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Milestones

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Today is an anniversary of a sad milestone. Fifty years ago, on January 27th 1967, astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee were killed in a fire in the Command Module during a launch training of Apollo 1.

The test took place under launch conditions, i.e. with pure oxygen in the cabin, under higher pressure than atmospheric conditions. The fire was most probably caused by an electric spark, which, in the pure oxygen environment of the cabin, started a rapidly spreading fire. The fire spread rapidly due to the presence of a lot of flammable materials. The cabin was overpressured, but the hatch opened inside, while the valve allowing to depressurize was immediately out of reach by the fire, making the escape practically impossible. It took only about fifteen seconds between the discovery of the fire and the death of the astronauts, due to CO intoxication.

Before the disaster, there had already been critics on the design of the Apollo Command Module, concerning safety and flammable materials. Afterwards, the whole craft was redesigned, and only twenty months later, the first manned Apollo mission (Apollo 7) would take place.
 
Loxuru said:
Today is an anniversary of a sad milestone. Fifty years ago, on January 27th 1967, astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee were killed in a fire in the Command Module during a launch training of Apollo 1.

The test took place under launch conditions, i.e. with pure oxygen in the cabin, under higher pressure than atmospheric conditions. The fire was most probably caused by an electric spark, which, in the pure oxygen environment of the cabin, started a rapidly spreading fire. The fire spread rapidly due to the presence of a lot of flammable materials. The cabin was overpressured, but the hatch opened inside, while the valve allowing to depressurize was immediately out of reach by the fire, making the escape practically impossible. It took only about fifteen seconds between the discovery of the fire and the death of the astronauts, due to CO intoxication.

Before the disaster, there had already been critics on the design of the Apollo Command Module, concerning safety and flammable materials. Afterwards, the whole craft was redesigned, and only twenty months later, the first manned Apollo mission (Apollo 7) would take place.
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It is good, that you us remembered. All times tragedys. The only good, a fast death. No long hurts as other must.
 
Today Australia marks the 75th Anniversary of the fall of Singapore. Second World War, February 1942.

130,000 allied servicemen and women from the Commonwealth (the Malaya Command) and civilians taken prisoner. So damned many never survived the brutality of the camps and the forced labour on the Burma Railway and elsewhere.

Of about 22,000 Australians taken prisoner by the Japanese 8,000 never made it home.
 
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Primus pilus said:
Today Australia marks the 75th Anniversary of the fall of Singapore. Second World War, February 1942.

130,000 allied servicemen and women (mostly from the Commonwealth) taken prisoner. So damned many never survived the brutality of the camps and the forced labour on the Burma Railway and elsewhere.

Of about 22,000 Australians taken prisoner by the Japanese 8,000 never made it home.
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Now we fight wars with smart-bombs , 'stealth' airplanes, special forces, and social media... is the 'return of the ninja' next...
 
Today marks the 75th anniversary of the Bangka Island massacre.

On 14th February 1942 the Vyner Brooke (the Sarawak royal yacht) was sunk by the Japanese while evacuating wounded service men, 65 nurses of the Australian Army Nursing Service along with civilian men, women and children from Singapore.

About 100 survivors including 22 of the nurses made it to Radjik Beach on Bangka Island in what was then the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). On the morning of 16th February a ship's officer went to the administrative centre at Muntok to surrender to the Japanese and, while he was gone the nurses persuaded the civilians to go to Muntok while they stayed to care for the wounded servicemen under canvas they set up each clearly marked with a red cross.

The ship's officer returned later in the morning with 20 Japanese soldiers. Any wounded capable of walking were taken around a headland and were either shot or bayoneted. The Japanese returned, cleaned their bayonets in front of the women, then ordered the nurses and one civilian woman to walk into the surf. The soldiers set up a machine gun and, when the women were about waist-deep, opened fire.

As the machine gunning began one nurse, Sister Esther Sarah Jean Stewart, called out, "girls, take it, don't squeal!"

After they had finished with the women they bayoneted the wounded servicemen where they lay on stretchers.

Only one, Sister Vivian Bullwinkle, survived by playing dead with a bullet through her hip and diaphragm. After the Japanese left she crawled into the bush and collapsed. When she woke a few days later she found a British soldier, Private Patrick Kingsley, who had survived the bayoneting. She dressed his wounds and her own and the pair evaded the Japanese for 12 days but eventually had to surrender. Kingsley died before reaching a PoW camp but Vivian Bullwinkle survived three years as a PoW and was able to give evidence at war crimes trials in Japan in 1947.
 
RacingRodent said:
An extra-ordinarily brave woman
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An extraordinary woman in many ways. Through the 3 1/2 years as a PoW she had to remain quiet about what she had witnessed lest the Japanese silence her.

She left the army in 1947 as Lieutenant Colonel Bullwinkle and devoted herself to nursing, to honouring those massacred and to raising funds for memorials to service nurses. She also served on the committee of the Australian War Memorial and was president of the Australian College of Nursing. Vivian died in July 2000 aged 84.

madiosi said:
All the nurses, i mean! "girls, take it, don't squeal!"
CF is a good place to remember her.
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They all were Madiosi...Jean Stewart, Kath Neuss and all the others.
 
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The same week as the fall of Singapore, Britain had to endure another humiliating event, straight at its doorstep.

On February 12th 1942, German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen and escorts, sailed from Brest in France, to Germany. They took the shortest route, and boldly passed through the English Channel at full daylight. They evaded detection long enough, and a real alarm was only given when the flotilla was already passing along Dover. Attempts to stop them came too late. The failure left Britain with the disbelieve how something like this could happen in 'their' Channel.

It was a tactical victory for the German navy, but on hindsight, the 'Channel Dash' would be the last successful operation of German surface ships during the war. A few weeks later, Gneisenau got heavily damaged during an air raid and was never fully repaired again. Scharnhorst would be sunk on her next mission in December 1943 and Prinz Eugen never came into real action again. She got confiscated by the US after the war, and was used as target in atomic bomb tests in the Pacific.
 
One hundred years ago, the February Revolution began in Russia.

The first crisis began on 23 February (8 March), when thousands of women textile workers in Petrograd walked out of their factories to protest shortages of bread and food, and in commemoration of International Women’s Day, adding to the large numbers of men and women already on strike in the capital and other cities. . . . As working women and men took to the streets of the capital in increasing numbers, chants, banners, and speeches demanded bread but also an end to the war and the end to autocracy. Students, teachers, and white-collar workers joined the crowds. Scattered violence broke out, especially smashing store windows. Some demonstrators carried sticks, pieces of metal, rocks, and pistols. Although socialist activists encouraged the movement, it lacked real leadership or direction. It was an expression of discontent more than deliberate action to resolve it.​

-- From The Russian Revolution, 1905–1921 (OUP USA, 2017) by Mark D. Steinberg.

A week later, the Russian Imperial monarchy that used to consider itself the Third Rome, Constantinople having been the second, was no more.
 
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