King Saul, the Music and Me

All my Stones albums, piled in stacks. I have almost every title, either from the group or from the individual members, that has been produced. I come home and throw a record on the turntable, and all my worries vanish.

Just like King Saul in the Old Testament of the Bible, I suffer from depression. It's quite common in the general population, but usually hushed up. The has plagued our family for many generations. But like old Mr. Saul, who had the future King David play to him when he was feeling down, I am soothed by music. That's probably why I have such a huge collection of music, in vinyl, cassette, CD and MP3. Music, in conjunction with my Christian faith, has kept me going for many years, and has been more effective than any of the frequently-prescribed anti-depressants in keeping me on an even keel.

Since I was a kid, I have been drawn toward the energetic, happy sounds of Rock and Roll. And now, forty years later, it still 'soothes my soul' in the words of Bob Seger.

The past few years have been rough ones, and the band that has kept me going all that time is the Rolling Stones. I have nearly everything the band has ever done, either collectively or solo, on records, CD and cassette, and about a year ago, I even saw the band perform live in Missoula, Montana. They were even better than I anticipated.

Stranger yet, I met a friend online who is a friend of the greatest rock and roll bassist of all time, Mr. Bill Wyman. And before I knew it, I had the outstanding "Rolling with the Stones" signed by authors Richard Havers and Bill Wyman.

I don't imagine that many readers of this blog share my taste in music. The bottom line isn't that any one band, or genre, is the pancacea for the worries and problems we deal with on a daily basis as human beings. The bottom line is that the beauty of music gives us the motivation and the optimism to move on. It is God's gift to His people.

Thank you, not only to the Rolling Stones (and my second favorite band, the Beatles) but to all those who make music, past and present, for making live so much better for us all.

For a Youtube clip for the Missoula concert, (the sound and video is not great, because both were shot with fans' camera phones) click this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxxYa9UZu5s

or this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrEE9r4n1t0

Study Finds One-Fourth of all Homeless are Veterans

The story below appeared in newspapers around the U.S. today. What a sad commentary this is on our treatment of veterans, some of whom have physical or emotional scars. I remember about twenty years ago when a WWII veteran froze to death on a park bench across the street from the White House. It was later discovered he was a highly decorated war hero.

"WASHINGTON - Lonnie Bowen Jr. was once a social worker, but for 17 years the Vietnam war veteran has slept on the streets off and on as he's battled substance abuse and mental health problems."It's been a hard struggle," said Bowen, 62, as he rolled a cigarette outside a homeless processing center in downtown Philadelphia, where he planned to seek help for his drug and alcohol problem, as he has before.Every night, hundreds of thousands of veterans like Bowen are without a home.

Veterans make up one in four homeless people in the United States, though they are only 11 percent of the general adult population, according to a report to be released today by the Alliance to End Homelessness, a public education nonprofit group.

And homelessness is not just a problem among middle-age and elderly veterans. Younger veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan are trickling into shelters and soup kitchens seeking services, treatment or help finding a job.The Department of Veterans Affairs has identified 1,500 homeless veterans from the current wars and says 400 have participated in its programs targeting homelessness.The Alliance to End Homelessness based the findings of its report on numbers from Veterans Affairs and the Census Bureau.

In 2005, it was estimated that 194,254 homeless people out of 744,313 on any given night were veterans. In comparison, the VA says that 20 years ago, the estimated number of veterans who were homeless on any given night was 250,000.Some advocates say an early presence of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan at shelters does not bode well for the future.

It took roughly a decade for the lives of Vietnam veterans to unravel to the point that they started showing up among the homeless. Advocates worry that intense and repeated deployments leave newer veterans particularly vulnerable."We're going to be having a tsunami of them eventually because the mental health toll from this war is enormous," said Daniel Tooth, director of veterans affairs for Lancaster County, Pa.While services for homeless veterans have improved in the past 20 years, advocates say more financial resources are needed. With the spotlight on the plight of Iraq veterans, they hope more will be done to prevent homelessness and provide affordable housing to the younger veterans while there's an opportunity."When the Vietnam War ended, that was part of the problem. The war was over, it was off TV, nobody wanted to hear about it," said John Keaveney, a Vietnam veteran and a founder of New Directions in Los Angeles, which gives veterans help with substance abuse, job training and shelter.

"I think they'll be forgotten," Keaveney said of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. "People get tired of it. It's not glitzy that these are young, honorable, patriotic Americans. They'll just be veterans, and that happens after every war."

Historically, a number of fighters in U.S. wars have become homeless. In the post-Civil War era, homeless veterans sang old Army songs to dramatize their need for work and became known as "tramps," which had meant to march into war, said Todd DePastino, a historian at Penn State University's Beaver campus who wrote a book on the history of homelessness.After World War I, thousands of veterans — many of them homeless — camped in the nation's capital seeking bonus money. Their camps were destroyed by the government, creating a public relations disaster for President Herbert Hoover.The end of the Vietnam War coincided with a time of economic restructuring, and many of the people who fought in Vietnam were also those most affected by the loss of manufacturing jobs, DePastino said."

Remembering the Norden Bombsight and Its Creator

Marilyn Walton sent me some good links dealing with the famous Norden bombsight, which legend has it could drop a bomb into a pickle barrel from twenty thousand fee (though only under ideal conditions and rarely when an aircraft was in less than perfect weather or was being shot at or flakked up. At the end of the article are two websites Marilyn recommended on the Norden bombsight. I checked them both and they are very interesting. According to Marilyn, Carl Norden sold his invention to the war effort for one dollar.

In the wiki story below, if you click on the blue hyperlinks, you can get additional information on the topics:

"Design and operation

The Norden sight was designed for use on US Navy aircraft by Carl Norden, a Dutch engineer educated in Switzerland who emigrated to the US in 1904 and worked on bombsights at the Sperry Corporation before starting his own company. The Norden was initially built at the Norden plant in New York City before the start of WWII and then at several other companies during the war. The device used a mechanical analog computer comprising electric motors, gyros, mirrors, bubble levels, gears and a small telescope.

The bombardier would input the necessary information, such as airspeed and altitude, and the bombsight would calculate the trajectory of the bomb being dropped. Near the target the aircraft would fly on autopilot to a precise position calculated by the bombsight and release the ordnance. Using this device, bombardiers could, in theory, drop their bombs within a 100-foot (ca 30m) circle from an altitude of well over 20,000 feet (ca. 7km). In combat, this accuracy was never achieved — because the Norden had been tested under "artificial conditions" at the US proving grounds, for example in the absence of anti-aircraft fire or adverse weather. An additional factor was that the shape and even the paint of the bomb mantle greatly changed the aerodynamic properties of the weapon; and, at that time, nobody knew how to calculate the trajectory of bombs that reached supersonic speeds during their fall.

Under perfect conditions only 50 percent of American bombs fell within a quarter of a mile of the target, and American flyers estimated that as many as 90 percent of bombs could miss their targets.

Operational efficiency

The "Norden" was marketed as the tool to win the war; and it was often claimed that the bombsight could drop bombs into pickle barrels. As noted above, the bombsight's effectiveness is debated. Some argue that over typically cloud-covered Europe the Norden was nearly useless, and the British Bomber Command focused on nighttime bombing anyway. However, the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) did both day and night bombing runs, depending on the distance; and many veteran B-17 and B-24 bombardiers swore by the Norden.
In the European theater, the US introduced an Automatic Flight Control Equipment (AFCE) and a radar system called the H2X (Mickey), which were used directly with the Norden bombsight. The AFCE served as the mechanical computer “autopilot” of the plane. The radar proved most accurate in coastal regions, as the water surface and the coastline produced a distinctive radar echo.

Over Japan, bomber crews soon discovered strong winds at high altitudes, the so-called jetstreams — but the Norden bombsight worked only for wind speeds with minimal wind shear, under which testing had been done. Additionally, the bombing altitude over Japan reached up to 30,000 feet — but most of the testing had been done well below 20,000 ft.
In both theaters of war, one vulnerability was that, when the bombardier auto-piloted the aircraft using the bombsight, the aircraft was more susceptible to anti-aircraft fire and collisions with other allied aircraft.

As a mechanical device, the Norden bombsight used complex machinery consisting of many gearwheels and ball bearings, which were prone to produce inaccuracies if not properly maintained. In fact, many bombsights were rushed to war use without thorough testing. Often the bombardier had to oil and repair failures himself – for some time into the war, equipped and qualified groundcrew technical staff were just not available in sufficient numbers (see below).

Wartime security

As a critical wartime instrument, bombardiers were required to take an oath during their training stating that they would defend the Norden secret with their own life if necessary. In case the bomber plane should make an emergency landing on enemy territory, the bombardier would have to shoot the important parts of the "Norden" with a gun, disabling it; but as this method still would leave a nearly intact apparatus to the enemy, something like a thermite gun was installed – the sheer heat of the chemical reaction would melt the "Norden" into a lump of metal.

After each completed mission, bomber crews left the aircraft with a bag which they deposited in a safe ("the Bomb Vault"). This secure facility ("the AFCE and Bombsight Shop") was typically in one of the base's Nissen hut (Quonset hut) support buildings. The Bombsight Shop was manned by enlisted men who were members of a Supply Depot Service Group ("Sub Depot") attached to each USAAF bombardment group. These shops not only guarded the bombsights but performed critical maintenance on the Norden and related control equipment. This was probably the most technically skilled ground-echelon job, and certainly the most secret, of all the work performed by Sub Depot personnel. The non-commissioned officer in charge and his staff had to have a high aptitude for understanding and working with mechanical devices.
As the end of World War II neared, the bombsight was gradually downgraded in its secrecy; however, it was not until 1944 that the first public display of the instrument occurred.
Its last use in combat was by the Naval Air Observation Squadron Sixty-Seven (VO-67), during the Vietnam War. The bombsights were used in Operation Igloo White for dropping Air-Delivered Seismic Intrusion Detectors (ADSID) along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. " ---End Wikipedia article

Further reading at these websites: http://www.nordenretireesclub.org/norden_bio.htm

and http://www.twinbeech.com/norden_bombsight.htm#3-29-07

B-17 Model 'Chowhound' by Marshall Dullum

B-17 model builder and B-29 radioman extraordinaire Marshall Dullum poses with his crew in the photo above, taken during Marshall's service in the Korean War. Marshall is in the bottom row, second from left. Marshall built the B-17 model featured in this post, which he gave to me today.

Marshall's B-17G model of 'Chowhound', with US dollar bill for size comparison.

I visited my Idaho Falls friend Marshall Dullum this afternoon to wish him Happy Birthday and deliver his present (a book about the B-29 units in Korea during the Korean War), and he had an amazing surprise for me---a huge B-17G model that he built many years ago. I was overwhelmed at his generosity. It's a beauty, as you can see from the pictures. This is no small-kit model, but a huge tribute to the B-17. Marshall did a wonderful job of painting all the interiors and exteriors---even the Norden bombsight is in there in regulation black. Wow!

This particular B-17, #42-31367 flew out of Bassingourn, England assigned to the 322nd Squadron of the 91st Bomb Group. The Walt Disney character "Pluto" was painting on her nose. Chow Hound flew over 30 missions, but luck ran out for her second crew on August 8th, 1944 when she was shot down--4 of her crew were killed.

The model is so realistic you can look into the Plexiglass windows and see the Norden bombsight and the pilot's seats. When Marshall moved from California, some of the pieces were broken. He painstakingly found matching parts and fixed this model.

Marshall was a B-29 radioman in Korea, and is the only local friend I know who shares my passion for WWII aircraft. I met Marshall when I did an article about him for a local magazine's July 4 issue. We've been friends ever since.

Enjoy the photos of this model!

120-Year-Old World War One Vet Blogs His Wartime Experiences

Mr. William Henry Bonser Lamin, of Ilkeston, England, has been blogging his daily World War One experiences online for the past year or so. I presume he is having some help from a 'medium' of some sort, possibly in the form of a descendant and with the use of his war diaries. Each day, a page of his diary from today's date is added, ninety years after it was written. This is an excellent blog and I recommend it highly to anyone with an interest in World War One or the common soldier's war experiences.

Below is Mr. Lamin's weblog profile:

William Henry Bonser Lamin
Age: 120
Gender: Male
Astrological Sign: Virgo
Zodiac Year: Rat
Industry: Manufacturing
Occupation: Laceworker
Location: Ilkeston : Derbyshire : United Kingdom
Audio Clip
About Me
Born in August 1887 in Awsworth Notts, to Henry and Sarah Lamin. Elder Sisters Catherine (Kate) and Agnes (Annie) and Elder brother John (Jack). Educated at Awsworth Board School, just outside Ilkeston, Derbyshire, England.
Interests
Home
wife Ethel
Baby son Willie and little Connie
Favorite Movies
Haven't managed to see one yet.

The web address for Mr. Lamin's blog is: http://www.blogger.com/profile/04673086195442900581

The writer keeps a seperate blog for viewer comments, which are almost as good as the blog itself. These are found at http://www1comments.blogspot.com/

Flying Tiger Legend Tex Hill Flies Final Mission

Tex Hill in his World War II Army Air Force uniform in 1943.
-- Courtesy photo

An aviation legend, who was a member of the famed Flying Tigers, died Oct. 11.Retired Air National Guard Brig. Gen. David Lee “Tex” Hill, 92, died at his home near San Antonio, Texas, of congestive heart failure.

Life with Tex Hill was always lighthearted because of his personality and sense of humor, said his grandson Col. Reagan Schaupp, director of Air University’s Joint Flag Officer Warfighting Course.“He could deliver a one-liner like you wouldn’t believe,” the colonel said. He said his grandfather’s outlook on life is illustrated by a story about one of the new guys reporting to the 23rd Fighter Group command section to meet his new commander, Tex Hill. The man found an inbox and an outbox on General Hill’s desk. The inbox held roasted peanuts. The empty shells were in the outbox.

The famed Flying Tigers commanded by aviation pioneer, Gen. Claire Chennault, was known officially as the American Volunteer Group. They were a small group of volunteer aviators recruited by Chennault at the request of China’s Madame Chiang Kai-shek to defend the country against the Japanese during the early years of World War II. On a mission to strafe Japanese aircraft at an airfield near Raheng, China, he and other Flying Tigers encountered enemy Ki-27 Nate fighters, and suddenly, General Hill’s P-40 Tomahawk began to shudder badly. “Something was wrong. Tex was vibrating and shaking so violently, he concluded the engine was coming out of the airplane,” Colonel Schaupp wrote in Tex’s memoir. “Feeling he didn’t have long in the air, Tex headed for Burma to put as much distance between him and the enemy as possible. He sweated out the shuddering ride, expecting any minute to begin a slow dive into the jungle, but somehow the P-40 stayed doggedly in flight and made it back to the base.”Upon inspecting the aircraft, General Hill discovered 11, 7.7-millimeter bullets lodged in his aircraft with a couple in one of the propeller’s blades. That had thrown the propeller rotation out of sync and was the cause of the intense vibration. Looking at the bullets, General Hill realized the loud thumps he heard while battling one of the Japanese fighters were, “very nearly the last sounds he ever heard.”

When the Flying Tigers were deactivated in July 1942, General Hill remained in China with the 23rd Fighter Group. He was one of only five Flying Tiger pilots to stay longer than two weeks after the American Volunteers Group disbanded, and was given the task of activating the 75th Fighter Squadron. General Hill left China in December 1942 to command the Proving Ground Group at Eglin Field, Florida, and returned to China in 1943 to command the 23rd Fighter Group. When he returned home in 1944, he was credited with destroying 18.25 enemy aircraft making him an ace three times over.

Hill became a brigadier general, and at age 31, he was the youngest one-star in the history of the Air National Guard. General Hill retired from military service with that rank in 1968.

As Colonel Schaupp remembers his grandfather, he realizes, for Tex, there are no more enemy fighters to duel in the sky, no more ground targets to strafe, and no more wars to win.“Others will have to see to those things,” he said. “What’s important is that young men and women know his story, understand his sacrifice and carry on where he left off. What’s important is for the nation to remember and uphold the freedom such patriots paid so dearly for.”

Pilot of A-Bomb B-29 Paul Tibbetts Flies Final Mission

By JULIE CARR SMYTH, Associated Press Writer

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Paul Tibbets, who piloted the B-29 bomber Enola Gay that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, died Thursday. He was 92 and insisted for six decades after the war that he had no regrets about the mission and slept just fine at night.

Tibbets died at his Columbus home. He suffered from a variety of health problems and had been in decline for two months.

Tibbets had requested no funeral and no headstone, fearing it would provide his detractors with a place to protest, said Gerry Newhouse, a longtime friend. (My comment: I find this very sad).

Tibbets' historic mission in the plane named for his mother marked the beginning of the end of World War II and eliminated the need for what military planners feared would have been an extraordinarily bloody invasion of Japan. It was the first use of a nuclear weapon in wartime.
The plane and its crew of 14 dropped the five-ton "Little Boy" bomb on the morning of Aug. 6, 1945. The blast killed 70,000 to 100,000 people and injured countless others.

Three days later, the United States dropped a second nuclear bomb on Nagasaki, Japan, killing an estimated 40,000 people. Tibbets did not fly in that mission. The Japanese surrendered a few days later, ending the war.

"I knew when I got the assignment it was going to be an emotional thing," Tibbets told The Columbus Dispatch for a story published on the 60th anniversary of the bombing. "We had feelings, but we had to put them in the background. We knew it was going to kill people right and left. But my one driving interest was to do the best job I could so that we could end the killing as quickly as possible."

Morris Jeppson, the officer who armed the bomb during the Hiroshima flight, said Tibbets was energetic, well-respected and "hard-nosed."

"Ending the war saved a lot of U.S. armed forces and Japanese civilians and military," Jeppson said. "History has shown there was no need to criticize him."

Tibbets, then a 30-year-old colonel, never expressed regret over his role. He said it was his patriotic duty and the right thing to do.

"I'm not proud that I killed 80,000 people, but I'm proud that I was able to start with nothing, plan it and have it work as perfectly as it did," he said in a 1975 interview.

"You've got to take stock and assess the situation at that time. We were at war. ... You use anything at your disposal."

He added: "I sleep clearly every night."

Tibbets took quiet pride in the job he had done, said journalist Bob Greene, who wrote the Tibbets biography, "Duty: A Father, His Son, and the Man Who Won the War."

"He said, 'What they needed was someone who could do this and not flinch” and that was me,'" Greene said.

Paul Warfield Tibbets Jr. was born Feb. 23, 1915, in Quincy, Ill., and spent most of his boyhood in Miami.

He was a student at the University of Cincinnati's medical school when he decided to withdraw in 1937 to enlist in the Army Air Corps.

After the war, Tibbets said in 2005, he was dogged by rumors claiming he was in prison or had committed suicide.

"They said I was crazy, said I was a drunkard, in and out of institutions," he said. "At the time, I was running the National Crisis Center at the Pentagon."

Tibbets retired from the Air Force as a brigadier general in 1966. He later moved to Columbus, where he ran an air taxi service until he retired in 1985.

The National Aviation Hall of Fame in Dayton plans a photographic tribute to Tibbets, who was inducted in 1996.

"There are few in the history of mankind that have been called to figuratively carry as much weight on their shoulders as Paul Tibbets," director Ron Kaplan said in a statement. "Even fewer were able to do so with a sense of honor and duty to their countrymen as did Paul."
Tibbets' role in the bombing brought him fame ” and infamy ” throughout his life.
In 1976, he was criticized for re-enacting the bombing during an appearance at a Harlingen, Texas, air show. As he flew a B-29 Superfortress over the show, a bomb set off on the runway below created a mushroom cloud.

He said the display "was not intended to insult anybody," but the Japanese were outraged. The U.S. government later issued a formal apology.

Tibbets again defended the bombing in 1995, when an outcry erupted over a planned 50th anniversary exhibit of the Enola Gay at the Smithsonian Institution.

The museum had planned to mount an exhibit that would have examined the context of the bombing, including the discussion within the Truman administration of whether to use the bomb, the rejection of a demonstration bombing and the selection of the target.

Veterans groups objected, saying the proposed display paid too much attention to Japan's suffering and too little to Japan's brutality during and before World War II, and that it underestimated the number of Americans who would have perished in an invasion.

They said the bombing of Japan was an unmitigated blessing for the United States and the exhibit should say so.

Tibbets denounced it as "a damn big insult."

The museum changed its plan and agreed to display the fuselage of the Enola Gay without commentary, context or analysis.

He told the Dispatch in 2005 that he wanted his ashes scattered over the English Channel, where he loved to fly during the war.

Newhouse confirmed that Tibbets wanted to be cremated, but he said relatives had not yet determined how he would be laid to rest.

Tibbets is survived by his wife, Andrea, and three sons: Paul, Gene and James as well as a number of grandchildren and great-grandchildren. A grandson named after Tibbets followed his grandfather into the military as a B-2 bomber pilot currently stationed in Belgium. "

My own thoughts on Paul Tibbetts and his important mission: by dropping the A-bomb on Hiroshima, Tibbetts saved the lives of countless American soldiers who would have died in a land invasion of Japan, not to mention the lives of all the Japanese military personnel and civilians. The fact that Hiroshima killed thousands must thus be looked at in perspective with the lives it saved. War is about killing, and in the words of American general William T. Sherman, "War is Hell". I am equally saddened by the loss of young American lives at Pearl Harbor in an unprovoked attack on December 7, 1941.

___