RM3 Otis Lee Dennis, USNRadioman Third Class Otis Lee Dennis is the subject of the day.From here is the little I can find on the web:

Otis Lee Dennis, born 26 March 1913 in Scottsville, KY., enlisted in the Navy 26 October 1940. Radioman Third Class Dennis was cited posthumously for his heroic conduct as an aerial gunner in the initial attack on Kwajalein, in which he was killed in action on 1 February 1942.

USS DENNIS (DE-405)In his honor, the USS DENNIS (DE-405), a JOHN C BUTLER Class destroyer escort was named for him.84 of these ships were planned, and 80 built. It took about 4 months to put these warships together from a steel keel on the building ways to a commissioned vessels sailing from the pier. Size: 306′ LOA, 36 ft beam, 24 knots max speed and displacing 1,300 tons. Two 5″38 cal mounts, four 40mm mounts, 10 20mm guns and 3 21″ torpedo tubes comprised the armament of these ships. These were little ships, full of fight, to escort the larger vessels, particularly the CVEs (escort carriers) and older battleships during amphibious operations. They also served as RADAR picket ships.The USS DENNIS (DE-405) was commissioned 3/20/1944, commanded by LCDR Sig Hansen, USNR. From Wikipedia:

Dennis arrived at Pearl Harbor on 19 June 1944 to escort a convoy to Eniwetok and Kwajalein. She returned to Eniwetok on 29 July screening Belleau Wood (CVL-24). Joining the 5th Fleet, she escorted Carrier Division 22 to Manus for exercises, then sortied with Task Force 77 on 10 September to supply air support for the landings on Morotai Island 15 through 27 September.

From 12 October Dennis screened the escort carriers supplying the air cover for the invasion of Leyte. On 25 October she joined her carriers in making history as they fought a gallant action with the Japanese counter-attacking force in the Battle off Samar phase of the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Dennis rescued 434 survivors from the bombed St. Lo (CVE-63). For this action she shared in the Presidential Unit Citation awarded to TU 77.4.3, “Taffy 3”. Arriving at Kossol Roads, Palaus, on 28 October, she sailed 3 days later for the west coast, arriving at San Francisco, California on 26 November for an overhaul.

More details of the Battle Off Samar and the role played by the USS DENNIS (De-405) are reported in James Hornfischer’s excellent book, “Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors,” which I used to find some of the info below.

A unit of the storied “Taffy 3,” USS DENNIS was and active participant in the last great naval surface force battle the world has seen. Of the four DEs in the formation on 25 October, 1944, LCDR Hansen was the senior skipper, and LCDR Copeland the most junior on USS SAMUEL B ROBERTS (DE-413). The geometry placed the DENNIS on the far side of the formation from the approaching Japanese battle force, lead by IJN YAMATO, with the “Sammie B” on the near side. DENNIS stayed with the escort carriers for support, until directed to detach and engage to enemy force, where she fired her 3 21″ “fish” at the Japanese from long range, adding to the attacks of the close side vessels, now engulfed in close quarters combat between large and small vessels.

As the Japanese retired, DENNIS was ordered to recover the survivors of the USS ST LO (CVE-63). With cargo nets draped over the sides, 1st Lt Frank Tyrell and BMC Joe Barry supervised the saving of 400 of the ST LO’s crew, including 35 pilots, in the wake of the first Japanese kamikaze attack.Surviving the major sea battle, USS DENNIS participated in the assaults on Guam, Iwo Jima and finally Okinawa. Off Okinawa, she rescued 88 survivors of another kamikaze attack on the USS SANGAMON (CVL-26).Decommissioned in December, 1946, USS DENNIS (DE-405) had earned the Presidential Unit Citation and four battle stars for her WWII duty.

Posted @ Little Green Footballs Open Post!

Ian Toll, author of the excellent book, “Six Frigates” will be at Olsson’s Books and Records in Alexandria on 10/12/2007 for a reading signing event.On 10/19/2007, he will be at Bay Books in Coronado, CA, doing a reading and signing.

Check out excepts from Chapter 1. If you haven’t picked up this book yet, and love early American history, don’t miss this writing!

History about the first “Big E”. Worth a read…and, it fits well that this is also the day the CV-6 was commissioned in 1936.

Linking, learning and OOPS! Information coming in!

Found at the Scientific American Mind website, the adventuring into the upper reaches of the atmosphere has a cumulative effect on the thing that makes you think.

From “Into thin air: Altitude’s toll on the brain”:

Douglas Fields
National Institutes of Mental Health
Washington, D.C.

Three attributes of a good mountaineer are high pain threshold, bad memory, and … I forget the third. – R. Douglas Fields

Climbing Mount Everest is not so difficult; the hard part is getting down intact. According to a recent brain imaging study, almost no one does. Of thirteen climbers in the study who attempted Mount Everest, none returned without brain damage. The study also scanned the brains of climbers who attempted less extreme summits. For those of us who love to climb, the results are less than elevating. It seems that almost no one, whether the weekend warrior chaperoned to the summit or the seasoned mountaineer, will return from the high peaks with a brain in the same condition it was in beforehand.
[…]

Some of us will be able, based on a propensity to “get high” in aircraft or climbing, will be able to use this as a defense in our more advanced years to cover our mental errors. But then we know the other people who “get high” also will have that excuse…

Watch Lex’s posts for signs of too many rides when he took his O₂ mask off against the directives of NATOPS.

Note the BIG grins. Photo: Wyat Drewes
Over the last few months, my sitemeter has shown a number of searches for words to the effect of “what are the odds of dying while skydiving?”My blog ends up in the top ten responses on the search engine of choice. Writing this post will help elevate it, too, but that’s not my point. So, earnest searchers who might arrive at this post, here are a few thoughts from one who has made it though 28 years and 15+ hours of being propelled by gravity towards the “Blue Planet” many more times than once:

The odds? Not much at all. Way better than driving your car. There are many other ways to actually die faster, that you will be involved in daily and not give it a second thought.

Afraid of heights? I have known many a skydiver that wold feel unsafe on their two story house roof, clearing out gutters (way dangerous!), yet be there in freefall beginning at 13,000 feet with the biggest grin on their face you’d ever witness on a human being…quite honestly, from 20 ft, there’s no time for your canopy to deploy, therefore, it’s really scary!

The world looks flat (for the most part), from such heights, even in the low thousands for static line jumps, and the visual cues that make you queasy at 20 feet don’t have the same effect. Besides, a good jumpmaster is making you run through the “dive flow,” to enable the best conditions in your head to achieve success, once the plane is no longer cuccooning you (not even so) safely (but you think it’s a “perfectly good airplane” and that’s good enough for you at this point).

Consider this: The parachuting community, led by the United States Parachute Association (USPA) , begun about 40 years ago at the Parachute Club of America (PCA), has been, with the exception of the “Basic Safety Regulations (BSRs)” self regulating. The BSRs carry the weight of FAA regs, and are nothing to mess with, but is a fairly short, yet well determined list of the very basic safety do and don’ts. Scan them yourself in the Skydiver’s Information Manual (SIM) in Section 2.

Now, enough! Find the closest USPA Group Member drop zone (that means they play by the USPA rules…the ones that make the sport safe and fun…by checking here in the USPA Drop Zone Directory.

Go and make your smiling muscles do what they have never done before. I take no responsibility for the sore face muscles as a result, but I bet you won’t really care.

As a matter of my advice for the type jump to begin with, you ask? Do an Accelerated Freefall (AFF) course. If you can avoid the Tandem jump (which depends on the DZ), I’d just head straight to “doing it!” Being a not current now, but for many years Instructor and Jumpmaster, the fess the JMs and Is get paid are highly appreciated, but the far greater benefit is you will actually have skydived.

Telling your buds you “went skydiving” and did the Tandem “pony ride” thing is like pretending you flew the jet from LA to New York, when you actually sat in the back, eating peanuts and trusting the pilot. Do it for real and see what you have missed.

Oh, and the entire time in freefall is spent having fun, not staring at an altimeter, waiting for pull time…

I have this guy’s signature in my logbook! Lew Sanborn, USPA D-1 (expert license)Met him in CA jumping in 1996. A legend in the sport. And I have met many, many interesting people from all over the world, including Charlie Case…and he’s a legend of old timey jump days, too.There…that should put me higher on the search engines and still get useful info to the inquisitive among us.

Tracked back @: SteelJaw Scribe

It’s too early to cal to employ one for today, so I’ll draft one: SteelJaw Scribe.

I know I can count on him for excellent posts about the aviation world, the naval aspects in particular. Today he goes back to more details of “oddities” of carrier aviation, covering more details about B-25 Mitchells flying on (we know well of them flying off…) carriers, and more feasibility testing conducted with that airframe, which, while seemingly a non-issue, was actually an in road to the world of jets aboard CVs.

(Thanks, SJS!)

In the meantime, I am working on The.Next.Big.Thing. Also, it’s this time again.

Do you have your PayPal buttons close at hand? You’re gonna be needing them. Plans for such overpowering success as Team Navy enjoyed last year are in the works. If anyone knows a Marine/Marine related blogger who wants to get their feet wet (but we know that’s what Marines do best) making an assault this coming campaign, tell them to “STEP UP, MARINE!” and send their muster report. The Marine Blogger of 2006 ValOUR-IT fame, Villaineous Company hung up her keyboard a few weeks ago. In other words, the Marines in our midst are currently “headless.” What they should go looking for is one of those “strategic corporals” they have created with their world renowned training regimen and combat experience. If you know anyone interested, get them in touch with me (in comments or via email) and I’ll hook them up with the volunteer selector.

I missed it by a day. Oct 2nd, 1992 is a date with memories for myself and those in the Med that night….

Some of the history involving the USS SARATOGA (CV-60) and TCG Muavenet (DM-357, ex-USS GWIN (DM-33)) begins here.

Last week I got a trackback…so the trend is in the positive region of the chart!

Anyhow, this is effectively Part III of warfare and war games at the Naval War College. Short one today, as I am prepping highly classified plans for the next big event. A few will get “briefed in” later this week with new, sink the Army technology that is now in my hands…

The story actually begins in 1985, at Christmas time to be more precise. I was in Singapore, and, took advantage of the wonderful pricing on a variety of cassettes. The music, in the days before iTunes and CDs took up more volume per song, as did the playing devices, so the collection for listening wasn’t too large or varied. I picked up three tapes to add to the Staff collection, one of which was the soundtrack to “Beverly Hills Cop.” One of the songs was used as a “morale booster” over the battle group circuits in the mockups, in that red brick building SSW of the main War College one.

When we were engaged with the mass raids of TU-95D Bears and TU-160 Backfires, who had been marshalling over Indian territory, where our ROE disallowed our presence, with threat of direct military action by Indian forces if we penetrated their airspace, it turned out my “AW” (Group Anti-Air Warfare Commander) had been quite effective, once the Soviets headed to sea and went “feet wet.”

I was I a good mood, as was the rest of the friendly forces and staffs, having had the foresight to plan and now execute a solid battle plan. I figured, now that the war was in full auto for the moment and our F-14s were splashing bandits like shooting fish in a barrel, I’d play some music: “The Heat is On” followed by “The Neutron Dance.”

Back in the day, when we could neither confirm nor deny some bits of information, struck with some sort of military amnesia, this had some not so subtle undertones.

For some reason, the game controllers got a mite upset with our frivolity and asked us to secure the music. I exercised my command position to tell them “no.”

Next week: The attire for staff during conflict….

• The Perfect Storm full

Trackbacked to Cao’s blog and Error Theory.Pennsylvania Newspapers Pretend There is No Direction to MeccaIn September 2005, a half dozen different bloggers verified that a person facing into what was originally called the Crescent of Embrace memorial to Flight 93 would be facing almost exactly at Mecca. Some surrounding trees have been added to the design, but the giant central crescent remains completely intact in the Bowl of Embrace redesign:With Tom Burnett Sr. condemning the crescent design and refusing
to allow Tom Jr.’s name to be used, there is now a big public controversy in western Pennsylvania over whether the giant crescent really is oriented on Mecca. In response, the Memorial Project has decided to deny that there is any such thing as the direction to Mecca, and Pittsburgh’s two major newspapers are both backing up this transparent falsehood.Professor Daniel Griffith, who is serving as a consultant to the Memorial Project, told the Post Gazette that: “anything can point toward Mecca, because the earth is round.” …He made similar statements to the Pittsburgh Tribune Review and the Johnstown Tribune Democrat. None of these papers asked for a second opinion from any of the one billion Muslims who face Mecca five times a day for prayer, and it isn’t that the media has been duped by Griffith.Editors and reporters at both the Post Gazette and the Tribune Review are fully aware that a host of bloggers have independently verified the Mecca orientation of the crescent design. It was actually the Tribune Review that first commissioned Professor Griffith to analyze the blogosphere’s Mecca-orientation claims. Alec Rawls, who has written a book about the many Islamic and terrorist memorializing features in the crescent design, has a copy of Griffith’s report for the Tribune Review posted online. The first thing Griffith does is calculate the direction to Mecca:

I computed an azimuth value from the Flight 93 crater site to Mecca of roughly 55.20°.

“Azimuth” is the technical term for “direction,” measured in degrees clockwise from north. Now Griffith is denying that there is any such thing as the direction to Mecca, and the Tribune Review refuses to tell its readers that Griffith is contradicting the report that he wrote for them.

The Post Gazette is even more outrageous. Rawls was told by Post Gazette reporter Paula Ward that she and her editors saw all the blog posts on the Mecca orientation of the Crescent of Embrace back in September 2005 and decided not to publish this explosive information. (Crescent of Betrayal, download 3, p. 108.) At the same time, the Post Gazette was running editorials that called critics of the crescent paranoid bigots:

But like those who look at innocent kids trick-or-treating at Halloween and see only the devil’s work, a few small and suspicious minds couldn’t look past the crescent to see a remarkably sensitive design.

When Tom Burnet Sr. asked the American people last month to please take his and Mr. Rawls’ warnings about the crescent design seriously, the Post Gazette responded with an editorial titled:
“Efforts to sully Flight 93 memorial deserve scorn.”

What is the significance of a crescent that a person faces into to face Mecca? Such a structure is called a mihrab, and is the central feature around which every mosque is built. That is why the surrounding trees added in the Bowl of Embrace redesign do nothing to alter the Islamic significance of the design. You can plant as many trees around a mosque as you want and it will still be a mosque.

One local paper actually did fact-check the orientation of the giant crescent and validated the Mecca orientation claim in print, but the larger papers are all refusing to pass this fact checking on, or to do their own, even though it is simple one-two operation. All that Tribune Democrat reporter Kirk Swauger had to do was use the Mecca direction calculator at Islam.com to print out a graphic of the direction to Mecca from Somerset PA, then place this print out over the Crescent of Embrace site-plan PDF on his computer screen:

The green circle, marked with the qibla direction (the direction to Mecca), is from Islam.com. Graphic shows that a person standing at the midpoint between the most obtruding tips of the crescent structure and facing into the center of the crescent (red arrow), will be facing almost exactly at Mecca. (Hat tip Sarah Wells.)

As Swauger put it in his news
article:

[Rawls’] claims seem to be backed up by coordinates for the direction of qibla from Somerset that can be found on Islam.com. When superimposed over the crescent in the memorial design, the midpoint points over the Arctic Circle, through Europe toward Mecca.

Having suppressed this information for two years, Pittsburgh’s major newspapers are desperate to keep it suppressed now, or they will be ruined. Thus they find themselves camped out on the very spot that the blogosphere ranged with its artillery two years ago. They know full well that the Mecca-orientation of the crescent has been verified numerous times and are counting on their
control of public information to keep this knowledge from getting out to the general public.

The challenge to bloggers could not be more overt. Can the blogosphere retrieve its earlier fact checking from the memory hole and bust these news frauds? Easy and permanent access to existing fact checking is the blogosphere’s natural advantage, but we still have to take advantage of it.

This information was also mentioned at Newsbusters here on September 27, 2007.

———–

If you want to join us outraged protesting bloggers

1. in objecting to planting an Islamic symbol instead of an American one on the crash site,
2. in objecting to its pointing to Mecca and the terrorists’ intended target,
3. in objecting to dishonoring the memory of the people who fought the terrorists on Flight 93
4. in pointing out how Paul Murdoch cleverly and symbolically cast the passenger and crew out of the Islamic heavens in the design while the terrorists are inside the Islamic heavens
5. in pointing out how the date and the site are dedicated to the terrorists
6. in pointing out the numerous redundant mosque design features
7. in pointing out the terrorist memorializing features
8. and post along with us on Wednesdays

Please contact caoilfhionn1 at gmail dot com with your website url. She will, in turn, add you to the email list, send you the
blogroll code (if you want to put it in your sidebar), and will send you the prewritten text to post. You should receive the email from Cao a day or two prior to the Wednesday it should be posted, and tracked back to Cao’s blog and Error Theory, if your blog has that capability. This will help us track who in the blogroll is posting the blogburst.

Let’s roll.

Stop the Memorial Blogburst

——————————–

Riddle me this:

What was Paul Murdoch, the design’s architect, thinking? What was his ulterior motive? When controversy over the original name “Crescent of Embrace” and the bald Islamic symbol planted on the crash site brought a public outcry, the entire memorial was hastily re-titled “40 Memorial Groves.”

As Alec is apt to do, he’s having some fun with this: So why only 38 Memorial Groves?

His answer should appear today at Error Theory, go check it out!

Trackedback @: Cao’s Blog and Error Theory

Displays. LCDs are getting cheap. Who can’t afford a 17″ these days with rebates? Ok, what’s next?

Organic Light Emitting Diode or OLED displays. From Wave Report tutorial on OLEDs:

Organic Light-Emitting Diode (OLED) technology

An OLED is an electronic device made by placing a series of organic thin films between two conductors. When electrical current is applied, a bright light is emitted. This process is called electrophosphorescence. Even with the layered system, these systems are very thin, usually less than 500 nm (0.5 thousandths of a millimeter).

When used to produce displays, OLED technology produces self-luminous displays that do not require backlighting. These properties result in thin, very compact displays. The displays also have a wide viewing angle, up to 160 degrees and require very little power, only 2-10 volts.

OLED displays have other advantages over LCDs as well:

* Increased brightness
* Faster response time for full motion video
* Lighter weight
* Greater durability
* Broader operating temperature ranges

There are two types of OLED displays – passive and active. These distinctions, plus narration about the OLED 2001 conference and the market challenges that the technology will face can be read in WAVE 151 or as a separate article on the WAVE Report site.
[…]

Thin and no backlights needed! I also read a year or so ago, they have figured out how to stack the blue/green/red diodes, rather than placing them in a small triangle to make a pixel. That breakthrough will provide even higher quality displays, tripling the resolution.

BUT WAIT! There are also PLEDs – Polymer LEDs. And I found them when the search box had PLED as a typo by me in it. So I got edumacated by mis-spelling…

From Cambridge Display Technologies FAQs:

How do PLEDs displays work?
PLED displays are made by applying a thin film of light-emitting polymer onto a glass or plastic substrate coated with a transparent electrode. A metal electrode is sputtered or evaporated on top of the polymer. Application of an electric field between these two electrodes results in emission of light from the polymer. When a current is applied, electrons from the cathode migrate through the cell and meet positive ‘holes’ migrating from the anode. When they meet, they form so-called excitons, and as the electrons drop into the holes, energy is released as light. See also How PLEDs work.
[…]
How big can PLED displays be manufactured?
Displays up to 40 in. have been demonstrated and ultimately, because of the scalability of ink jet printing, even larger displays are expected. The relative simplicity and flexibility in manufacturing means that different technology sets could enable modular display devices that can be tiled to produce very large displays.

Approximately how much will it cost?
Costs to manufacture, when compared with LCDs of comparable volume and maturity of production tools and processes, are expected to be 20-40% lower.

What are PLED displays used for?
PLED has four key applications:

* Large single pixel displays can be used in lighting applications, replacing incandescent and fluorescent bulbs.
* Low information content displays where inorganic LEDs are currently used: video, hi-fi, shaver, watch etc
* Displacement of cathode ray tube (CRT) or LCD (traditional television and computer display applications): mobile phones, digital assistants, computers and televisions.
* New display applications for which PLED characteristics make it uniquely suited. E.g., replacement for traditional automotive instrument panel, dynamic advertising applications, graphical signs for point of sale or purchase, electromechanical signage, bio-medical testing.

See that? Print them with an inkjet like process….and, like OLEDs, cheaper than LCD technology. I have also read that the LED displays can be put on a flexible/bendable (not foldable) base, leading to all sorts of new ideas for paper thin display surfaces that are not required to stay flat all the time to be usable.

Now, never fear, the scientists are even father out with Quantum Dot display technology…

QD Vision has this to say about the practical stuff, you know like price and performance:

[…]
QD Vision has developed a prototype of a 32-by-64 red pixel QD display that uses the new printing process. Quantum dots were printed within a sandwich of organic semiconductor thin films, which when driven by a current, enable quantum dots to emit light. The quantum dots are 5nm inorganic semiconductor nanocrystals synthesized by QD Vision.

Quantum dots displays are expected to provide sharper colors and cost less to make than the competing technologies like organic light-emitting diodes while using a similar manufacturing process to OLEDs.
[…]

MIT Labs have been working to develop the technology for a while now:

Quantum-dot LED may be screen of choice for future electronics

December 18, 2002

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.–MIT researchers have combined organic materials with high-performing inorganic nanocrystals to create a hybrid optoelectronic structure–a quantum dot-organic light-emitting device (QD-OLED) that may one day replace liquid crystal displays (LCDs) as the flat-panel display of choice for consumer electronics.
[…]
CREATING BRIGHT LIGHT

The QD-OLEDs created in the MIT study have a 25-fold improvement in luminescent power efficiency over previous QD-OLEDs. The MIT researchers note that in time, the devices may be made even more efficient and achieve even higher color saturation.

“One of the goals is to demonstrate a display that is stable, simple to produce, flat, high-resolution and that uses minimal power,” Bulovic said.

The MIT researchers were inspired by advances in all-organic LED (OLED) technology. OLEDs, which can be used to create TVs or computer screens only a fraction of an inch thick with the same brightness as LCDs, have been making their way into commercial electronic devices. The MIT group envisions that QD-OLEDs will in time become complementary to OLEDs because they can be built on the same electronic platforms with compatible manufacturing methods.
[…]

So, the future for your display surfaces/devices looks bright and inexpensive, too!