1967 USS Forrestal fire
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1967 USS Forrestal fire
On 29 July 1967, a fire broke out on board the aircraft carrier after an electrical anomaly caused a Zuni rocket on a F-4B Phantom to fire, striking an external fuel tank of an A-4 Skyhawk. The flammable jet fuel spilled across the flight deck, ignited, and triggered a chain-reaction of explosions that killed 134 sailors and injured 161. At the time, ''Forrestal'' was engaged in combat operations in the Gulf of Tonkin, during the Vietnam War. The ship survived, but with damage exceeding US$72 million, not including the damage to aircraft. Future United States Senator John McCain and future four-star admiral and U.S. Pacific Fleet Commander Ronald J. Zlatoper were among the survivors. Another on-board officer, Lieutenant Tom Treanore, later returned to the ship as its commander and retired an admiral. The disaster prompted the Navy to revise its fire fighting practices. It also modified its weapon handling procedures and installed a deck wash down system on all carriers. Th ...
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Gulf Of Tonkin
The Gulf of Tonkin is a gulf at the northwestern portion of the South China Sea, located off the coasts of Tonkin (northern Vietnam) and South China. It has a total surface area of . It is defined in the west and northwest by the northern coastline of Vietnam down to the Hòn La Island, in the north by China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, and to the east by the Leizhou Peninsula and Hainan Island. Etymology The name ''Tonkin'', written "" in Hán-Nôm characters and in the Vietnamese alphabet, means "eastern capital", and is the former toponym for Hanoi, the present capital of Vietnam. It should not to be confused with Tokyo, which is also written "" and also means "eastern capital". During the French colonial era, the northern region of today’s Vietnam was called ''Tonkin''. ''Bắc Bộ'' is the native Vietnamese name of Tonkin. The bay's Vietnamese and Chinese names – and , respectively – both mean "Northern Bay". History Gulf of Tonkin incident On 4 ...
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Horn Of Africa
The Horn of Africa (HoA), also known as the Somali Peninsula, is a large peninsula and geopolitical region in East Africa.Robert Stock, ''Africa South of the Sahara, Second Edition: A Geographical Interpretation'', (The Guilford Press; 2004), p. 26 Located on the easternmost part of the African mainland, it is the fourth largest peninsula in the world. It is composed of Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia and Djibouti; broader definitions also include parts or all of Kenya, Sudan, South Sudan, and Uganda. The term Greater Horn Region (GHR) can additionally include Burundi, Rwanda, and Tanzania. It lies along the southern boundary of the Red Sea and extends hundreds of kilometres into the Guardafui Channel, Gulf of Aden, and Indian Ocean and shares a maritime border with the Arabian Peninsula of Western Asia. Names This peninsula has been known by various names. Ancient Greeks and Romans referred to it as Regio Aromatica or Regio Cinnamonifora due to the aromatic plants or as Regio I ...
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M117 Bomb
The M117 is an air-dropped demolition bomb used by United States Armed Forces, United States military forces. The weapon dates back to the Korean War of the early 1950s. Although it has a nominal weight of its actual weight, depending on fuze and retardation options, can be around . The bomb's explosive content is typically of Tritonal or of Minol (explosive), Minol in the case of the M117A1E2 due to their higher density and detonation velocity compared to TNT. Demolition bombs rely on time delayed fuzes which allow the bomb to burrow into a building or other structure before detonating. The M117 can be configured with a conical low-drag tail for medium and high altitude deliveries or a high-drag tail fin for low-altitude drops, delaying the bombs hitting their targets ensuring fighters are out of the blast zone before detonation.
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Mark 118 Bomb
The M118 is an air-dropped general-purpose or demolition bomb used by United States military forces. It dates back to the time of the Korean War of the early 1950s. Although it has a nominal weight of 3,000 lb (1,350 kg), its actual weight, depending on fuse and retardation options, is somewhat higher. A typical non-retarded configuration has a total weight of 3,049 lb (1,383 kg) with an explosive content of 1,975 lb (895 kg) of tritonal. This is a higher percentage than in the more recent American Mark 80 series bombs thus perhaps the designation as a demolition bomb. In the late 1950s through the early 1970s it was a standard aircraft weapon, carried by the F-100 Super Sabre, F-104 Starfighter, F-105 Thunderchief, and F-4 Phantom. Some apparently remain in the USAF inventory, although they are rarely used today. It was a component of the GBU-9/B version of the Rockwell electro-optically guided Homing Bomb System (HOBOS). This weapon consisted of ...
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Republic F-105 Thunderchief
The Republic F-105 Thunderchief is an American supersonic fighter-bomber that served with the United States Air Force from 1958 to 1984. Capable of Mach 2, it conducted the majority of strike bombing missions during the early years of the Vietnam War; it was the only American aircraft to have been removed from combat due to high loss rates. It was originally designed as a single-seat, nuclear- attack aircraft; a two-seat Wild Weasel version was later developed for the specialized Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses (SEAD) role against surface-to-air missile sites. The F-105 was commonly known as the "Thud" by its crews. As a follow-on to the Mach 1 capable North American F-100 Super Sabre, the F-105 was also armed with missiles and a rotary cannon; however, its design was tailored to high-speed low-altitude penetration carrying a single nuclear weapon internally. First flown in 1955, the Thunderchief entered service in 1958. The single-engine F-105 could deliver a bomb load gre ...
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Sortie
A sortie (from the French word meaning ''exit'' or from Latin root ''surgere'' meaning to "rise up") is a deployment or dispatch of one military unit, be it an aircraft, ship, or troops, from a strongpoint. The term originated in siege warfare. In aviation In military aviation, a sortie is a combat mission of an individual aircraft, starting when the aircraft takes off. For example, one mission involving six aircraft would tally six sorties. The sortie rate is the number of sorties that a given unit can support in a given time. In siege warfare In siege warfare, the word ''sortie'' refers specifically to a sudden issuing of troops against the enemy from a defensive position—that is, an attack launched against the besiegers by the defenders. If the sortie is through a sally port, the verb ''to sally'' may be used interchangeably with ''to sortie''. Purposes of sorties include harassment of enemy troops, destruction of siege weaponry and engineering works, joining the relief ...
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Ground Attack Aircraft
An attack aircraft, strike aircraft, or attack bomber is a tactical military aircraft that has a primary role of carrying out airstrikes with greater precision than bombers, and is prepared to encounter strong low-level air defenses while pressing the attack.Mortensen 1987, pp. 24–25. This class of aircraft is designed mostly for close air support and naval air-to-surface missions, overlapping the tactical bomber mission. Designs dedicated to non-naval roles are often known as ground-attack aircraft.Gunston 2009, p. 73. Fighter aircraft often carry out the attack role, although they would not be considered attack aircraft ''per se'', although fighter-bomber conversions of those same aircraft would be considered part of the class. Strike fighters, which have effectively replaced the fighter-bomber and light bomber concepts, also differ little from the broad concept of an attack aircraft. The dedicated attack aircraft as a separate class existed primarily during and after Worl ...
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CATOBAR
CATOBAR ("Catapult Assisted Take-Off But Arrested Recovery" or "Catapult Assisted Take-Off Barrier Arrested Recovery") is a system used for the launch and recovery of aircraft from the deck of an aircraft carrier. Under this technique, aircraft launch using a catapult-assisted take-off and land on the ship (the recovery phase) using arrestor wires. Although this system is costlier than alternative methods, it provides greater flexibility in carrier operations, since it imposes less onerous design elements on fixed wing aircraft than alternative methods of launch and recovery such as STOVL or STOBAR, allowing for a greater payload for more ordnance and/or fuel. CATOBAR can launch aircraft that lack a high thrust to weight ratio, including heavier non-fighter aircraft such as the E-2 Hawkeye and Grumman C-2 Greyhound. Types The catapult system in use in modern CATOBAR carriers is the steam catapult. Its primary advantage is the amount of power and control it can provide. During ...
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Mark 83
The Mark 83 is part of the Mark 80 series of low-drag general-purpose bombs in United States service. Development and deployment The nominal weight of the bomb is 1,000 lb (454 kg), although its actual weight varies between 985 lb (447 kg) and 1,030 lb (468 kg), depending on fuze options, and fin configuration. The Mk 83 is a streamlined steel casing containing 445 lb (202 kg) of tritonal high explosive. When filled with PBXN-109 thermally insensitive explosive, the bomb is designated BLU-110. The Mk 83/BLU-110 is used as the warhead for a variety of precision-guided weapons, including the GBU-16 Paveway laser-guided bombs, the GBU-32 JDAM and Quickstrike sea mines. The Mk 83 is also used as the warhead in a variety of Pakistani smart bombs made by GIDS. During Operation Swift Retort in 2019, 2 JF-17 Thunders of the No. 16 Squadron "Black Panthers" armed with newly developed Mk. 83 Range Extension Kit (REK) bombs struck military target ...
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General-purpose Bomb
A general-purpose bomb is an air-dropped bomb intended as a compromise between blast damage, penetration, and fragmentation in explosive effect. They are designed to be effective against enemy troops, vehicles, and buildings. Characteristics General-purpose (GP) bombs use a thick-walled metal casing with explosive filler (typically TNT, Composition B, or Tritonal in NATO or United States service) comprising about 30% to 40% of the bomb's total weight. The British term for a bomb of this type is "medium case" or "medium capacity" (MC). The GP bomb is a common weapon of fighter bomber and attack aircraft because it is useful for a variety of tactical applications and relatively cheap. General-purpose bombs are often identified by their weight (e.g., ). In many cases this is strictly a ''nominal weight'' (the counterpart to the ''caliber'' of a firearm), and the actual weight of each individual weapon may vary depending on its retardation, fusing, carriage, and guidance syst ...
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A-7E VA-25 Dropping Bombs Over Vietnam C1970
The LTV A-7 Corsair II is an American carrier-capable subsonic light attack aircraft designed and manufactured by Ling-Temco-Vought (LTV). The A-7 was developed during the early 1960s as replacement for the Douglas A-4 Skyhawk. Its design was derived from the Vought F-8 Crusader; in comparison with the F-8, the A-7 is both smaller and restricted to subsonic speeds, its airframe being simpler and cheaper to produce. Following a competitive bid by Vought in response to the United States Navy's (USN) ''VAL'' (Heavier-than-air, Attack, Light) requirement, an initial contract for the type was issued on 8 February 1964. Development was rapid, first flying on 26 September 1965 and entering squadron service with the USN on 1 February 1967; by the end of that year, A-7s were being deployed overseas for the Vietnam War. Initially adopted by USN, the A-7 proved attractive to other services, soon being adopted by the United States Air Force (USAF) and the Air National Guard (ANG) to replac ...
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North Vietnam
North Vietnam, officially the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV; vi, Việt Nam Dân chủ Cộng hòa), was a socialist state supported by the Soviet Union (USSR) and the People's Republic of China (PRC) in Southeast Asia that existed from 1945 to 1976 and was recognized in 1954. Both the North Vietnamese and South Vietnamese states ceased to exist when they unified as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. During the August Revolution following World War II, Vietnamese communist revolutionary Hồ Chí Minh, leader of the Việt Minh Front, declared independence on 2 September 1945, announcing the creation of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. The Việt Minh ("League for the Independence of Vietnam"), led by communists, was created in 1941 and designed to appeal to a wider population than the Indochinese Communist Party could command. From the very beginning, the DRV regime sought to consolidate power by purging other nationalist movements. Meanwhile, France moved in t ...
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