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Posted on 08/13/2003 12:00:15 AM PDT by SAMWolf
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 are acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated.
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| Our Mission: The FReeper Foxhole is dedicated to Veterans of our Nation's military forces and to others who are affected in their relationships with Veterans.
Where the Freeper Foxhole introduces a different veteran each Wednesday. The "ordinary" Soldier, Sailor, Airman or Marine who participated in the events in our Country's history. We hope to present events as seen through their eyes. To give you a glimpse into the life of those who sacrificed for all of us - Our Veterans.
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ARMY OF THE POTOMAC COMMENCING MAY 4TH 1864 We were in winter quarters near Brandy Station, VA. Our Bugler sounded the revilee and long role which caused a comotion in camp knowing full well the time had arrived for the Army of the Potomac to start on the summer campaign.  The Wilderness Creating Org. War Department. U.S. Army. Office of the Chief Signal Officer. photographer, Mathew Brady Studio National Archives at College Park, We arose at 4 oclock, struck tents, packed our knapsacks, got our breakfast and fell into line. At 6 oclock in the morning we started south crossing the Rapidan river on a pontoon bridge. Marching all day. We encamped for the night in a pine woods. Marching about 15 miles. Was very tired & foot sore. Arose at daybreak, got our breakfast and fell into line, then resumed our march southward. Saw Gen. Grant for the first time. Marching very slow. Very warm. Fighting commenced at 11 oclock A.M. and continued all day untill after dark. Saw Gen. Burnside. He is here with 6,000 men. We captured 500 men to day. The picket firing lasted all night. Slept on the ground with my knapsack for a pillow and the canopy of heaven for a tent.  General Grant and staff on the road from the Wilderness to Spotsylvania Courthouse, Virginia May 7, 1864 Edwin Forbes (1839-1895) Graphite on paper The fighting commenced at daylight. The canons roared like thunder. Several charges were made but very little was accomplished on either side. Capt Billings of my own company, & Nicholas Beck, by old bunk mate were both killed by the same shell, and several more comrades belonging to Co F of our Regt. were killed & wounded. The Provose Guard were deployed as skirmishers in the rear of line of battle to take charge of the prisioners if any taken & to hold the straglers in check. Our lines were broken. The Rebels made a grand charge on the first Division of the Old 6th Corps & after a hard struggle our line was broken & driven back but the Provost Guard fixed bayonets & stoped every man. Our line was soon formed again and at dark the Old 6th Corps charged on the Rebels and drove them out of the breast works they had taken from us before l0 o'clock in the evening.  Arose at daylight, we had our breakfast about half cooked when the battle commenced. The rebels came out of the woods in 4 lines of battle, then Our artilery opened on them with Grape & Canister causing them to retreat in confusion & were glad to get out of sight. Very heavy fighting down the left of the line near Chancelorsville. It was reported we had captured between 4 & 5000 prizoners today. Heared good news about dark and Great Cheering prevailed the whol length of the line. We recd orders to be ready to move at dark. We marched 3 or 4 miles and halted untill 2 O clock in the morning by the side of the road. We slept with our knapsacks on our backs. Was aroused from our slumbers by a pack of mules running away. We sprung to our feet, grabbed our muskets & got ready for action. We considered it an attack from the rebels. In a moments time we were all quiet and down we laid until daybreak.  Lee at the Wilderness (1872) Lee at the Wilderness, McArdle's first battle painting, survives only in the form of a photograph. McArdle had served under General Robert E. Lee during the Civil War. In creating Lee at the Wilderness, McArdle honed the painstaking research skills he would use in the Texas paintings, interviewing and corresponding with many veterans of Hood's Texas Brigade and others involved in the battle. McArdle was heartbroken when Lee at the Wilderness, along with the first Dawn at the Alamo, was consumed in the 1881 Capitol fire Arose at daylight and marched about 8 miles very fast. Very warm today. We passed our ambulances loaded with our wounded comrades & saw lots of men laying by the road side that were wounded. Some with a leg off, some with an arm off, some a hand, some a foot. I tell you it was a hard sight to behold. We passed through Chancelersville and also through a dense pine forest. We saw lots of dead & wounded all along the roadside. Canonading in the morning but not much fighting today but at dark we made a charge on the Rebel Breastworks and drove them from their position. We cut them down dreadfully. The ground was covered with the dead and dieing. They laid like sheaves of wheat in a harvest field. Our men slept in the Breastworks & rifle pits they had captured.  Arose at daylight ate breakfast and got ready to march. Not much fighting today. A little canonading & skirmishing. Gen. Sedgwick our Corps Commander was killed near our Regiment by Rebel sharp shooters. Some of the boys would dodge when the balls passed their heads & the General said: "boys don't dodge. They could not hit an elephant." And in less than 5 minutes he was hit and soon died on the field. Gen. Morris of our brigade was wounded about the same time in the leg. The rebel sharp shooters were soon discovered up in a tree, 9 of them, when the officer in command called for a piece of artilery from the rifle batery and opened on them and the first shot cut the tree off about 40 feet from the ground & down came Mr. sharp shooter head first. That ended the sharp shooting at this time. It was very warm today. Some of the men were sun struck. The sick & wounded are being sent to Fredricksburg in amblulanees and general wagons. Had a brisk fight at dark of musketry & artilery.  All was quiet at daylight, except now & then a random shot was fired. Heavy skirmishing commenced at 6 Oclock A.M. This has been the hardest days fighting that has been done. Have fought al1 day and hard at it yet. Reported that Gen Butler had taken Petersburg & was advancing on Richmond. We see hundreds of wounded by the sides of the road and the wounded in the ambulances are screeching as they are moved off the field. But we don't mind it. We are so tired & worn out by marching & fighting & being without sleep. We don't care for any one but ourselves. We don't realize the horrors of war. Our men made a charge at dark & captured about l000 rebels. So ended this days fighting.
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Just like old guys. LOL!
The "M" class just proves that dumb ideas universal.
Just rub all over your body, guaranteed to prevent sex
Disclaimer: Theory is void in some areas of San Francisco and all of france where it's actually an improvement in body odor)
The "Bloody Angle" took place at a strategic crossroads that controlled the shortest route to Richmond. General Lee's Confederate troops built a complex series of trenches and embankments to protect their position. On May 12, 1864, General Grant's Union troops attacked throughout the rainy, foggy day, and on into utter darkness. Twenty hours of unrelenting vicious combat resulted in one square mile of ground strewn with 12,000 casualties.
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Air Power |
The diminutive Bell X-1 rocket research plane was the world's first aircraft to break the "sound barrier" and achieve supersonic flight on Oct. 14, 1947, when "Chuck" Yeager's "Glamorous Glennis" passed Mach 1 on its epic flight. The aircraft's conical nose was modeled on the lines of a .50 caliber bullet. While the X-1 was capable of taking off under its own power, all but one of its flights began with a high-altitude drop from a launch aircraft in order to conserve precious rocket fuel.
During World War II, fighter pilots encountered a new and terrifying phenomenon. Rolling over into steep dives, they accelerated to speeds of 500 mph and into the unknown region of transonic flight (0.7-1.3 Mach) where the effects of compressibility--loss of control and structurally devastating aerodynamic loads--began to take over with often deadly consequences. By war's end, new turbojet engines were under development and they promised even higher speeds--speeds passing through the transonic and even, perhaps, into the supersonic region. So little was known about transonic aerodynamics, however, that many aerodynamicists theorized that drag would reach infinity as an airplane approached the speed of sound. The possible existence of a "sound barrier" was only one of a host of unknowns constituting a very real barrier to flight progress. Aircraft designers could not proceed without valid data and the wind tunnels of the day, which "choked" as the airflow around models reached transonic velocities, provided few answers.
Thus an experimental research airplane--the rocket-powered and bullet-shaped Bell X-1 --was designed and built to acquire the necessary data and to determine whether or not a piloted aircraft could actually penetrate the "sonic wall." The X-1 aircraft were almost 31 feet long and had a wingspan of 28 feet. The X-1 was built of conventional aluminum stressed-skin construction to extremely high structural standards. The X-1E was also 31 feet long but had a wingspan of only 22 feet, 10 inches. It was powered by a Reaction Motors, Inc., XLR-8-RM-5, four-chamber rocket engine. As did all X-1 rocket engines, the LR-8-RM-5 engine did not have throttle capability, but instead, depended on ignition of any one chamber or group of chambers to vary speed.
The X-1 was the first in a series of "X"--or experimental--aircraft that were designed to answer fundamental questions, to probe the most challenging unknowns of flight and solve their mysteries. The program was also the Air Force's first foray into experimental flight research and the first collaborative effort in what would become an extraordinarily productive partnership between it and the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). The first NACA contingent arrived at Muroc Army Air Field (later Edwards) in September of 1946 and the NACA and its successor, NASA, have been conducting fundamental flight research there ever since.
There were four versions of the Bell X-1 rocket-powered research aircraft that flew at the NACA High-Speed Flight Research Station, Edwards, California. The bullet-shaped X-1 aircraft were built by Bell Aircraft Corporation, Buffalo, N.Y. for the U.S. Army Air Forces (after 1947, U.S. Air Force) and the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). The X-1 Program was originally designated the XS-1 for EXperimental Supersonic. The X-1’s mission was to investigate the transonic speed range (speeds from just below to just above the speed of sound) and, if possible, to break the "sound barrier." Three different X-1s were built and designated: X-1-1, X-1-2 (later modified to become the X-1E), and X-1-3. The basic X-1 aircraft were flown by a large number of different pilots from 1946 to 1951.
The X-1 Program not only proved that humans could go beyond the speed of sound, it reinforced the understanding that technological barriers could be overcome. The X-1s pioneered many structural and aerodynamic advances including extremely thin, yet extremely strong wing sections; supersonic fuselage configurations; control system requirements; powerplant compatibility; and cockpit environments. The X-1 aircraft were the first transonic-capable aircraft to use an all-moving stabilizer. The flights of the X-1s opened up a new era in aviation.
The X-1 program also represented a turning point. Up until that time, experimental flight research programs had always been flown by contractor or NACA test pilots. Thus it represented a major departure from convention when, after Bell pilots had demonstrated the flight worthiness of the airplane up to a speed of 0.8 Mach, the assault on Mach 1 was turned over to a young Air Force test pilot. The man chosen to make that assault was a 24-year old combat ace named Capt. Charles E. "Chuck" Yeager . What followed is well known. After launch from a B-29 for his ninth powered flight on October 14, 1947, he accelerated to a speed of Mach 1.06 (700 mph) at 42,000 feet and shattered the myth of the sound barrier forever. Though few people could comprehend its full implications at the time, he had just taken the first step in a chain of events that would ultimately vault man beyond the atmosphere and into space.
This achievement also legitimized the role of military test pilots in flight research and, with the flights of the X-1, testing at Muroc began to assume two distinct identities. Highly experimental research programs were typically flown in conjunction with the NACA (later NASA) and conducted in a very methodical fashion to answer largely theoretical questions. Meanwhile, highly accelerated development programs to evaluate the capabilities of aircraft proposed for the operational inventory were conducted by Air Force and contractor test teams.
Even while the original X-1s were still flying, modified versions were being developed to study high-speed aerodynamics. Three second-generation aircraft were built: the X-1A, X-1B and X-1D. The X-1A, X-1B, and the X-1D were growth versions of the X-1. They were almost five feet longer, had an improved rocket propellent system and conventional canopies. The X-1A and X-1B were modified to have ejection seats. Their mission was to continue the X-1 studies at higher speeds and altitudes. All three of the Bell Aircraft Company manufactured planes had a 6,000-lb thrust, XLR-11 four-chambered rocket engine. The XLR-11 was built by Reaction Motors Inc. The aircraft were all air-launched from a carrier aircraft.
The X-1A was larger than its predecessor in order to carry more fuel, carried reliable turbo pumps, and had better cockpit visibility. This aircraft attained a speed of Mach 2.44 and an altitude of 90,440 feet. The X-1A was the first to begin this research after the X-1D was destroyed in an explosion on a captive flight before making any research flights.On December 12, 1953, Maj. Chuck Yeager piloted the X-1A rocket plane to a speed of Mach 2.44 (1,650 mph) in level flight at an altitude of approximately 76,000 feet. As he attained top speed, however, the X-1A tumbled violently out of control. He was encountering something new--something aerodynamicists called "inertia coupling." The airplane tumbled violently--about all three axes--for more than 40,000 feet before Yeager was able to begin to recover to wings-level, stable flight. When landed safely on Rogers Dry Lake he was, once again, the "fastest human alive" but it was quite apparent that there were still many mysteries to be solved concerning supersonic flight. Nine months later, on August 26, 1954, Maj. Arthur "Kit" Murray flew the same aircraft to a new altitude record of 90,440 feet. Those two performances were the records for the X-1 program. On July 20, 1955, the X-1A was lost just before its first NACA test flight when it had to be jettisoned from the launch aircraft following an onboard explosion.
The Bell X-1B was a second-generation X-1 used by the U.S. Air Force for pilot familiarization before being turned over to NACA in December 1954. The X-1B was similar to the Bell X-1A except for the installation of wingtips extensions for its last three flight. The X-1B had a modified fuselage with greater capacity for fuel tanks, an improved cockpit, and a turbopump fuel system as compared with the X-1. The NACA used the X-1B primarily for aerodynamic heating and reaction-control research from 1956 to 1958. The aircraft was fitted with special instrumentation for exploratory aerodynamic heating tests. It had over 300 thermocouples installed on it. The X-1B was the first aircraft to fly with a reaction-control system; a prototype of the reaction-control system used on the X-15 and other piloted test aircraft. . Midway through its flight test program, the X-1B was equipped with an Reaction Motors, Inc. XLR-11-RM-9 engine which differed, from the other XLR-11s, only in having an electric spark, low-tension interrupter type ignition in place of the older high-tension type. The X-1B was given to the Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base Dayton, Ohio, on January 27, 1959, for preservation and display. This aircraft completed a total of 27 glide and powered flights by eight U.S. Air Force and two NACA test pilots.
The X-1C was cancelled while still in the mock-up stage.
The X-1D had short career, just one flight. On 24 July 1951, its nose gear failed during landing. The X-1D was destroyed in August 1951 after being jettisoned from its B-50 carrier plane, following an explosion.
The number two X-1 was modified and redesignated the X-1E. The modifications included adding a conventional canopy, an ejection seat, a low-pressure fuel system of increased capacity, and a thinner high-speed wing. The X-1E was used to obtain in-flight data at twice the speed of sound, with particular emphasis placed on investigating the improvements achieved with the high-speed wing. These wings, made by Stanley Aircraft, were only 3 - 3/8-in. thick at the thickest point and had 343 gauges installed in them for measurement of structural loads and aerodynamic heating. The X-1E used the XLR-11 rocket engine from the X-1 to power it up to a speed of 1,471 mph and to an altitude of 73,458 ft. Like the X-1 it was air launched.
Specifications:
Primary Function: Experimental Aircraft
Contractor: Bell
Crew: One
Unit Cost: N/A
Powerplant: Reaction Motors, Inc., XLR-11-RM-3 (model A6000C4) four chamber rocket engine, rated at 6,000 lb static thrust
Dimensions:
Length: 30.9 feet
Wingspan: 28 feet
Height: 10.85 feet
Weights: Empty: 7,000 lb / Maximum Takeoff: N/A
Performance :
Speed: mach 1.45 (957mph)
Ceiling: 71,900 feet
Range: N/A
Armaments:
None
All photos Copyright of Global Securtity.org
I have a thread scheduled that covers the X-1 coming up later this month.
Check your real life email when you get a chance. Love you guys.
LOL, you are so right!
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