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Do I have your concurrence now?

Jesse Leroy Brown, born 10/13/1926. 22 years later, in Oct 1948, Midshipman Jesse L. Brown, USN was the first African American to be designated a Naval Aviator. Assigned to VF-32, he was commissioned an Ensign in 1949. Ens Brown entered combat shortly there after. In 1950, while flying from USS LEYTE (CV-32), conducting close air ground support missions in the F4U-4 Corsair for the Marines in the vicinity of the Chosin Reservoir.

“I think I may have been hit. I’ve lost my oil pressure and I’m going to have to go in.”

On 12/4/1950, Jesse’s Corsair was hit by anti-aircraft fire and crashed. He didn’t survive.

For his actions in the Korean Conflict, ENS Jesse Leroy Brown was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.A more detailed page covers Jesse L Brown in depth here, telling the story of LTJG Thomas Hudner and Jesse Brown’s friendship as squadron mates:

Eight thousand badly outnumbered Marines shivered in the sub-zero temperatures of the Chosin Reservoir in North Korea on December 4, 1950 as eight F4U-4 Corsairs left the deck of the carrier USS Leyte. Each of the eight heavily armed but outdated fighters was piloted by a Naval aviator rushing to defend their comrades on the ground. Most of the pilots were young, in their early twenties, but all were dedicated “brothers in arms” who would risk their lives for the soldiers on the ground, men they didn’t even know, but defended because they were Americans at great risk.

Lieutenant Commander Richard Cevoli led his squadron inland, over the rugged mountains of North Korea just north of the Chosin Reservoir. The eight fighters skimmed 1,000 feet above the snow covered terrain, eyes alert for the movement of enemy troops. It was a general support mission, one of many Naval pilots had been flying recently to give air cover to the withdrawing Marines below. Cevoli’s pilots had been flying over Korea for only about two months, but in that short time they had become skilled combat veterans. They had also become close….like brothers.

Off in the distance flying “wing” for Ensign Jesse Brown was Lieutenant (j.g.) Thomas Hudner. Hudner was senior to Brown, but the Ensign had more experience. In the perilous skies over North Korea, rank didn’t matter. It was experience that counted. The two pilots were good friends, though they had little more in common than a boyhood fascination with airplanes and a determination to some day soar above the clouds. Their dream had come true. That dream had also become a nightmare of death and destruction. On this day they would confront the nightmare once again, and Lieutenant Hudner would do all the wrong things…..

BECAUSE IT WAS RIGHT!
[…]

The USS JESSE L BROWN (DD-1089) was named to honor our first African American Naval Aviator. Commissioned February, 1973 as a frigate in the KNOX Class, with a primary mission to detect and engage submarine targets. BROWN was assigned to the Atlantic Fleet and also made three UNITAS cruises, one in 1979, one in 1983 and another in 1989.During UNITAS XXIV, the BROWN also sailed to the West Coast of Africa to show the flag for the WATC (West African Training Cruise). I was aboard USS CONOLLY (DD-979) and had to devise a plan to refuel her part way across the Atlantic, as she didn’t take on enough fuel before leaving Brazil. The “Sea Story” of that event is here.

From Oct, 1985 to May, 1986, USS JESSE L BROWN was assigned to the USS CORAL SEA (CV-43) and USS SARATOGA (CV-60) Battle Groups for a deployment to the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean.In December, 1985, I was embarked on the BROWN as we transited from the North Arabian Sea to Singapore for a Christmas port visit. During that almost month long transit, we conducted the exercise we nicknamed “The Never Ending ASWEX (Anti-submarine exercise)” for the legendary time span the training mission spanned. CDR Kelly O. Spears was the captain of the BROWN and later made Captain, serving as a Destroyer Squadron commander himself a few years later.After the port visit to Singapore, the SARATOGA Battle Group headed for Diego Garcia, from where to left on short noticed to return to the Med to conduct operation in the vicinity of Libya. The BROWN was assigned to the anti-submarine forces for the 4 months of operations, shielding the three carries and the many logistics ships from subsurface attack.Decommissioned in 1994, BROWN was transferred to the Egyptian Navy and renamed the Damietta (F-961).

…because you just won’t have to walk tours, you may have to lose your head.

“White slips.”  Discrepancy reports..gets demerits for you at one of the fine institutions of the South East. Exceed your monthly demerit quota and start with confinement, or maybe do not pass go and head straight for the Quad of Third Battalion to walk tours with your assigned M-14 over your shoulder.

One favorite discrepancy was “failure to get the word.” In this case, it will be “failure to pass the word,” if you don’t comply. the punishment? Not a fifty minute stint doing close order drill in the muggy Charleston afternoon heat, but the loss of liberty and justice, and far too many citizens.

The Islamist Head fake editorial in Investors Business Daily, tells a summarized story of what’s been coming out in almost not covered in the MSM’s pages: The Holy Land Foundation trial: The real conspiracy that has been occurring for decades in this country.

The lunatics can scream about how GWB planned the 9/11, purposely blew the WTC Towers, including #7, that the war on terror is all a construct for the much feared “military industrial complex” or a great string pulling by the puppet masters in Israel, but they will never find evidence (other than what they can manufacturer (if they are smart enough to get an IBM Selectric II on ebay)), because none of those theories are valid..

The one to subvert American politics, and use our own money to attempt to finance our own demise, has all to solid a “paper trail,” and it’s being exposed using clear rules of evidence in a formal court of law, not by some college kids with some chicken wire, a brick, some kerosene and a cheap digital video camera.

I’m passing the word, by linking the IBD editorial. You need to read it carefully and consider the implications of what has been set in place by the PC/multi-cultural environment. One commenter at Little Green Footballs remarked:

#6 Bearster 9/29/07 10:25:07 pm reply quote report 14

The worst thing about political correctness is not that it attacks white males. The worst is that it blocks the very attempt to think (or speak) clearly.

It’s not possible to accept the multicultural-diversity view and, at the same time, grasp that Islam’s goal is to kill or subjugate every non-muslim. As long as PC rules the country, we will continue to grant moral sanction, political power, foreign policy concessions, and aid and comfort to the enemy.

It’s really a race to see if we can shake off mind-numbing philosophy of PC, or if islam will destroy us first.

It is a race, one between reason and compassionate tolerance of those around us, or being led to the slaughter for holding dear the right to have our own religion, or not, and to let those around us practice theirs simultaneously.

Pass the word around…and invite others to understand the depth of the deception in our midst, and to discuss it appropriately with our elected representatives.

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Begun by Cao, the below post found at The Wide Awakes, to support a grass roots movement to change the design of the Flight 93 monument. The details of the design and the relation to all things Islamic are way beyond sheer coincidence. Unlike the case of the Navy barracks in San Diego, we have the opportunity to possibly stop the construction of a site that would honor those who did the killing, rather than those who were the victims. It is in the subtle message, only seen from above, and when sound cartographic scrutiny is used, when the true indignity comes out. It’s not a perspective you’d get being earth bound. Chase the links and see this isn’t some off the page conspiracy of ill-informed minds.

X Posted at Cao’s blog and STACLU

Flight 93 has once again been hijacked by the terrorists.

After deliberating on this for a while, I’ve decided to start a blogburst regarding the Flight 93 Memorial in order to keep the calculations that verified its orientation to Mecca from going down the memory hole.

In addition, I think bringing heightened awareness to the mosque features of the memorial and other facts are important because they’re moving to start construction of this monstrosity at the crash site.

If you want to join the blogroll/blogburst for the Crescent of Betrayal blogburst, email me at caoilfhionn1 at gmail dot com, with your blog’s url address. The blogburst will be sent out once a week to the participants, the plan is- we will all be posting simultaneously on this issue on Wednesdays.

Of course, I will fully expect that you will post on this if you join the blogburst. I’ll keep an email list, and if you don’t post on it, your url will come off the blogroll, and your email address will come off the list.

Thanks to Stop the ACLU

This isn’t one of those posts you just read and think about, as you go about your day. It’s one to take action on and pass the word. By blog, by email, by word of mouth, by cellphone. Get to work, of live with the overhead view of a the Muslims crescent to remember the first casualties in our homeland to a new kind of war.

Last week netted two trackbacks….and also I left off a sea story about War Gaming at War College.

So I was the Ops Boss for planning. We did that in the few intervening days. How to approach Pakistan during “heightened tensions” in order to pull US citizens out of danger ashore, while not losing our combat power. Rules of engagement were pretty restrictive, as you might expect.

Sometime in the next few days, I was told by Danny that I was going to the be the Big Kahuna for the war game execution. There you go. My low grade in the class, but wearing black shoes and a SWO pin. Never did think of it until now, but possibly the airdales had convincingly dodged the bullet and I was left to take the scepter unknowingly.

Off we went, one morning to the red brick building a few blocks from the main building, where our command centers would be. We were given a current intelligence briefing for the area, and I distinctly recall that a Soviet Charlie II sub was out to the west, underway and, as part of the Soviet platforms in theater, a potential threat to the battle group. The complication of this presence was that India, a neutral party in the current raised tensions, had leased a C-II from the Evil Empire. Intel showed had same sub inport at an Indian Naval Base in the last 24 hours. Having come from the sub chasing world not but a few months before, I mentally cataloged the info as significant. Partly because my recent experience tuned me to it, but also because off all the beginning locations, the issue of the Charlie seemed to have the opportunity to come into play very early on in the games.Off we went, armed with pseudo factoids presented by the “and then the exact opposite of this briefing cannot be discounted disclaimer crowd (Yep, intel weenies), to our assigned warfare commander “modules” to fight the war with paper charts, hand written radio logs and plexiglass edge lighted status boards.

Within an hour or so, an S-3A (no B birds in the fleet yet), played by one of the game controllers (a
shoe LCDR), sent to the west to conduct ASW sweeps, sure enough got a solid sniff on a nuke boat, high probability that it was also the not located very recently Charlie II. The ASWC calls on the radio for direction and I issue a “take” order on the contact. Roger, Out!

Then ASWC calls and tells me the “pilot” said he couldn’t do that, because it might be the Indian leased C-II. I, once more, say “take the subsurface track.” Pilot continues to stall, argue. I get on the net and say words to the affect: “When I order you to engage, you put weapons in the water!” Response: “Lost contact!” AW1 Tim and company knows there is always a handy-dandy gouge for executing a “time late” attack, yet this “combat pilot” seemed to have all sorts of excuses as to how not to take out the threat, for which we had the ROE to support the engagement in our hands.

At that point the ramp up to war was stilling in run, so I/we went back to work, foiled once more by “playing to real.”

The next morning, at the new day’s intel brief, my peer in real rank insignia, yet not in the world of the war game, began to lecture during the putting forth of info, something about not starting a war with a friendly nation. Some part of his upbringing had not exposed him to the skillful tutelage of CAPT W.E. Jordan, Jr, in the finer points of physics a as a viable life application in decision making, specifically the parts about Time/Speed/Distance, the immutable factors of vehicle movement we learned to live by off the coasts of many lands.

I dispensed with the niceties of providing a full tutorial for the errant war game staff officer, but did provide a Reader’s Digest version, telling him the Indian sub couldn’t have made it from their last known location inport on the west coast of India to the vicinity of the PROBSUB contact of the S-3, unless it grew wings and engines like a really big airplane, so he should have put MK46s in to take the Soviet sub out to the picture right then. He wasn’t happy, so I told him the next time I directed and engagement, all I wanted to hear was “Bloodhound Away!” I didn’t do the next part as well as Jack Nicholson in “A Few Good Men,” but I did directly ask for his complete understanding, which I got.

Back to the modules we went, to begin a new day of evaluating ROEs and looking forward to making war, not love, within the confines of such political-military constraints.

Yes, later the C-II did somehow manage to arrive, undetected, in our neighborhood, and it spewed forth a few SSN-9s to get our blood flowing. If he only would have listened…but then, if they had crafted their game force layout better, they could have put the Indian C-II at sea, close enough to require some in depth soul searching before I cold be so cavalier with the taxpayers’ torpedoes.

Next week: More “War Games.”

• Holy Man buy

Toys….

Virtual Reality headsets have been a technology I watch from afar.Two things have made them “not just yet” for the run of the mill users: 1) Cost! and 2) Resolution. The second actually drives the first, when you consider the expense in making a small LCD, or now OLED, display less than an inch square have the same resolution as most people run on their laptops and 15/17″ LCD monitors: 1024×768 pixels.

I once was working on the Computer Aided Dead Reckoning Tracer project, when they used an upended Mitsubishi 37″ TV as the viewing surface. There was a quest to replace the CRT technology with a digital projector by the engineers working the project, and at the time, they were lucky to have a 800×600 pixel display for the projectors (similar issue with the LCD in the projector). Pushing the manufacturing process to make 1024×768 yielded significant failure rates in the LCDs produced. That was 1997-8.

Things have come a lot further now, and Vuzix has a series of head mounted displays (HMDs) that are affordable and can display a 1024×768 picture to each of your eyes. Not surprisingly, they also build such equipment for the military/tactical market, which, most likely has been a major factor in driving the cost down for the run of the mill consumer by expending military R&D dollars.

The one headset in particular that I have “my eyes on” (maybe I should say “in”) is the iWearYR920. Besides being able to take a VGA display feed, it also has head tracking built in. That means the unit, while worn, sends a signal back via the interface to tell the computer which direction you are “looking” in the virtual world. Big deal? Yes, it is. For games like Flight Simulator X from Microsoft (check out a video of the VR920 in action with FSX here), when you look around your cockpit, or the outside of the cockpit, the display shifts as though you were looking there, without the operator having the slew the picture about artificially with key strokes. That adds another layer of realism to the game….
Specs:

Technical Specifications:
Twin high-resolution 640×480 (920,000 pixels) LCD Displays
Equivalent to a 62″ screen viewed at 9 feet
24-bit true color (16 million colors)
Visor weighs 3.2 oz.
60 Hz progressive scan display update rates
Fully iWear® 3D compliant and supports NVIDIA stereo drivers
Built-in noise canceling microphone for Internet VOIP communications
Built-in 3 degree of freedom head-tracker
USB connectivity for power, tracking and full duplex audio
Analog VGA monitor input
Support for up to 1024×768 VGA video formats

Features:
6-foot slim, single cable design with miniature USB and VGA connectors
Large field-of-view optics to allow a fully immersive experience
iWear® 3D enabled for automatic 2D/3D control; no buttons required
With built-in microphone users can communicate from anywhere in the world as if they were standing next to each other (or inside the game)
Integrated 3 DOF head-tracker lets users look around inside virtual worlds as if they were there

User Adjustable:
Removable, flexible headphones
AccuTiltâ„¢ viewer pivots up to 15 degrees
Soft, comfortable, hypoallergenic nosepiece extends out up to 3/8″
Custom fit headstrap included for extra secure fit

Supported Media:
Plug and play video with virtually all PC applications
Thousands of pre-existing applications in full 3D (supported by NVIDIA stereo drivers)
The VR920 will completey change the plethora of massively multiplayer applications from World of Warcraft to Internet chat in virtual worlds

Advanced Optics:
32 degree field of view
3/4″ eye relief and 5/16″ eyebox
2.5″ Intraocular Distance (IOD)
Color corrected 10th order aspherical lense with diffractive surface

Box Contents:
iWear VR920
Headstrap
Drivers, manual and software disc
Quick start guide with warranty and safety instructions
Lens cleaning carrying pouch

Price tag? SRP $399. Not cheap, but…not like the $24,000, many, many lb beast I used to find around the net that would do the same thing in military grade simulation applications…

In case you don’t need head tracking, but are in the habit of watching movies, but have the significant other that doesn’t share your choice of movies, or you are on the road/in the air a lot, or just bored and sit and watch movies, there is the AV920 for a savings of $50 @ $349 to plug into your DVD player.

What does it look like? 62″ display at 9 feet. Like sitting in the TV/Living Room with the $3000+ dollar big screen. See, it’s really affordable if you explain it to her that way…and she won’t even have to watch it because you grabbed the remote first and you saved at least about $2650!

What’s not to like?

You know…it could be like this:

Read more about this monstrosity here…

Serendipitous? Yes it is. Eagle1 brings us back to the famous battle of John Paul Jones 9/23/1779 in his Sunday Ship History series.From Wikipedia some details of John Paul Jones’ life:

John Paul Jones (July 6, 1747–July 18, 1792) was America’s first well-known naval hero in the American Revolutionary War.

John Paul Jones was born John Paul in 1747, on the estate of Arbigland in the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright on the southern coast of Scotland. John Paul’s father was a gardener at Arbigland, and his mother was a member of Clan MacDuff.

John Paul adopted the alias John Jones when he fled to his brother’s home in Fredericksburg, Virginia in 1773 to avoid the hangman’s noose in Tobago after an incident when he was accused of murdering a sailor under his command. He began using the name John Paul Jones as his brother suggested during the start of the American Revolution.

Though his naval career never rose above the rank of Captain in the Continental Navy after his victory over the Serapis with the frigate Bonhomme Richard, John Paul Jones remains the first genuine American Naval hero, and a highly regarded battle commander. His later service in the Russian Navy as an admiral showed the mark of genius that enabled him to defeat the Serapis.

Jones simply was not as good a politician as he was a naval commander, in an era where politics determined promotion, both in America and abroad. Though he was originally buried in Paris, after spending his last years abroad, he was ultimately reinterred at the United States Naval Academy, a fitting homecoming for the “Father of the American Navy.”

The famous battle with the HMS Serapis is covered by Eagle1.

Other notes of interest about John Paul Jones. After the Revolution, he left the US for France and ended up being commissioned in the Russian Navy as an Admiral. He then had the opportunity to take on an early fight against the Ottoman Empire:

[…]
As a rear admiral aboard the 24-gun flagship Vladimir, he took part in the naval campaign in the Liman (an arm of the Black Sea, into which flow the Southern Bug and Dnieper rivers) against the Turks. Jones successfully repulsed Ottoman forces from the area,
[…]

Through a series of unfortunate events of internal Russian Navy politics, he was released from service there. Retuning to France, he died there July 18th, 1792. Buried in Paris, his graveyard was later sold and then left untended. His body was found in 1905, having been searched for by the US Ambassador to France, Horace Porter for six years. John Paul Jones remains were carried to the US aboard USS BROOKLYN (CA-3) escorted to the US by three other cruisers, and met by seven battleships as they neared the coast of the US. In 1913, his remains were placed in the Chapel at Annapolis, in a ceremony presided over by President Theodore Roosevelt.

Five ships have been named in honor of John Paul Jones:

• USS PAUL JONES, a sidewheel steamer commissioned in 1862
• USS PAUL JONES (DD-10), a . Commissioned in 1902, she saw duty in the Pacific Fleet and in the Atlantic running convoys in the Western Atlantic. Once caught in a raging storm in January 1918, she almost was lost, but made her way yo drop anchor off Bermuda and made repairs. She was decommissioned in 1919.
• USS PAUL JONES (DD-230), a CLEMSON Class destroyer commissioned in 1920. Initially assigned to the Asiatic Fleet, she was in the Java Sea when the Japanese opened WWII. Escaping after several battles with Japanese forces, she transferred to the Atlantic Fleet as was assigned to convoy duties. She won two battle stars for her WWII service and was decommissioned in 1945.

• USS JOHN PAUL JONES (DD-953), a FOREST SHERMAN Class destroyer. Commissioned in May, 1955, she served in the Atlantic Fleet and had the distinction of recovering Virgil Grissom and John Young after their aborted Gemini IIIflight of two orbits vs the three planned. DD-932 was later converted to a DDG, and redesignated DDG-32 in 1967. Decommissioned in 1982.

• USS JOHN PAUL JONES (DDG-53), the third ship of the AEGIS Class ARELIGH BURKE guided missile destroyers. Commissioned 12/18/1993, she was the first of the class to be assigned to the Pacific Fleet. Another early distinction for the JPJ was to be assigned as the shock test platform for the class. USS JOHN PAUL JONES (DDG-53) was one of the US Navy’s “first responders.” The picture is of a Tomahawk Land Attack Missile on 10/8/2001 from JPJ headed for Afghanistan.

Here’s a link to the USS John Paul Jones Association, which includes history for all of the ships named for the famous Naval hero.

Inspired by the General Patreaus hearings before Congress? You decide….

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I’d say, with YouTube and such sites, the 15 minutes of fame will be extended for many years more…

embedded by Embedded Video

Heh.