#509th

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[nocternalrandomness]

B-2 Operations Display - Whiteman AFB - Missouri

[softplumbs]

Vivienne isn't having the.. easiest time getting along with her new friends.

[historyofguns]

The article "Convair B-36 Peacemaker" by Peter Suciu, published on "The Armory Life” on October 19, 2024, explores the significance of the B-36 Peacemaker, an imposing strategic bomber that played a vital role during the Cold War. Developed for long-range nuclear missions without refueling, it was the largest mass-produced piston-engined aircraft with a significant wingspan and length. Originally conceived to bomb Nazi Germany, its development pivoted towards counteracting the Soviet Union after World War II. Although seen as controversial due to concerns over its practicality in the modern military landscape and causing friction with naval aviation interests, it was a crucial asset in the Strategic Air Command (SAC), capable of carrying massive hydrogen bombs. Despite never being used in combat, the B-36 served as a deterrent to the USSR during its operational years, bridging the transition from propeller-driven bombers to the jet-powered age, until being replaced by the B-52 Stratofortress. Today, only four B-36 Peacemakers survive, including one at the National Museum of the United States Air Force, underlining its historical legacy as a deterrent rather than a combatant.

[cherrycolouredpunk]

AM I A MASOCHIST RESISTING URGES TO PUNCH YOU IN THE TEETH CALL YOU A BITCH AND LEAVE DID I COME HERE TO SIT AND WATCH YOU STARE AT YOUR FEET WAS THAT THE PLAN ABSOLVE YOU OF YOUR GUILT ANd SHAKE HANDS

[captain-price-unofficially]

Paratrooper Harry Lorenzo of the 509th Parachute Infantry Battalion clutches his Thompson submachine gun and his puppy “Kaput” near Katharinenberg, Germany. April 1945

[usafphantom2]

An 509th BW FB-111A out of Pease AFB. (ken hammond)

@kadonkey via X

[rockyp77mk3]

In April of 1945, paratrooper Harry Lorenzo of the 509th Parachute Infantry Battalion clutches his Thompson submachine gun and his puppy “Kaput” near Katharinenberg, Germany.

[unteriors]

509th Avenue, Talihina, Oklahoma.

[dangerousthingobservation]

Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit USAF 93-1088 Spirit of Louisiana, 509th BW, Whiteman AFB

Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit USAF 93-1088 Spirit of Louisiana, 509th BW, Whiteman AFB Recovery @ Exercise Red Flag 15-1, Nellis AFB, NV

[statecryptids]

ROSWELL ALIENS- NEW MEXICO

Finally finished all 50 State Cryptids! Time to start putting them together into a book!

I always have a bit of a quandary whenever I showcase an alien as a “State Cryptid”. For many people the term “cryptid” typically refers to unknown Earthly animals. But over time this blog has evolved into more of an overall tour of speculative creatures in American pop culture and folklore where the lines between “natural animal”, “supernatural entity”, and “extraterrestrial” become very blurry. I’m also much more interested in the history behind these sightings than the classification of each creature, or even whether it plausibly exists at all. Plus I’ve already featured several extraterrestrials already such as the Pascagoula creatures, the North Dakota Meccano-Mummy, and the Grays that allegedly abducted Barney and Betty Hill.

June 14, 1947- Rancher W.W. “Mac” Brazel and his son were driving on their property 80 miles outside of Roswell, New Mexico when they came upon “a large area of bright wreckage made up of rubber strips, tinfoil, and rather tough paper, and sticks.” What was it? They had no idea.

 Initially unsure about what to do with the strange find, Brazel collected some of the debris a few days later and drove it into Roswell to give to Sheriff George Wilcox. The sheriff, equally perplexed, contacted the nearby Roswell Army Airfield’s 509th Composite Group. They sent a team out to the desert to collect the remaining debris and ascertain what it was. A few days later Major Jesse Marcel made a statement to the local paper about the incident. Though he didn’t explain exactly what the object was, headlines claimed the army had captured a “flying saucer”.

Flying saucers were in the news a lot that year. On June 24th, 1947 amateur pilot Kenneth Arnold reported seeing an airborne, disk-shaped vehicle near Mt. Rainier in Washington. Later, Navy seaman Harold Dahl claimed he had seen a whole group of the strange objects on June 21st near Puget Sound. Soon people were sighting flying saucers everywhere. Much of this hysteria was fueled by fears of the growing power of the Soviet Union and worries about what secret experiments they might be conducting. Paranoia about unknown Russian flying vehicles soon turned upwards beyond the boundaries of Earth as people began to speculate that flying saucers actually came from other worlds. These mysterious objects were labeled UFOs- Unidentified Flying Objects- by the US military and the term quickly caught on in popular culture. Though UFO originally just meant an unknown aerial object, with no indication of origin, it became synonymous with extraterrestrial spacecraft.

Eventually the army explained that the debris found near Roswell had come from a downed weather balloon. But such a prosaic explanation did not stick with the public. The idea that creatures from outer space had crashed on Earth had firmly taken hold, and a good number of people believed that this “weather balloon” story was just a flimsy cover-up. It certainly didn’t help that the government was tight-lipped about many of its programs out of fear that the Soviets might get wind of them.

 It turns out, though, that the weather balloon story was actually close to the truth. In the late 1940s the government began Project MOGUL, in which massive balloons equipped with sensitive detection instrument were launched high into the ionosphere to look for signs that Russia was testing nuclear weapons. One of these balloons had fallen out of the sky, crashed on Brazel’s ranch. Not wanting to reveal their secret project, military officials had felt it was better to let the “alien spacecraft” idea percolate in the popular imagination instead.

A decade later In the 1950s rumors cropped up that people had seen government agents collecting alien bodies in the New Mexico desert. These stories were soon conflated with the Roswell crash legend, leading to conspiracy theories about frozen alien corpses preserved in secret government hangers. For many years any secretive government sight was rumored to have “aliens in the freezers”. Eventually accusations settled on Area 51, a classified military base in the Nevada desert.

 These reports too had a more down-to-Earth explanation, though. Investigations revealed that the “alien bodies” had actually been special crash dummies fitted with sensors and dropped from airplanes by the Airforce to test the effects of high-altitude parachute drops. Like Project MOGUL, these tests had been hidden behind a thick veil of secrecy which did little to dispel the rumors.

As for Area 51, though the government denied its existence for decades despite clear evidence that it existed, it was officially confirmed in 2013 as a base for testing experimental aircraft such as the U2 spy plane, the Archangel-12, the SR-71 Blackbird, and others. No word on frozen alien corpses, though. By the way, the name “Area 51” is more of a pop culture term. The base is typically just called “Groom Lake”, “Homey Airport”, or simply the “Nevada Test and training Range” by the CIA.

The Roswell Aliens story gained a major surge in popularity in the 90s with shows like “The X-Files” and “Dark Skies”, movies like “The Arrival” and “Independence Day”, and comic books like “Roswell, Little Green Man” by Bill Morrison. There was even a 1995 psuedo-documentary called “Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction” produced by the Fox Network and hosted by Star Trek actor Jonathon Frakes. It allegedly showed vintage footage of the dissection of an alien corpse from the Roswell crash.  This video was eventually revealed to be a hoax, with the corpse actually a rubber dummy stuffed with jam and animal organs from a butcher.

For my depiction of the Roswell aliens, I wanted to get away from the typical images of corpses lying on dissection tables or floating in preservative-filled tubes. I also wanted to avoid the trope of aliens as malicious, terrifying invaders like in Independence Day or any number of B horror movies.

Instead, I chose to portray them as normal beings adapting to a new life on Earth.   Here we see one of the aliens recovered from their crash with the help of a wheelchair and prosthetics. I’ve imagined them setting up a new life for themselves in New Mexico, just trying to keep to themselves. They’ve taken a keen interest in their new home, evident in their collection of local plants like ocotillo and yucca. They’ve also made friends with many locals, including Indigenous communities, evident here in the “Singing Mother” figure on the table. These figures were first created in 1964 by artist Helen Cordero of the Pueblo de Cochiti, a community of the Keres Pueblo peoples.

As immigrants themselves, the Roswell Aliens also feel a kinship with the many other people that have moved to New Mexico from other countries. This is reflected in the alebrije they got from a Oaxacan-born artist.

REFERENCES

The Roswell UFO Festival!

A Smithsonian article on the crashed MOGUL balloon

An article from History.com about the Roswell incident

An article from the Chicago tribune about the high-altitude dummies that were mistaken for alien bodies.

A Space.com article about Area 51

An article about the infamous "Alien Autopsy" pseudo-documentary

Another article about the "Alien Autopsy" film

[todaysdocument]

General Carl Spaatz Attends Crew Interrogation Of The 509Th Composite Group Who Participated In The First Atomic Bombing Of Hiroshima On 6 August 1945. Tinian Island, Marianas Islands.

Record Group 342: Records of U.S. Air Force Commands, Activities, and OrganizationsSeries: Photographs of Activities, Facilities and Personnel

Black and white photograph showing a group of about twenty military men sitting and standing around a large table in a building with curved walls (like a quonset hut).

War Theatre #22 (Tinian, Marianas Islands) 4x5 print rec'd 9 February 1945 from Air OPERATIONS Force Public Relations. Copied 11 February 1949 (over) [Handwritten vertically in left margin: "Operations - Interrogation" and "Personnel" and "509th Unit" INDEXED [Handwritten: 342-FH-3A-39971-69052 AC] [Handwritten vertically in right margin: "A39971"]

[gumroad-shop]

❏ Messerschmitt 'O-Nine' Gallery | Thomas H. Hitchcock | 1973 ❏ The book is dedicated to perhaps the most numerous "family" of German military aircraft of World War II: Messerschmitt - 09. Modifications of the 109th from Bruno to TL, 209th, 309th and up to 509th - everything is in this book. Many b\w and color photos, diagrams and drawings, all this makes the book interesting for lovers of aviation history and aircraft modelers.

[ms-yuuki-daily-pokemon]

This is the 509th drawing for this project.

[anumberofhobbies]

Captain Lefforge said that during the mission, he and Captain Bruger concentrated their attention on the details of their flight plan and transporting the heart. "It was Valentine’s Day. We had this heart; we were going to save someone’s life," Captain Lefforge said in an interview after the flight. "After we figured out what it all meant, it was pretty sobering." "I was sitting there with it (the heart) in my lap," Captain Bruger added. "We just kind of looked at each other. I know I’ll remember this for a long time." Captain Bruger carried the container holding the heart on his lap because it was the only place in the cockpit where the heart could fit. It had to be transported in the cabin of the aircraft because this is the only area which is pressurized. The FB-111 landed at Bradley Air National Guard Base, East Granby, Conn., at approximately 5 a.m. A helicopter was standing by to transport the heart to Hartford Hospital. From the time the donor heart was removed until it was transplanted, 3 hours, 59 minutes had elapsed. "We were fortunate," said Col. Thad A. Wolfe, 509th Bombardment Wing vice commander. "First, we were fortunate to have crews and aircraft prepared to launch on their routine training mission, and second that we had aircraft capable of meeting the tight time requirements involved. The wing is extremely proud of the crews’ effort and of those people who facilitated a quick decision to get us involved."

...

POSTSCRIPT Mr. Reinhardt was 48 years old with a wife and two children and was a letter carrier for the U.S. Postal Service. He began suffering heart problems around the age of 43. On Jan. 16th, 1986, he was admitted to the hospital and placed on the heart waiting list. On Friday, March 21st, 1986, Mr. Reinhardt was able to shake hands with Capt.'s Bruger and Lefforge at the Hartford Hospital, and the following day he was sent home, five weeks after the surgery. Mr. Reinhardt spent years taking medication to prevent rejection of his heart, and one of the side effects was an increased risk of cataracts. By 1989, he had already had one cataract surgery and was expecting to have it done on his other eye. Despite the issues following his surgery, Mr. Reinhardt lived 23 years with his transplant heart. He passed away on April 19th, 2009, survived by his wife, two children and four grandchildren. EDITOR'S NOTE: This story has been republished from a story originally published in 1986. It has been edited for spelling and grammar and to ensure compliance with current Associated Press style. The postscript was added to the story later based on research by 509th Bomb Wing Historian Dee Gullickson.