#ordnance corps

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"Hunters Aid Smokes Fund," Windsor Star. January 8, 1943. Page 5. --- If there is a shortage of meat and the soldiers need smokes, hunting jackrabbits will help some, in the opinion of Jack Critchley (left) and Lorenz Borotolotto, Ford Local 200 members, who are shown with part of a recent hunt. The rabbits were sold and the proceeds accrue to the Smokes Fund. Critchley, whose son, Jack W., is now overseas with the Ordnance Corps, says it is really a Triple Victory program because recreation improves the health of war workers working long hours. Critchley intends to propose the establishment of a gun club by Local 200 similar to that operated by Local 222, Oshawa.

[natelia-aldelliz]

Soap : Let's play two truths one lie, me first : I falsified my birth certificate, I beat up a superior officer before locking him in the trunk of his car, and I was arrested when I was 12 on account of suspicion of terrorist intent.

Gaz :

Soap : It was the last one, I wasn't actually arrested, they just paid a visit to my house to question me.

Ghost : My turn, I can't get married because I'm legally dead, my favourite colour is black, and I went to prison for murdering my family.

Gaz : I'm very scared because I know your favourite colour.

Ghost : Yep. I didn't stay long in prison though, don't worry, I had an alibi.

Price : I once caused a diplomatic incident that almost led to a war, I shot someone in the foot because he annoyed me, and I've been secretely married for ten years.

Gaz : I'm not sure I like this game, actually.

Ghost : I'm pretty sure I was to your wedding and it doesn't feel that long ago.

Soap : Wait, you're married??

Price : Yep! But it was only 6 years ago.

Gaz : Okay, my turn then : I don't think you're all fucked in the head, I'm scared for my own mental health and I want to go home, guess which one is the lie.

[fives-girlfriend]

So, you wanna kiss the 398th – here's what you should prepare for...

Captain Helix is fiery, intense - an absolute inferno of a man just barely restrained by the armor he wears. All-consuming and so, so warm.

Bomber is loud, bombastic, passionate - he's the one who laughs against your lips, hoists you against the wall, has fun with it.

Birch... a quiet, sensitive man that hides an intense, powerful inner core that leaves you breathless when it comes out in his most vulnerable moments...

Daub is more reserved. By-the-book, never the rule-breaker, but needs that gentle push to really let himself go a little bit.

Axel is similar to Daub, but only because he's a man who hides in an armored shell, rarely venturing out. They're the ones you'll have to gently coax closer...

And Drake... violent, bitter, intense Drake. He bites. He grabs. He claims.

And then, there's Rook... sweet, patient, gentle Rook. The man's a medic, he knows exactly how the body works, what makes it tic... his hands won't wander, not in public. But he'll hold you with such reverence that you'll be wishing he'd just give in already.

[wrishwrosh]

just finished coming out under fire by allan bérubé, a major entry in the field of monographs where each successive passage makes you go ‘fuck me that’s the saddest paragraph ive ever read in my life’ and then the next paragraph is somehow even sadder

[for-the-sake-of-color]

Goodbye from the 398th Ordinance Corps Sprig! [x]

Welcome to the 218th Urban Crisis Response Sprig! [x]

It turns out being in a Diffuser squad on loan to the 'Experts in everything that goes Boom' Corps may not be quite the best fit for Specialist 'Greatest fear is being Vaporized' Sprig, so on the request of his new Captain, Jet, he transfers out of the 398th Ordinance Corps (Helix and the 398th belong to @fives-girlfriend) to 218th Urban Crisis Response, or 'Glorified Port Security' uhh which generally encounters explosives closer to dynamite than proton bombs.

Captain Helix could probably agree there are worse ways to lose a soldier than a unit transfer; Although when he see's where Sprigs going.... well he wont be able to say it's worse than most alternatives but he can certainly question the Specialist's judgement, because Crisis Company certainly know how to make first impressions. Sprig's just happy to get the hell out of there, no offense, Sir.

Looks like Torch's 'I'm a little silly little guy, you wouldn't hit a silly little guy?' routine did not quite pan out this time

[fives-girlfriend]

Allowing me to be obnoxious about my ocs is a dangerous path, yall

god i love being SOOO obnoxious about my ocs everyone should be 50% more obnoxious about their ocs right neow

[gremlins-hotel]

From the notes of Capt. Alfred Jones: "Davie was a bus and the 'Flying Fortress' moniker seemed to pass her by, but it was a ship with a brave crew. The trudge of getting back to England from enemy territory is a story for another day. I miss her and sometimes I miss the boys we lost that day."

-✪- -✪- -✪-

B-17F "Dear Davie": *U.S. Army Model B-17F-65-BO Air Corps Serial No. 42-29670 Delivered Cheyenne 31/1/43; Pueblo 18/2/43; Salina 15/2/43; Brookley 19/3/43; Smoky Hill 23/3/43; Dow Field 18/4/43. Assigned to the 333rd Bomb Squadron/94th Bomb Group [TS-L] "DEAR DAVIE" 22/4/43; Missing in Action near Hamburg 25/7/43 with Alfred "Comet" Jones, **Co-Pilot: Daryl "Speed" Reed, Navigator: Richard Reed, Bombardier: Charlie Marstaller; Radio Operator: Johnathan Graves, Flight Engineer/Top Turret Gunner: Clyde "Pepsi" Ray, Ball Turret Gunner: William Ortlieb, Waist Gunner: Leslie Lipsey, Waist Gunner: Paul Rapoport, Tail Gunner: Thomas Pugh (6 Killed in Action); "DEAR DAVIE" lost to flak/anti-aircraft fire, crashing near Uetersen, 15 miles NW of Hamburg, Germany.

-✪- -✪- -✪-

[nerd things & acknowledgements below cut]

Notes on the B-17F... The B-17F was an upgrade of the previous E model, with several notable changes: A one- or two-piece plexiglas nose cone, as opposed to the ten-paneled cone of previous versions. Reinforced landing gear allowed for a greater maximum payload, from 4,200 lb (1,900 kg) of ordnance to 8,000 lb (3,600 kg). Flight and combat range of the F model was improved by 900 mi (1,400 km) with the addition of nine self-sealing rubber fuel cells in the wing root, aka, "Tokyo tanks". The F model was generally characterized by being tail-heavy - which lead to part failure - and woefully undefended from the front; the early F models had no front-facing armament, leaving a 60° blind spot to the direct front of the aircraft - a flaw which was exploited by German pilots, who held air superiority. Later F models would see a list of possible available modifications (factory and field) such as inserting two .50 caliber machine guns into the nose cone to solve the blind spot. Other modifications to later F models were bulged cheek turrets, as opposed to the window-mounted guns of earlier iterations, and the available addition of the iconic "Bendix" chin turret. The chin turret is far more common on the subsequent G "gunship" variant. ("Dear Davie" is an early F model without the nose mount, bulged cheeks, or chin turret.)

*This model production block, serial no., and fate are borrowed from real-life B-17F #42-29670, "Thundermug." "Thundermug" was an aircraft that originally served in the 333rd Bomb Squadron/94th Bomb Group alongside my great-grandfather and his usual steed, "The Gremlins Hotel." It was transferred to the 544th BS/384th BG, at which point it went Missing in Action over Hamburg from flak/aa-fire; 8 of its crew became POWs while 2 were KIA. I have had the honor to speak to descendants of both of its crews and help them research "Thundermug"; I wish to voice a mere glimpse of their stories in a unique way.

**All names of Alfred's crew are either cobbled-together family names throughout our history here or entirely fictitious - though some were inspired by real people whom I grew up with stories of. All inspirations were individuals that lived good lives post-war.

[alex--max]

U.S. Marine Corps F-35B Lightning II assigned to Marine Fighter Attack Squadron (VMFA) 121, 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit receive ordnance and launch during flight operations aboard the amphibious assault ship the USS America (LHA 6), in the Philippine Sea.

🎥: By Cpl. Juan Maldonado

#USMC #marineaviation #marinecorps #f35b #f35blightningii #stovl #fighterjet #lockheedmartin #stealthfighter #flightops #combataircraft #military #carrieraviation #navalaviation

[fives-girlfriend]

OH???? MY GOD?????? THATS MY BOY THATS MY SWEET SPECIAL BOY OH MY GOD THIS IS AMAZING???!?!?!?!?! IM GONNA PRINT THIS OUT AND EAT IT HOLY S H I T

@fives-girlfriend Oc!! This is Rook! It was so muc fun to draw him and paint him in gouache!!

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"2ND LIEUT. JACK S. HUGHES, son of Mr. and Mrs. J. Hughes, 276 Earl Street, graduated from the Officers' Training Centre at Brockville recently. Lieut. Hughes was a member of the Ordnance Corps before the war and worked at Headquarters but for the past two years he has been an instructor at Brockville until he took his officer's course." - from the Kingston Whig-Standard. June 24, 1943. Page 2.

[usafphantom2]

Four U.S. Marine Corps McDonnell Douglas A-4M Skyhawks of Marine Attack Squadron VMA-331 "Bumblebees" drop Mk 82 Snakeye ordnance near Naval Air Station Fallon, Nevada (USA), in 1978.

credit Jets n Props

@CcibChris via X

[fives-girlfriend]

Captain Helix of the 398th Ordnance Corps

Original cap for comparison

[babylon-crashing]

Q: Have you ever wrote a poem, drew a painting, or recorded a song that almost (or has) brought you to tears any time you listen to it, read it, or see it?

“One in eight civilians killed or injured by landmines and unexploded ordnances is a child,” Save the Children (2023)

I’m not Armenian but I lived in the country as a Peace Corps volunteer and have been following the fighting in the Nagorno-Karabakh area, between Armenia and Azerbaijan, for years.

During those decades of war the Artsakh countryside - the hills and fields and mountains - have been littered with tens of thousands of landmines. According to NATO ACT’s current estimates, there are approximately 110 million live-ordnances still buried across nearly 70 countries worldwide. For reasons too complex to go into here the job of bomb disposal on the Armenian side fell to a group of volunteers, primarily teenage high school girls, who’d go out into the hills in their protective gear on the weekends and attempt to defuse any device that they could find.

The interviewer I heard this story from made it very clear this team was not trained by the military, they were primarily high schoolers who were, “learning as they went along,” doing this job because no one else would and there were fatalities among the volunteers.

I wrote this poem in 2007, 17-years before the Republic of Artsakh fell. My high school years were tumultuous but nothing like that. The horror that we make children shoulder. Now Artsakh is gone and the Armenian population has fled and I will never learn those volunteers’ names or their fates.

I titled the poem, "Trav'lin' Light," after a Billie Holiday song I use to croon. “No one to see/ I'm free as the breeze/ No one but me/ And my memories/ Some lucky night/ He may come back again/ So until then/ I'm travellin' light.” Bittersweet. as all love is, but dark. Dark and horrific. I’ve read this poem only once in public, at a Protest for Peace rally we were putting on in response to Iraq and the Surge. I got to the line, “stumbled on four,” and lost it. It’s a one-time only poem. I will never read it again.

Travel. Sudden lightning flash in daylight. A word others use. "So from today I'm trav'lin' light." As in atoms. The white flash of a device going off. My grime and bits settling down on your surprised face. You. Someone had to plant these ghastly boxes under this hill's skin. You surmised there are hundreds. Children have already stumbled on four. We. Travel with me here. I want you here when I mess up. Just once. Wave your hands. Call out my name. You can hear the light. Count the seconds. The short distance it takes to get to you. A blur. Crayon red. I rise up and all at once — I'm gone.

[compacflt]

If you want, and only if you want to, could you explain about making Logistics a big part of Ice's career path? Not only did fit so well with your Ice's characterization, it was just so neat I've made it my HC for Ice's career path.

yes!

I got REALLy deep into the defense policy weeds in this post so I’m putting a cut to save people’s dashboards

1. when i was rewriting chapters 8 &9 last winter i did literally the bare minimum of research about the current set of high-level officers. the commander of the pacific fleet at the time had previously been the director of pacific fleet logistics ordnance & supply. So that was easy to yoink. a proven chain of succession.

2. but also: it fit ice’s (or his alter ego admiral Kazansky’s) neat, orderly, effective, collected, strategic characterization. And as professional tactics go, there would be no better promotion for a high-level officer looking to take over the fleet than DFLOS. understand the fleet by the numbers, you comprehensively understand the fleet.

3. In terms of secret-keeping logistics, ice is supposed to be kind of the best. like, because of his logistical thinking, he & maverick get away with it. Or that’s how I would’ve written it if I were a little smarter. Obviously in practice a bunch of people find out so it’s not great. but the navy AS A WHOLE doesn’t find out.

4. The field of military logistics is rigorously bureaucratic, boring, soulsucking, selfdefeating, notoriously corrupt, and yet entirely necessary for the military to succeed at any level (in the very first draft of WWGATTAI i included a famous US marine corps maxim that most people have heard at some point: “amateurs talk tactics. professionals talk logistics.” but that was literally the only good thing about the original chapter 6 which got entirely rewritten a month after i published it). So logistics as a field of specialization fit in perfectly with my secondary character thesis that rising through the boring bureaucratic ranks of the Navy sucked all the humanity & will to live out of ice one day at a time.

a couple related interesting things that I’ve never talked about on this blog & might never get the chance to again:

a) ice canonically joins the navy as a fighter pilot & ends his career as a glorified bureaucrat. that sucks. obviously the struggle to rise in the ranks is a notoriously cutthroat, political, sleazy business (you do not get to the top of the United States Navy by being nice to people), but i would also not be the first person to say that—for exemplary officers—leadership is an EXPECTATION that can counterbalance someone’s natural drive to excel, if that makes sense. You get promoted because you’re good at something (flying), but you get promoted away from the thing you were good at. There is an extent to which you have to fight for a promotion—but there is also an extent to which commanders above you pick you for the job, suck you up along the pipeline. Loss of agency—a major major component of joining the military—does still apply to upper-level officers.

B) to that end, i am reminded of one quote from Todd Schmidt’s 2023 book “Silent Coup of the Guardians: US Military Elite Influence on National Security.” This is an Army training & doctrine commander speaking: “the military has a lot of two- and three-star senior leaders that were confident, charismatic commanders at the O-6 level. But that’s the end of the story. One in fifty, maybe one in a hundred, truly have what it takes to operate successfully at the strategic level and make a real difference for their service. The problem is that they all tend to think that, since they have stars on their shoulders, they’re the one.” —I’ve been writing ice as “The Chosen One,” the officer unicorn, for two reasons: one, it provides him cover for his illegal relationship (and also asks an interesting chicken-egg question: does he get away with his rlnship because he’s so good, or is he so good JUST to get away with his relationship?); and two, he’s “the chosen one” in canon, i.e. he already has four stars in canon: canonically he is not a mediocre officer. But most officers (cough cough maverick) are not cut out for high-level leadership.

C.) in Thomas E. Ricks’ book “The Generals,” Ricks argues that (at least in the Army) mediocrity in the general/flag officer ranks is unfortunately by design. In WWII, if you were a mediocre officer, you got relieved! You got fired! It’s part of why we won: merciless culling of the general officer ranks! But between WWII and Korea, officer relief began to be associated with shame & wasted resources. Mediocre officers got promoted anyways. The military elite pipeline sucks mediocrity up the chain of command. Ricks blames this issue for (at least the Army’s) shit leadership in every post-WWII war, including but most especially Iraq and Afghanistan. There’s no penalty for mediocrity. That in turn reflects on military strategy (mediocre strategists at the helm) & the outcome of every military foray (mediocre outcomes).

D) additionally. There’s a whole neverending debate in the field of civil-military relations (an extremely interesting field of study btw) about the corporatization of the military—lots of high-level talk over the years of “running the military like a business.” If you get kinda into defense policy like me (am i still antimilitary? Idk! but i CAN easily tell you i am against the navy’s littoral combat ship program! It sucks!) then you will know that the navy is struggling right now on a lot of different fronts (procurement [shipbuilding esp. is a disaster—ford-class carriers are under budget though 👍🏽], recruitment, theatre prioritization, general preparedness, readiness against major adversaries [China in particular]). Simply, the navy is pretty mediocre at the minute. I talk a big game about ice being COMPACFLT & SECNAV, but if those are true, & if he “exists” in our current timeline, or even canon timeline (COMPACFLT in 2020), then he’s complicit in a lot of why the navy is sucking ass right now. He didn’t do his job very well. LOL. So, because I love (especially my version of) ice too much to see his legacy suffer, I am stating for the record that my timeline is a different timeline where ice saves the navy from itself and fixes all its issues & solves all its problems & makes it the pride of the armed forces & the tip of the spear of American defense :) because I said so

E.) unrelated but important. It sounds obvious but it must be said. Ice dies on the job in TGM canon. To the extent that in earlier drafts of the script, not-his-sister-Sarah even points out to maverick that ice is still active duty, in the same breath as she tells him ice is sick again. (A wise move to remove that line.) ice does not resign his commission. Ice does not retire to spend time with his family at the end of his life. Ice dies as commander of the pacific fleet. He dies on the job; he dies FOR the job, bureaucratic as it is. If you were wondering why I wrote ice so dormantly suicidal, it’s because canon (i argue) has made it clear that—since the second ice signed up to be a fighter pilot during the Cold War to the second he died active duty—ice has ALWAYS been ready and willing to die for his honorable Navy career.