#Douglas Manufacturing

[robertreich]

Boeing Is Everything Wrong With American Capitalism

Excuse my language, but why is Boeing such a shitty corporation?

Their planes are literally falling apart in the sky.

At least six Boeing planes have had parts fall off this year — including an exit door in mid-flight. A whistle-blower has accused Boeing of a “criminal cover-up” of its safety failures.

But beyond this one company, Boeing’s descent is a case study in how American capitalism has become so rotten. Let me explain.

I’m old enough to remember when people used to say “If it’s not Boeing, I’m not going.”

But in 1997, everything changed when Boeing merged with McDonnell Douglas and became the only major maker of commercial aircraft in America. With no domestic rivals, it no longer needed to stay on the cutting edge of innovation.

Executives at Boeing who once specialized in engineering were replaced with Wall Street types who looked down on the engineers. One money-hungry CEO described those who cared too much about the integrity of Boeing’s planes, and not enough about its stock price, as “phenomenally talented assholes.”

To keep Wall Street happy, Boeing began spending billions on stock buybacks that pumped up the value of shares — money that could have been spent on safety and innovation.

It doled out hundreds of millions on campaign contributions and lobbying to lower safety standards, rake in massive government contracts, and boost its bottom line.

To cut costs, Boeing outsourced roughly 70% of its design, engineering, and manufacturing rather than rely on its experienced union workforce.

To further undercut its union, Boeing opened an assembly plant in South Carolina, a notorious anti-union state. Executives reportedly told managers not to move any unionized employees there.

This quest for profit resulted in massive quality control problems that were reported by engineers and machinists, but allegedly ignored by management. All of this inevitably led to the deadly safety issues Boeing faces today.

And because of Boeing’s monopoly-like power, it has been largely immune from any repercussions for its poor performance.

Boeing made it seem like it was punishing executives who led it astray by firing them, but still rewarded them with “golden parachutes” on the way out.

Folks, Boeing’s troubles should serve as a cautionary tale. It’s reflective of broader trends in our economy over the past forty years. Monopolization. Wealth siphoned off to rich shareholders at the expense of everyone else. Cutting corners on safety to save a dime. Bashing unions. All while spending big money lobbying the government.

Boeing may have become a shitty company, but that doesn’t mean we have to put up with it.

The government has the power to increase antitrust enforcement to bust up big companies — something that we are already starting to see in other industries.

It should also attach strings to government contracts and subsidies to ensure that private corporations are working in the best interest of the country, and not just their bottom lines.

It should ban stock buybacks, which were illegal before the Reagan administration, so profits are put back into improving the company, including the safety of products, rather than solely padding investors’ wallets.

Union power should be rebuilt, so that workers can once again act as a countervailing force to Wall Street.

And we should continue the fight to get Big Money out of politics.

It’s not too late to reverse course and chart a new flight path.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Boeing’s deliberately defective fleet of flying sky-wreckage

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me TOMORROW (May 2) in WINNIPEG, then Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), Tartu, Estonia, and beyond!

Boeing's 787 "Dreamliner" is manufactured far from the company's Seattle facility, in a non-union shop in Charleston, South Carolina. At that shop, there is a cage full of defective parts that have been pulled from production because they are not airworthy.

Hundreds of parts from that Material Review Segregation Area (MRSA) were secretly pulled from that cage and installed on aircraft that are currently plying the world's skies. Among them, sections 47/48 of a 787 ��� the last four rows of the plane, along with its galley and rear toilets. As Moe Tkacik writes in her excellent piece on Boeing's lethally corrupt culture of financialization and whistleblower intimidation, this is a big ass chunk of an airplane, and there's no way it could go missing from the MRSA cage without a lot of people knowing about it:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/transportation/2024-04-30-whistleblower-laws-protect-lawbreakers/

More: MRSA parts are prominently emblazoned with red marks denoting them as defective and unsafe. For a plane to escape Boeing's production line and find its way to a civilian airport near you with these defective parts installed, many people will have to see and ignore this literal red flag.

The MRSA cage was a special concern of John "Swampy" Barnett, the Boeing whistleblower who is alleged to have killed himself in March. Tkacik's earlier profile of Swampy paints a picture of a fearless, stubborn engineer who refused to go along to get along, refused to allow himself to become inured to Boeing's growing culture of profits over safety:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/transportation/2024-03-28-suicide-mission-boeing/

Boeing is America's last aviation company and its single largest exporter. After the company was allowed to merge with its rival McDonnell-Douglas in 1997, the combined company came under MDD's notoriously financially oriented management culture. MDD CEO Harry Stonecipher became Boeing's CEO in the early 2000s. Stonecipher was a protege of Jack Welch, the man who destroyed General Electric with cuts to quality and workforce and aggressive union-busting, a classic Mafia-style "bust-out" that devoured the company's seed corn and left it a barren wasteland:

https://qz.com/1776080/how-the-mcdonnell-douglas-boeing-merger-led-to-the-737-max-crisis

Post-merger, Boeing became increasingly infected with MDD's culture. The company chased cheap, less-skilled labor to other countries and to America's great onshore-offshore sacrifice zone, the "right-to-work" American south, where bosses can fire uppity workers who balked at criminal orders, without the hassle of a union grievance.

Stonecipher was succeeded by Jim "Prince Jim" McNerney, ex-3M CEO, another Jack Welch protege (Welch spawned a botnet of sociopath looters who seized control of the country's largest, most successful firms, and drove them into the ground). McNerney had a cute name for the company's senior engineers: "phenomenally talented assholes." He created a program to help his managers force these skilled workers – everyone a Boeing who knew how to build a plane – out of the company.

McNerney's big idea was to get rid of "phenomenally talented assholes" and outsource the Dreamliner's design to Boeing's suppliers, who were utterly dependent on the company and could easily be pushed around (McNerney didn't care that most of these companies lacked engineering departments). This resulted in a $80b cost overrun, and a last-minute scramble to save the 787 by shipping a "cleanup crew" from Seattle to South Carolina, in the hopes that those "phenomenally talented assholes" could save McNerney's ass.

Swampy was part of the cleanup crew. He was terrified by what he saw there. Boeing had convinced the FAA to let them company perform its own inspections, replacing independent government inspectors with Boeing employees. The company would mark its own homework, and it swore that it wouldn't cheat.

Boeing cheated. Swampy dutifully reported the legion of safety violations he witnessed and was banished to babysit the MRSA, an assignment his managers viewed as a punishment that would isolate Swampy from the criminality he refused to stop reporting. Instead, Swampy audited the MRSA, and discovered that at least 420 defective aviation components had gone missing from the cage, presumably to be installed in planes that were behind schedule. Swampy then audited the keys to the MRSA and learned that hundreds of keys were "floating around" the Charleston facility. Virtually anyone could liberate a defective part and install it into an airplane without any paper trail.

Swampy's bosses had a plan for dealing with this. They ordered Swampy to "pencil whip" the investigations of 420 missing defective components and close the cases without actually figuring out what happened to them. Swampy refused.

Instead, Swampy took his concerns to a departmental meeting where 12 managers were present and announced that "if we can’t find them, any that we can’t find, we need to report it to the FAA." The only response came from a supervisor, who said, "We’re not going to report anything to the FAA."

The thing is, Swampy wasn't just protecting the lives of the passengers in those defective aircraft – he was also protecting Boeing employees. Under Sec 38 of the US Criminal Code, it's a 15-year felony to make any "materially false writing, entry, certification, document, record, data plate, label, or electronic communication concerning any aircraft or space vehicle part."

(When Swampy told a meeting that he took this seriously because "the paperwork is just as important as the aircraft" the room erupted in laughter.)

Swampy sent his own inspectors to the factory floor, and they discovered "dozens of red-painted defective parts installed on planes."

Swampy blew the whistle. How did the 787 – and the rest of Boeing's defective flying turkeys – escape the hangar and find their way into commercial airlines' fleets? Tkacik blames a 2000 whistleblower law called AIR21 that:

creates such byzantine procedures, locates adjudication power in such an outgunned federal agency, and gives whistleblowers such a narrow chance of success that it effectively immunizes airplane manufacturers, of which there is one in the United States, from suffering any legal repercussions from the testimony of their own workers.

By his own estimation, Swampy was ordered to commit two felonies per week for six years. Tkacik explains that this kind of operation relies on a culture of ignorance – managers must not document their orders, and workers must not be made aware of the law. Whistleblowers like Swampy, who spoke the unspeakable, were sidelined (an assessment by one of Swampy's managers called him "one of the best" and finished that "leadership would give hugs and high fives all around at his departure").

Multiple whistleblowers were singled out for retaliation and forced departure. William Hobek, a quality manager who refused to "pencil whip" the missing, massive 47-48 assembly that had wandered away from the MRSA cage, was given a "weak" performance review and fired despite an HR manager admitting that it was bogus.

Another quality manager, Cynthia Kitchens, filed an ethics complaint against manager Elton Wright who responded to her persistent reporting of defects on the line by shoving her against a wall and shouting that Boeing was "a good ol’ boys’ club and you need to get on board." Kitchens was fired in 2016. She had cancer at the time.

John Woods, yet another quality engineer, was fired after he refused to sign off on a corner-cutting process to repair a fuselage – the FAA later backed up his judgment.

Then there's Sam Salehpour, the 787 quality engineer whose tearful Congressional testimony described more corner-cutting on fuselage repairs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PP0xhIe1LFE

Salehpour's boss followed the Boeing playbook to the letter: Salehpour was constantly harangued and bullied, and he was isolated from colleagues who might concur with his assessment. When Salehpour announced that he would give Congressional testimony, his car was sabotaged under mysterious circumstances.

It's a playbook. Salehpour's experience isn't unusual at Boeing. Two other engineers, working on the 787 Organization Designation Authorization, held up production by insisting that the company fix the planes' onboard navigation computers. Their boss gave them a terrible performance review, admitting that top management was furious at the delays and had ordered him to punish the engineers. The engineers' union grievance failed, with Boeing concluding that this conduct – which they admitted to – didn't rise to the level of retaliation.

As Tkacik points out, these engineers and managers that Boeing targeted for intimidation and retaliation are the very same staff who are supposed to be performing inspections of behalf of the FAA. In other words, Boeing has spent years attacking its own regulator, with total impunity.

But it's not just the FAA who've failed to take action – it's also the DOJ, who have consistently declined to bring prosecutions in most cases, and who settled the rare case they did bring with "deferred prosecution agreements." This pattern was true under Trump's DOJ and continued under Biden's tenure. Biden's prosecutors have been so lackluster that a federal judge "publicly rebuked the DOJ for failing to take seriously the reputational damage its conduct throughout the Boeing case was inflicting on the agency."

Meanwhile, there's the AIR21 rule, a "whistleblower" rule that actually protects Boeing from whistleblowers. Under AIR21, an aviation whistleblower who is retaliated against by their employer must first try to resolve their problem internally. If that fails, the whistleblower has only one course of action: file an OSHA complaint within 90 days (if HR takes more than 90 days to resolve your internal complaint, you can no have no further recourse). If you manage to raise a complaint with OSHA, it is heard by a secret tribunal that has no subpoena power and routinely takes five years to rule on cases, and rules against whistleblowers 97% of the time.

Boeing whistleblowers who missed the 90-day cutoff have filled the South Carolina courts with last-ditch attempts to hold the company to account. When they lose these cases – as is routine, given Boeing's enormous legal muscle and AIR21's legal handcuffs – they are often ordered to pay Boeing's legal costs.

Tkacik cites Swampy's lawyer, Rob Turkewitz, who says Swampy was the only one of Boeing's whistleblowers who was "savvy, meticulous, and fast-moving enough to bring an AIR 21 case capable of jumping through all the hoops" to file an AIR21 case, which then took seven years. Turkewitz calls Boeing South Carolina "a criminal enterprise."

That's a conclusion that's hard to argue with. Take Boeing's excuse for not producing the documentation of its slapdash reinstallation of the Alaska Air door plug that fell off its plane in flight: the company says it's not criminally liable for failing to provide the paperwork, because it never documented the repair. Not documenting the repair is also a crime.

You might have heard that there's some accountability coming to the Boeing boardroom, with the ouster of CEO David Calhoun. Calhoun's likely successor is Patrick Shanahan, whom Tkacik describes as "the architect of the ethos that governed the 787 program" and whom her source called "a classic schoolyard bully."

If Shanahan's name rings a bell, it might be because he was almost Trump's Secretary of Defense, but that was derailed by the news that he had "emphatically defended" his 17 year old son after the boy nearly beat his mother to death with a baseball bat. Shanahan is presently CEO of Spirit Aerospace, who made the door-plug that fell out of the Alaska Airlines 737 Max.

Boeing is a company where senior managers only fail up and where whistleblowers are terrorized in and out of the workplace. One of Tkacik's sources noticed his car shimmying. The source, an ex-787 worker who'd been fired after raising safety complaints, had tried to bring an AIR21 complaint, but withdrew it out of fear of being bankrupted if he was ordered to pay Boeing's legal costs. When the whistleblower pulled over, he discovered that two of the lug-nuts had been removed from one of his wheels.

The whistleblower texted Tkcacik to say (not for the first time): "If anything happens, I'm not suicidal."

Boeing is a primary aerospace contractor to the US government. It's clear that its management – and investors – consider it too big to jail. It's also clear that they know it's too big to fail – after all, the company did a $43b stock buyback, then got billions in a publicly funded buyback.

Boeing is, effectively, a government agency that is run for the benefit of its investors. It performs its own safety inspections. It investigates its own criminal violations of safety rules. It loots its own coffers and then refills them at public expense.

Meanwhile, the company has filled our skies with at least 420 airplanes with defective, red-painted parts that were locked up in the MRSA cage, then snuck out and fitted to an airplane that you or someone you love could fly on the next time you take your family on vacation or fly somewhere for work.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/01/boeing-boeing/#mrsa

Image: Tom Axford 1 (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Blue_sky_with_wisps_of_cloud_on_a_clear_summer_morning.jpg

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

--

Clemens Vasters (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:N7379E_-_Boeing_737_MAX_9.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

[captain-price-unofficially]

Manufacturing Douglas A-20 Havoc medium bombers, Long Beach, California.

[wheelsgoroundincircles]

Between 1937 and 1945, a grand total of 12,730 B-17s were manufactured. Additionally, there was one more aircraft known as the Model 299, which resembled a B-17, but it never received procurement by the Air Corps, thus technically not classified as a B-17. The production of B-17F and B-17G variants was undertaken by three different companies: Boeing at its Plant 2 located in Boeing Field, Seattle; Douglas at its Long Beach facility; and Vega (later Lockheed) at its Burbank plant.

[beesmygod]

oh, so. there's this story thats semi-local to my hometown that ive been keeping up on via the reno subreddit. ive been gawking at it from afar in wonder bc i didnt know people could make this many bad decisions on purpose.

joey gilbert was a boxer who was forced to retire bc he's a cheating bitch who was roiding up and doing meth before fights. the list of drugs in his system would scatter an average human's atoms like dust.

as a shining example of the kind of education i paid for: joey gilbert graduated from my alma mater, UNR, with an english degree and then passed the nevada bar using a law degree gained from a diploma mill that is no longer accredited. so now gilbert practices law. this is the advertisement that greets you when you get off the plane at reno/tahoe airport.

every time i see this i want to laugh my ass off. the vague use of meme formatting even though he doesn't understand the conventions of an impact font meme. he has the dead doll eyes described by clint in jaws. he looks like if lowtax attended his own funeral. there's no phone number or website. google me bitch.

anyway, that's not the point. gilbert evidently fried what was left of his tenderized boxer brain with speed and has tried to fashion himself as the VIP in douglas county/vegas conservative circles. i guess he fits right in because they willingly embraced him. he was at the jan 6 riot and will loudly espouse basically any belief as long as hes getting paid. he tried to run for gov and lost the primary by over 20k votes. somehow he claims this is election fraud. he has yet to explain the mechanisms that would explain how douglas county and its republican chapter manufactured over 20000 votes for a republican primary without anyone noticing during a time when election fraud is a hot button topic, all because they feared that the guy they test research chemicals on was a legitimate threat.

hold up my bad. actually gilbert says HE won by over 50000 and the city of las vegas is suppressing the results. his case was thrown out and he was fined 88k for wasting everyone's time.

okay now: in july of 2023 (insane link btw lol. they keep saying shit like "yeah i did that. problem, bitch?",) the conservative douglas county board of trustees had a bitch fit over their lawyer, who has been in the position for over 20 years, for refusing to enforce a transgender sports ban. in an act of retaliation he was fired by a narrow vote and replaced with........

JOEY GILBERT!!!!!!!!

pros of this exchange:

cons of this exchange: he costs more, has no formal law education, the ACLU is going to rip them a new hole, its now october and he has charged the school district an eye-watering 100k in two months. the previous firm charged 18k a month.

in response, the board of trustees is convening in order to fire......the superintendent who has been in the position for 30 years bc he was against gilbert from the start.

nevada is so dedicated to being number 50 in the nation. its honestly heartwarming to think that even the dumbest, toothless hick can make it there by simply lying nonstop. thats the american way, baby!

[vintageairplanehub]

What Is Considered a Vintage Airplane? Key Characteristics of Classic Aircraft Model

A vintage airplane is a term that generally refers to an aircraft model that was built between the early 1900s and the 1980s. These airplanes are often celebrated for their historical importance, unique designs, and the pivotal roles they played during a certain period in aviation history. While there is no agreed-upon definition of what specifically qualifies an airplane model as "vintage," there are a few characteristics that most enthusiasts and experts agree on.

One of the primary characteristics of a vintage airplane model is its age. Typically, any aircraft that was manufactured more than 40 years ago is considered vintage. However, the term can also apply to airplanes that were built more recently but are replicas or restorations of older models. The technology and materials used during the construction of these planes are often outdated by today's standards, which adds to their vintage charm.

Another defining feature of a vintage airplane is its design. These airplanes often have unique shapes, construction methods, and engineering that set them apart from modern aircraft. For instance, many vintage airplanes feature fabric-covered wings, radial engines, and tailwheel landing gear, which are uncommon in contemporary aircraft. These design elements not only make vintage airplanes visually striking but also reflect the technological limitations and innovations of their time.

Several vintage airplane models stand out for their historical significance and the roles they played during pivotal moments in aviation history. For example, the World War 2 aircraft model P-51 Mustang is one of the most iconic vintage airplanes. Since its speed, agility, and long-range capability plays a crucial role in securing air superiority for the Allies during World War II. Its sleek design and powerful Rolls-Royce Merlin engine made it a favorite among pilots and aviation enthusiasts alike.

Another notable vintage airplane is the big airplane model Douglas DC-3. Introduced in the 1930s, the DC-3 revolutionized air travel by making commercial flights more reliable and accessible. Its robust design and capability to land on short, unpaved runways made it an all-around aircraft used not only for passenger transport but also for military operations during World War II.

The vintage airplane model Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress is yet another example of an aircraft that has earned its place in history. This heavy bomber was instrumental during World War II, particularly in the European theater. Its durability, withstanding severe battle damage and still returning home, earned it a reputation as one of the most reliable bombers of the war.

The appeal of vintage airplanes goes beyond their importance. For many enthusiasts, these aircraft represent a golden age of aviation—a time when flying was seen as an adventure, and each flight was a testament to human ingenuity and bravery. Restoring and flying a vintage airplane is a way to preserve this legacy, keeping the history and stories of these aircraft alive for future generations.

Preservation of vintage airplanes is a passion for many. Organizations around the world dedicate themselves to restoring and maintaining these aircraft, ensuring that they remain airworthy and can be enjoyed by future generations. Air shows and museums often feature vintage airplanes, providing an opportunity for people to see these incredible machines up close and even witness them in flight.

In conclusion, vintage airplanes are more than just old machines—they are flying pieces of history. Whether it's a World War 2 aircraft model like the P-51 Mustang or a big airplane model like the Douglas DC-3, these airplanes embody the spirit of a bygone era of aviation. For those who appreciate history, craftsmanship, and the thrill of flight like me, vintage airplanes hold a special place in the skies and in our hearts.

[livingforstars]

A Delta Rocket Launches - December 13th, 1995.

"A Delta rocket is seen being launched in 1988. In use since 1960, Delta rockets have been launched successfully over 200 times. Scientific satellites placed into orbit by a Delta rocket include IUE, COBE, LAGEOS-I, ROSAT, EUVE, GEOTAIL, and WIND. Commercial launches include INMARSAT. Many recent Delta launches have placed Navstar Global Positioning System satellites into orbit. Delta rockets are manufactured for the USAF and NASA by McDonnell Douglas Space Systems Co."

[lonestarflight]

The S-IV stage of the Saturn I intended for SA-5 is being loaded onto the Aero Spacelines Pregnant Guppy, a modified Boeing B-377 Stratocruiser, for transport. It was manufactured at the Douglas factory in Santa Monica, California.

Date: 1963

NASA ID: link

[slaygentford]

the jdcu: a comparative analysis in fact and fiction

several months ago I watched the netflix program mindhunter. this was a normal experience until I found out it is based on a memoir -- the work of 77 year old ex FBI agent John Douglas (jd). indeed, he is the man behind every behavioral analyst character youve ever seen, most notably jack crawford of silence of the lambs/Thomas Harris's novels, which consulted him personally.

I could not believe that those jds -- jack crawford and far more, as it turns out -- were based on the same man that jd of the show mindhunter was based on. mindhunter tv's jd is like if m3gan was a gay keebler elf. his girlfriend tells him to use his womanly wiles on murderers to get them to talk! and he does so -- the harlot! I was stunned. 77 year old ex FBI agent John Douglas consented for this little freak to be his eidolon forever on netflix? who even IS John Douglas?

and so I am compelled by intellectual curiosity to ask: by watching all jds ever committed to screen, can we qualify the multitude that is jd? and, after hearing John Douglas speak on John Douglas in his own words, can we decide who among the many is the most accurate fictional depiction? to conduct this study which is a really good use of my time, we begin by sorting the fictional jds into two categories: slaygent and hard boiled detective. after this, we will compare them to jd in his own words -- that is, his memoir and his masterclass.

mindhunter tv: let us begin where the problem first surfaced. much has been said about patient zero holden ford. a youthful thirty, he begins a career of seducing real life serial killers to learn about their behavior and so forth. many times I asked: girl what kind of interview is this? in the interest of time I will simply say that this evil roomba created and defines the slaygent category.

silence of the lambs: the next logical move. here we encounter the original and most famous fictional jd: jack crawford. despite a strong effort to manufacture chemistry with jodie foster, he is sadly still a man. three words I would use to describe this jd are Svelte, Serves in a trenchcoat, and Succinct. he falls in the middle of the slaygent/hard boiled Venn diagram.

manhunter: this jack is adorned with a rare and compelling mustache. in one scene he shouts, AND I'D DO IT AGAIN! I was not paying attention at this point to what he would do again but I did not doubt he would do it. no dignity, all exhaustion. hard boiled.

Hannibal nbc: jack crawford receives a much needed reboot! Laurence fishburne gives a nuanced and honestly moving performance of a man for whom meaning is unraveling one day at a time. this jack is sartorially aware but practical, and remains empathetic despite his painful job. hard boiled

the alienist: dr laszlo is our first sherlock holmes* archetype -- somehow this has not cropped up before now. with his difficulty relating to people, his lovely coat with a fur collar, and his genuinely sharp observations, laszlo alienist emerges as a dark horse slaygent.

*due to its original publication date, Sherlock Holmes and successive properties are not relevant to a John Douglas study.

criminal minds (& related procedurals): cm's david rossi, along with his counterparts across other networks, are unilaterally hard boiled.

though hardboiled jds prevail in quantity, slaygents are not necessarily an anomaly. now the moment of truth: is the real jd a holden ford or a jack crawford?

Mindhunter (book):

while reading this book I began to feel...discomfited. and not just because it's 400 pages of self aggrandizing ghostwritten prose. something was wrong. it wasn't until, in the last five pages of the gauntlet, that it all cohered.

jd and his wife separated because work kept him away, because he barely knew his children, and because when his daughter skinned her knee he couldn't find much empathy for the scrape because of the shit he saw all day. this isnt the unmarried antisocial slaygent ford who began our odyssey. this isn't even the stylish and heterosexual Jack Crawford of silence of the lambs, nor our mustachioed manhunter. a man who lacked empathy for his child? whose marriage crumbled? who thinks shrinks are dumb as hell? whose main recourse in difficult moments is to remind himself that serial killers are nothing but "inadequate losers" -- of no inherent interest to him outside of their contributions to his noble mission to stop serial killing?

whatever answer remains, however unfuckable, is the truth: holden ford -- and indeed any slaygent -- has never been John Douglas at all. even jack crawford is barely a jd himself. we've been overlooking the real jd all along. and he was right under our noses. hiding like the adder, right in plain sight.

the bill tench paradigm shift

a chain-smoking vet whose wife leaves him because he thinks their kid sucks? an unapproachable asshole clinging to his slippery moral high ground?

target locked.

but make no mistake. this is not yet a victory. if bill tench was right before us all along, then how many jds did I overlook with my narrow definition of a jd??? has hubris bested me again? who will we find now that the truth is blown open before us? how will we wrangle this new data into a useful paradigm? what does paradigm actually mean and can I use it in a sentence like that? questions we must answer.

I propose an ontological compromise. if we set slaygent at one end of a spectrum and the true jd at the other, we may examine all jds and potential jds without compromising the integrity of the real/tench jd, AND without ignoring the fact that slaygent ford is BILLED AS jd. indeed, slaygent and jd CAN coexist -- it is only that their differences must be accounted for.

below are MANY, though not every, possible jd.

now to the final frontier: www.masterclass.com, where for the low low price of 100 dollars you can access celebrities just verbatim reading from their memoirs. literally just verbatim reading from them. like I'm not joking like you could just go to fucking barnes and noble.

mindhunter (masterclass by jd): the discovery of this masterclass was a windfall in my work (thank you cj). now, at last, to the knowledge gleaned. jd (real) is man with white hair and a very slight New York accent. he is well fit for his age with minimal male pattern baldness. he confirms everything we have discovered regarding the bill tench paradigm shift; gruff, to-the-point, sardonic. even his controlled mannerisms are tenchian.

and so I must ask: from whence did the slaygent archetype spring? and why did jd consent for the scary keebler elf to be his proxy? despite the depth of my work, I cannot access the mind of this man, nor the circumstances which gave rise to these anomalies in the continuum.

still. in the indefatigable spirit of jd himself, I feel a theory nipping, nibbling at my ear. I mentioned sherlock holmes before, and now some unwanted voice within me calls out that very name. is it Holmes who shapes the slaygents into his image, even from beyond the grave? has all of this been a prelude to the real work -- the work of examining and classifying every Holmes committed to screen?

like vercingetorix, exhausted by the struggle, here I toss down my arms. with or without me, though, the jd quest continues. what doors remain unopened? what slaygent homunculi lay in wait behind them? and what will become of us, if we knock?

[townofcrosshollow]

My Official Worst Plane List

The only good thing about being a born again plane autistic is that I am now able to gossip about which planes suck the most.

The Comet 1

My least-least favourite of the worst, the de Havilland Comet 1, the first ever jet airliner, first flown all the way back in 1949. Say goodbye to noisy, jerky, uncomfortable piston propellor planes and say hello to falling out of the fucking sky because the Comet was involved in 3 fatal crashes within its first year of operation.

Two of those three crashes were attributed to breakup due to structural failure- see, jets are more efficient at higher altitudes and thus need pressurized fuselages to keep you from suffocating. But it puts a big load on the aircraft's skin to pressurize and then unpressurize it, and it turns out that the engineers at de Havilland just straight up didn't make the plane strong enough. Whoops.

The Concorde

I know this is gonna be controversial in the Plane Fandom but fuck Concorde. Awful plane. It was the first ever, and notably only ever, supersonic passenger plane, introduced in 1969. It was loud, could barely fly any routes due to noise pollution, and its economics were terrible- because it guzzled fuel so badly, tickets were unhinged levels of expensive. And it broke down so frequently that operators had to have a second Concorde on standby in case the first one broke.

The beginning of the end for Concorde came during a takeoff from Charles de Gaulle in 2000, when a piece of debris pierced the tire of a Concorde and led to a fuel tank rupture, massive fire, loss of control, and crash into a hotel. The planes were briefly grounded, and within only a few years, retired. Good riddance. I don't wanna see that thing's stupid nose ever again.

The DC-10

Not as ugly (or groundbreaking) as the previous two, my least favourite plane comes from one of the worst aircraft manufacturers of all time, McDonnel Douglas (who, coincidentally, merged with Boeing. Shocker!). The DC-10 is honestly pretty cool looking and had a long and successful run, but its legacy is tarnished by the series of accidents caused by a poorly designed rear cargo door.

When this door wasn't properly closed, it could fly open during flight, and insufficient ventilation between the cargo compartment and cabin meant that the floor would collapse. Both McDonnell Douglas and the FAA were made aware of this fact, but in order to stop a costly grounding, they agreed not to issue any airworthiness directives that would mandate immediate changes to the whole fleet worldwide. They basically stuck a bandaid on an open cargo door.

As a result of this lack of action, and MD's aggressive marketing of the DC-10 to Turkish Airlines before revoking all maintenance help and leaving the inexperienced airline struggling, a Turkish DC-10 crashed and 346 people died. It was the second-worst single airplane accident in history, only after Japan Airlines 123, which literally lost the entire tail in flight.

But on a more positive note, some DC-10s have been converted to air tankers and put out forest fires, which looks sick as fuck:

[usafphantom2]

The 10th manufactured McDonnell Douglas F-15A in the blue and white chase scheme at St. Louis. (R. Ray Leader)

@kadonkey via X

[couchtaro]

I got to play a game of Urban Mages run by @eaudecrow where I played a brownie (as in the house spirit) who had been recently liberated from a fast food conglomerate that had learned how to manufacture them for labor. His name is Douglas, he was born in a Wendy’s, and they can make guns out of French fries

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Universities secretly sold their students to online casinos

End-stage capitalism’s defining characteristic is making money rather than making things. Think of how Jack Welch destroyed GE by transforming it from a manufacturing company to a financial engineering shop:

https://the.ink/p/like-capitalism-itself-business-journalism

Hospitals are invoice-generating factories with a sideline in medicine. The electronic health record only incidentally records your health. Its primary purpose is to record your billing-codes:

https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/ehrs/physicians-spending-nearly-2-hours-a-day-on-ehr-tasks-outside-work.html

And universities? Ugh. Most universities now have more administrators than faculty:

https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2022/08/administrative-bloat-harms-teaching-and-learning/

Much of that “administration” comes down to begging alums for money to funnel into vast endowments, but heaven forfend those endowments would be used to cover payroll and other essentials, even in a pandemic emergency:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/reneemorad/2020/04/21/harvard-under-fire-for-accepting-nearly-9-million-in-coronavirus-relief-funds/

Nor are endowment funds available to pay the education workers who actually teach students, but can’t afford the rent, food, or family:

https://www.capradio.org/articles/2022/11/14/nearly-50000-university-of-california-graduate-student-employees-launch-open-ended-strike/

The point of the endowment is to increase the size of the endowment — not to improve educational outcomes or research. That’s why Harvard is “A hedge fund that has a university”:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-hedge-fund-that-has-a-university-1510615228

This is the overwhelming logic of capital: capital exists to increase capital, and the underlying mechanism for that increase is irrelevant. This was the reasoning behind the surreal bid to sell the .ORG nonprofit registry to a secretive hedge-fund.

The point of the .ORG registry is to host domain records for nonprofits; incidentally, this throws off some extra money that is turned into grants for public interest projects. The board decided to sell off .ORG so it could make more of these grants, despite the fact that this would compromise the mission of hosting .ORG domain records:

https://www.eff.org/press/releases/org-domain-registry-sale-ethos-capital-rejected-stunning-victory-public-interest

Likewise, this was the reasoning of the Mountain Equipment Co-Op board when they decided to sell off the member-owned co-op (“the most trusted brand in Canada”) to a US private equity fund without consulting the members:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/16/spike-lee-joint/#casse-le-mec

The expand-capital-at-all-costs mindset is a virulent species of brain worms. It’s the basis for surreal movements like effective altruism, which encourages people who want to do good for the world to sell out to the most toxic industries on Earth, amass gigantic fortunes, and then, upon their death, donate them to causes that in some way remediate the harms they themselves wreaked:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earning_to_give

In his new book Survival of the Richest, Douglas Rushkoff calls this “The Mindset” — “I need to make vast amounts of money, no matter what the consequences, or I will not be able to afford to insulate myself from the consequences of how I made all that money”:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/13/collapse-porn/#collapse-porn

Once you let people with The Mindset anywhere near your institution, they will take it over and turn it into a paperclip-maximizing killing machine, one that abandons and then betrays its mission to increase its profits, eventually killing its host. Anything that can’t go on forever will eventually stop:

https://doctorow.medium.com/anything-that-cant-go-on-forever-will-eventually-stop-110ba9711133

That’s what’s happened to higher ed. It’s not just the payroll full of starving adjuncts, facilities workers, etc. It’s not just the way that universities join forces with textbook monopolists to gouge their students:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/07/markets-in-everything/#textbook-abuses

Beyond academics having to rely on food-stamps, students going into lifetime debt to enrich predatory textbook monopolies, and the other horrors of financialized higher ed, there’s the special evil of college sports.

Like all finance-bro motivated reasoning, college sports are sold as a way to do well by doing good: “Look! We’re giving poor people a chance at a great education based on their physical prowess, and we’re racking up tons of money for the university!”

But — like all finance schemes — college sports is a self-licking ice-cream cone that destroys the lives of the people who generate value for it, even as it devours its host institution from within.

Did you know that until very recently, college athletes weren’t allowed to make a penny from their labor?

https://www.scotusblog.com/2021/06/in-unanimous-ruling-court-agrees-with-athletes-that-ncaa-violated-antitrust-laws/

Did you know that those same athletes experience lifelong brain injuries?

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2791303

Did you know that college sports are a cesspit of long-term, officially tolerated sexual abuse?

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/nov/30/ohio-state-michigan-doctors-sexual-abuse-college-football

Did you know that the highest paid public employee in many states is a football coach at a state college?

https://www.profootballnetwork.com/highest-paid-college-football-coaches-2022/

Did you know that college coaches conspired with the rich parents to steal sport-related admission slots from poor kids and give them to mediocre winners of the orifice-lottery?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varsity_Blues_scandal

In many universities — whether public or private — the sports program effectively runs the show. Take the University of New Hampshire: back in 2016, a university librarian named Robert Morin left his life’s savings to the school after 50 years of service. Morin lived frugally for that half century and amassed a personal fortune of $4m.

He believed so deeply in the university’s mission that he turned it all over to the school without any restrictions. Talk about earning to give! The university blew Morin’s gift on a new jumbotron for their sports stadium:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/09/16/university-to-buy-1-million-football-scoreboard-with-thrifty-librarians-money-outraging-critics/

The people who see universities as inconvenient adjuncts to exploitative sports teams know that there are still rivals within higher ed who think the point of the school is to educate students.

That’s why the universities that arranged to allow sports gambling websites to target the young people in their care did so in secret.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/20/business/caesars-sports-betting-universities-colleges.html?unlocked_article_code=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACEIPuonUktbfqYhlSVUZAybfQMMmqBCdnr_EybEnj2XlaTONTixe1KEfDpSc-kHCILdlZsU-xS-aWN5MK_okQ_h2w-BSJAptVwys6NOiqagyHh8U-8i1T39kmNXER6w5-jvnKWDmIe5ymOTn-hvbbzH1XKzbg2lxIVpvvZY2d12t3yMDwKmVFfVnmYUrhYdXDZ54TT8KZiWY7bK_W1glZoLwPlyL4RI2WupZRTnQgdWfjrsCew5TAl7FJ2httSd-sJgPfYNKY9usakIoa8H8gr4OCmd3LYvPBpQ5RILck70Coqf9dPDE9RFVhqXegnp2EK4F

Writing for the New York Times, Anna Betts, Andrew Little, Elizabeth Sander, Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly and Walt Bogdanich reveal the extraordinary corruption and depravity of college administrators who colluded with sports book companies to bring gambling to campus.

Implicated in the scandal are such top schools as Michigan State, U Colorado Bolder, Louisiana State, Syracuse and Texas Christian Univeristy (mission: “to educate individuals to think and act as ethical leaders and responsible citizens”).

On the casino side, the major player is Caesar’s, which is only fitting — Caesar’s was driven to bankruptcy by private equity who managed to financialize a casino into ruin:

https://www.ft.com/content/a0ed27c6-a2d4-11e7-b797-b61809486fe2

Caesar’s offered universities millions of dollars for the right to directly sports betting to students. The MSU deal, brokered by university officials Paul Schager and Alan Haller, was worth $8.4m. That is to say, Caesar’s was asking the university to help it drain at least $8.4m from students’ bank accounts in order to turn a profit.

Louisiana State U did a similar deal with Caesar’s, and then embarked on a direct marketing campaign to sell sports gambling to students who were too young to legally place a bet.

LSU says this was a mistake. Cody Worsham, a university official who holds two offices — associate athletic director and chief brand officer (!!) — said that Caesar’s and LSU “share a commitment to responsible, age-appropriate marketing.”

Meanwhile, U Colorado Boulder struck a deal where it earned a $30 bounty every time a student went from non-gambler to gambler — in other words, Boulder didn’t make money by advertising gambling to students — it made money only if its students started gambling.

These student gambling programs are designed to keep children betting even if they lose money, with teaser offers that refund some losses if students keep placing bets.

This is obviously unsavory stuff. That’s why the architects of these programs went to enormous lengths to keep it secret. The state schools involved funneled their deals through private marketing agencies that were shielded from FOIA requests, specifically to prevent the public from learning how public universities were conducting their affairs.

As MSU executive associate athletic director Paul Schager put it: “With the multimedia rights holder, public institutions like Michigan State no longer have to disclose all those sponsorship deals. This helps with the sponsors being able to spend what they feel is appropriate without having the public or employees or stockholders question that investment.”

The deals themselves are far-reaching. As part of MSU’s Caesar’s deal, tailgate parties before big games would be “Caesarized,” with the casino providing ad-copy for the live announcers to read to attendees. As a figleaf, $25,000 of the millions that MSU received from Caesar’s was earmarked for gambling addiction education.

The deals weren’t just kept secret from the public — they were also hidden from top university oversight. At UC Bolder, the Board of Regents was informed of the deal mere hours before it was announced to the public.

These deals have only been running for a couple months and it’s too soon to chart the long-term harms they’ll create in the student body. But, the Times* notes, there is an one harm that surfaced almost immediately: student athletes are now subject to vicious abuse by their fellow students, who lose money they can’t afford when their peers lose a game.

[Image ID: A gaudy casino floor. In the foreground is a figure in college graduation robes giving a double thumbs-up. His head is a grinning skull with a mortarboard.]

[weirdowithaquill]

Traintober 2023: Day 25 - Distress Signal

What's Out in Tidmouth Bay:

“And every year, on the date of the sinking, the ship rides the seas again, searching for the crew that abandoned her to her watery grave…” Salty finished, grinning at the assembled engines. “Rubbish!” snorted Douglas. “Thir's na sic thing as ghost ships rising up oot o' th' ocean. Whit a doolally idea. Whitevur neist? A submarine letting oot distress signals, even though thir's na yin thare?” Both he and his twin Donald sniggered. Edward scowled.

“You shouldn’t joke about lost submarines,” he said grimly. “After all, there’s a tale of a submarine that was lost off Tidmouth bay that will make you funnel quiver.” “Ooo! Tell it! Please!” exclaimed the other engines. Edward shot a dark look at them.

“This is not a pleasant story, and it’s certainly not one to make light of…” With one last sigh, the old engine began his story.

“Back during the First World War, both Britain and Germany began to deploy early submarines to disrupt shipping and try to starve their opponent out of the war. But back then, the submarines were still new technology – they rattled, and sprang leaks, and they were loud most of the time too. But when they glided underwater, not even the keenest of eyes could spot them.

“In 1916, several British submarines began docking at Tidmouth. These submarines were manned by local Sudrians who’d signed up for the navy, and they were very proud of their machines. ‘Best in the Navy!’ they would boast. ‘Never to be beaten!’ we would often reply, caught up in a great patriotic spirit for our country and our boys doing their part to defend it.

“One of the duties of these submarine crews was to tow large underwater mines into choke points in the harbour waterways. These giant, spiked balls of explosives were placed randomly, so that enemy ships would be unable to get too close to the harbour to attack. The submarines were good at this job, and the island’s people always felt safer knowing they were protecting us.

“It all changed one foggy night. A German U-Boat had been spotted off the coast of Liverpool and was sailing north towards us at a tremendous rate. At the time, Tidmouth was a major manufacturer of shells and explosives for the front line, and even one hit to the factory would do irreversible damage. The submarines in Tidmouth bay were sent out to find the German U-Boat, despite the thick fog that made navigation almost impossible – and they found it. Unfortunately, they also found the minefields.

“The radios were filled with crackly cries for help from Sudrian sailors, all lost in the fog and trying to avoid the mines they’d set while also hunting for a German U-Boat. We all waited with bated breath on the shoreline, all listening to the radio and praying for the boys…”

Edward paused, then tears filled his old eyes.

“And then, there was a flash of light – it was so bright, it pierced through the fog and lit up the entire bay – and screams. They came through the radio for only a couple seconds, but they were the longest seconds of my life. They were horrible – wretched, broken, filled with agony and suffering – and then they were gone. One of the Sudrian submarines had found the German U-Boat and fired on it… but they had missed… and hit an underwater mine. Both ships were destroyed, sinking down to their final resting places on the sea floor.”

The engines were horrified. Even Donald and Douglas were silent, eyes wide. Every engine who had lived through the First World War had known someone who had lost their lives – but to actually see it with their own eyes… it was horrific.

“But that wasn’t the end,” Edward continued, startling everyone. “One year later, the remaining submarines were sat in the harbour when their radios crackled with an unknown message. But it wasn’t just the submarines’ radios – no, it was every radio in Tidmouth. Every single one picked up this unknown, crackling message. It was a distress signal! – a shouted one, in two different languages. One was foreign – German; garbled, broken by the static of the radios. The other however… it was the lost sailors from the sunken submarine. They were shouting at each other and at us – and then there was a massive explosion that ripped through the radio-waves. There was a flash of light – and then those screams. They tortured us, far longer than the screams we’d heard on that fateful night. They were in German too now, as if both ships were wailing for their losses. And then… nothing.

“This happened again the next year, and then the year after that – and after that, the people of Tidmouth learnt. Every year, on the date of the accident, every radio in Tidmouth is switched off. It’s a moment of silence, for the men who lost their lives.”

No one knew what to say, and so they all went quietly to sleep.

The next evening, Edward was away on his branchline, and a new driver decided to leave the radio on for the engines in the sheds. This was not uncommon – the engines enjoyed the background noise; it was relaxing after a long days’ work.

It was only Donald and Douglas – Bear had the midnight goods, Gordon had the express, Salty was delivering some trucks to Elsbridge, Duck was collecting a late load of ballast, James and Henry were sleeping at the other end of the line, and Oliver was pulling the last passenger train of the evening. “Edward's story - ye dinnae hawp it, dae ye?” asked Donald. “Na! nae at a' - tis a guid story fur a friten, bit thir's na sic thing as ghosts,” snorted Douglas. “Especially nae ghosts sending oot distress signals.” “Aye, whit nonsense…”

The song on the radio ended – but another didn’t start. Instead, the radio crackled – as if suddenly overwhelmed by a wave of static. Voices could be vaguely heard from the radio, quiet – but growing louder. They were in English… and in German. They were screaming, pleading, arguing, begging for help. It was a distress signal. The voices grew louder, more garbled – and then, there was a sonic BOOM! that erupted from the radio, almost knocking the Caledonian twins off their rails.

It was followed by a horrific wailing and screaming. It ripped through Donald and Douglas, their boilers going cold at the sound. It was the sound of dying men. It stretched on for what felt like an eternity, eventually tapering off into garbled groaning, and then nothing.

An unseen figure in a top hat clicked off the radio, and vanished out the back door, unheard by the twins. They were barely holding in their tears, eyes wide and wheels quivering.

Oliver puffed in, looking very confused. “Are you two alright?” he asked. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost—” “Dinnae... say that…” Donald croaked.

Oliver stayed respectfully silent.

Back to Master Post

[scotianostra]

On January 8th the burgh of Stirling surrendered to the Jacobite army.

As had happened in Edinburgh the year before, the town fell to the Jacobite army, but crucially the castle remained in Government hands.

Stirling has always been a pivotal Scottish location, an important, strategic site for centuries, particularly throughout the first and second Scottish ‘Wars of Independence’ of the 13th and 14th Centuries and, indeed, during the entire mediaeval period. The history of Stirling, the name of which is said to derive from ‘striveling’ meaning ‘place of strife’, seems to have proceeded in concert with that of Scotland and the 1745-6 Jacobite Rising also made its mark.

We last saw the Jacobite army in Glasgow at Christmas, they left on 3rd January in two columns. One column of six Highland battalions and Lord Elcho´s cavalry, led by Lord George Murray marched towards Falkirk, via what is now Cumbernauld. Lochiel´s regiment was sent to Alloa to escort the artillery to Stirling and subsequently to form the Prince´s guard at Bannockburn.

The Prince marched towards Stirling, there he set up his headquarters at Bannockburn House as the guest of Sir Hugh Paterson, a Jacobite supporter. Lord John Drummond came from Perth with four thousand men and heavy artillery. Whilst he was there he was visited by Sir John Douglas MP who stated that there was £10,000 waiting for him in London from London Jacobites.

Now boasting a force of 8,000 men the Jacobites sent a drummer to Stirling on 5 January demanding the surrender of the town. The garrison responded by shooting at the drummer who then ran for his life. The town council later agreed to surrender. Stirling Castle itself was held by a small garrison of trained militiamen and troops under the command of Major General William Blakeney, who declined to surrender. The Prince ordered the castle to be besieged, but withstood the artillery bombardment.

As this went on, General Hawley brought an army of 13,000 from Newcastle to Edinburgh, sending an advance unit to Linlithgow on January 13th. Lord Elcho fell back to Falkirk where he met Lord George Murray. Hawley advanced with his main army of 6,000 on 15th January, intending to relieve Stirling Castle, Murray and Elcho withdrew to Bannockburn.

Stirling would later be relieved by Cumberlands troops as they swept North pursuing Charlie's army.

The Jacobite army is shown retreating across the Forth laden down with plunder from the town while Prince Charles Edward Stuart is depicted submitting to Cumberland and his troops. Following the Battle of Culloden the Duke of Cumberland was made an honorary burgess of Stirling. It is thought this fan was one of several manufactured for the occasion of his presentation in April 1746 when he received his burgess ticket in a handsome engraved silver box.

[thepastisalreadywritten]

On 6 August 1945, during World War II (1939-45), an American B-29 bomber dropped the world’s first deployed atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

The explosion immediately killed an estimated 80,000 people; tens of thousands more would later die of radiation exposure.

Three days later, a second B-29 dropped another A-bomb on Nagasaki, killing an estimated 40,000 people.

Japan’s Emperor Hirohito announced his country’s unconditional surrender in World War II in a radio address on August 15, citing the devastating power of “a new and most cruel bomb.”

The Manhattan Project

Even before the outbreak of war in 1939, a group of American scientists — many of them refugees from fascist regimes in Europe — became concerned with nuclear weapons research being conducted in Nazi Germany.

In 1940, the U.S. government began funding its own atomic weapons development program, which came under the joint responsibility of the Office of Scientific Research and Development and the War Department after the U.S. entry into World War II.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was tasked with spearheading the construction of the vast facilities necessary for the top-secret program, codenamed “The Manhattan Project” (for the engineering corps’ Manhattan district).

Over the next several years, the program’s scientists worked on producing the key materials for nuclear fission — uranium-235 and plutonium (Pu-239).

They sent them to Los Alamos, New Mexico, where a team led by J. Robert Oppenheimer worked to turn these materials into a workable atomic bomb.

Early on the morning of 16 July 1945, the Manhattan Project held its first successful test of an atomic device — a plutonium bomb — at the Trinity test site at Alamogordo, New Mexico.

No Surrender for the Japanese

By the time of the Trinity test, the Allied powers had already defeated Germany in Europe.

Japan, however, vowed to fight to the bitter end in the Pacific, despite clear indications (as early as 1944) that they had little chance of winning.

In fact, between mid-April 1945 (when President Harry Truman took office) and mid-July, Japanese forces inflicted Allied casualties totaling nearly half those suffered in three full years of war in the Pacific, proving that Japan had become even more deadly when faced with defeat.

In late July, Japan’s militarist government rejected the Allied demand for surrender put forth in the Potsdam Declaration, which threatened the Japanese with “prompt and utter destruction” if they refused.

General Douglas MacArthur and other top military commanders favored continuing the conventional bombing of Japan already in effect and following up with a massive invasion, codenamed “Operation Downfall.”

They advised Truman that such an invasion would result in U.S. casualties of up to 1 million.

In order to avoid such a high casualty rate, Truman decided – over the moral reservations of Secretary of War Henry Stimson, General Dwight Eisenhower and a number of the Manhattan Project scientists – to use the atomic bomb in the hopes of bringing the war to a quick end.

Proponents of the A-bomb — such as James Byrnes, Truman’s secretary of state — believed that its devastating power would not only end the war but also put the U.S. in a dominant position to determine the course of the postwar world.

'Little Boy' and 'Fat Man' Are Dropped

Hiroshima, a manufacturing center of some 350,000 people located about 500 miles from Tokyo, was selected as the first target.

After arriving at the U.S. base on the Pacific island of Tinian, the more than 9,000-pound uranium-235 bomb was loaded aboard a modified B-29 bomber christened Enola Gay (after the mother of its pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets).

The plane dropped the bomb — known as “Little Boy” — by parachute at 8:15 in the morning.

It exploded 2,000 feet above Hiroshima in a blast equal to 12-15,000 tons of TNT, destroying five square miles of the city.

Hiroshima’s devastation failed to elicit immediate Japanese surrender, however, and on August 9, Major Charles Sweeney flew another B-29 bomber, Bockscar, from Tinian.

Thick clouds over the primary target, the city of Kokura, drove Sweeney to a secondary target, Nagasaki, where the plutonium bomb “Fat Man” was dropped at 11:02 that morning.

More powerful than the one used at Hiroshima, the bomb weighed nearly 10,000 pounds and was built to produce a 22-kiloton blast.

The topography of Nagasaki, which was nestled in narrow valleys between mountains, reduced the bomb’s effect, limiting the destruction to 2.6 square miles.

Aftermath of the Bombing

At noon on 15 August 1945 (Japanese time), Emperor Hirohito announced his country’s surrender in a radio broadcast.

The news spread quickly.

“Victory in Japan” or “V-J Day” celebrations broke out across the United States and other Allied nations.

The formal surrender agreement was signed on September 2, aboard the U.S. battleship Missouri, anchored in Tokyo Bay.

Because of the extent of the devastation and chaos — including the fact that much of the two cities' infrastructure was wiped out — exact death tolls from the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki remain unknown.

However, it's estimated roughly 70,000 to 135,000 people died in Hiroshima and 60,000 to 80,000 people died in Nagasaki, both from acute exposure to the blasts and from long-term side effects of radiation.