The Newly-made Airforce

As I said before, bombers were huge planes used for carrying out bombing raids all over Nazi occupied Europe; yet there was a different type of plane known as the fighter/bombers. These planes had two main purposes: to escort bombers to there destination and to attack ships. One of the best fighter bombers and probably my favorite is called the  North American P-51 Mustang. The was a plane of the USA Air force (USAAF). As the Germans were in a war with the German Air force (Luftwaffe), they needed a very good plane. They had a lot of decent fighter/bombers, but they needed a plane to make casualties for the Luftwaffe yet not inflict damage to the USAAF and RAF (Royal Air force). The answer came with the invention of the Mustang. The first time the USAAF took it out, the mustang showed itself to be a very good plane. The P-51 did exactly what the Air force wanted. It pushed the Luftwaffe back and headed straight into Germany allowing the bombers to complete its mission.   

Another wonderful fighter/bombers was the Supermarine Spitfire. The Spitfire, a lot of the times, traveled on an aircraft carrier. The fighter/bomber was a small plane which meant it could not hold a lot of fuel. In World War 1 & 2, the air force was not actually called the air force, but the American Expeditionary Forces, so the air force was not its own branch of the military. Most of the aircraft in WW1 took off from regular battleships. In WW2, the military invested in a gigantic ship. It was called the Aircraft Carriers. Great Britain already had a good navy, so they added aircraft carriers to their fleet and filled them with aircraft.  

 

The Japanese also made a fighter/bomber known as the A6M5 Zero. This was a naval plane and as I also talked before, this was the plane used for the Kamikaze.What all fighter/bombers had in common was they all were used to sink or defend ships.  As the picture above shows, these planes usually had one or two bombs on the bottom. The Aircraft Carriers were not made to lug around heavy bombers that had a big bomb loads, so the fighter/bombers carried either torpedoes or bombs.

The fighter/bombers did not play a huge part in the war yet they did help to make our country what it is now.

The Doomed City

    Welcome to Pompeii here you will find many interesting artifacts, including the bodies of dead people that have been preserved from the eruption in 79 AD. I hope you enjoy this dive into one of Italy’s most fascinating touring sites, so let’s go in.

The results to Mt. Vesuvius’s eruption was death and destruction all over the place. It is speculated that over 16,000 people died in the eruption. They were buried in ash and pumice that was 19-23 feet deep, it helped preserve them from being looted and from destructive weather. Through CAT scans, archaeologists have discovered that the people did not die from suffocation, but from falling buildings. The buildings fell because of the pumice, which is usually light; but when it built up, it became heavy , so the buildings fell under its weight. They also have discovered that the people’s teeth were perfect, which means that they had a low sugar diet, and also had lots of fluoride in the water. There are no cavities in the teeth, which is actually amazing.

  Some of the different artifacts found in Pompeii included a preserved loaf of bread, bodies plaster casts of human bodies. Nearly 2,000 bodies that were preserved were discovered.

They also found mold-made oil lamps that were preserved from the volcano. One is in the shape of an eagle, and another one had a fighting Roman warrior on it.

 Now I want to cover some of the different things that happened before the volcano erupted. There were many little earthquakes before the volcano erupted. Archaeologists have said that they should have known what these signs meant, but they just went on living as usual... until that fateful day when they were all buried. When Mt. Vesuvius erupted, the lava was 1,292 degrees F, and it flowed as fast as 68 MPH. The people were doomed, God was making sure that there was no way that they could escape. He was judging them for everything that they had done. Another interesting fact, is that 1.5 million tons of pumice and stone were spewing out of the volcano every second. There is another fact that proves God’s judgment upon them: the wind usually blew in the opposite direction of Pompeii, so it would have blown all the pumice and stone away, but this time it was blowing towards Pompeii, so the Pumice and stone were blown directly over Pompeii. God definitely orchestrated everything to be the way it was. This was the most feared kind of volcano ever, it was called the “Plinian” volcano. This kind does not have lava, but it contains super-heated gas, magma, and ash. Together, these elements form a huge column that towers up to the sky. Pulverized rock would flow down the mountain bringing destruction to anyone or anything in its path. Vesuvius erupted the day after the festival of Vulcan, who is the “god of fire.”

They also named it “volcano after their “god” of fire. Here is an eyewitness account of the volcano it was written by a boy by the name of Pliny the younger:

“...broad sheets of flame were coming out of Mount Vesuvius. Night had fallen so these flames could be seen more clearly than they would have been during the day. In order to calm his friend, my uncle told Pomponianus that they were just flames from burning villages on the slope of the mountain. After this everyone went to bed at Pomponianus's house. They had slept only a short time, but the ash and stones were falling so thickly that they were rapidly filling the courtyard. If they stayed any longer, they would not be able to get out of the house. My uncle was a sound sleeper and had to be awakened. My uncle and his friends debated whether it would be better to stay in the house or go out into the open fields. There they might be hit by the stones and rocks that were being thrown out of the depths of the mountain.

They decided to go into the fields. It was now time for day, but everywhere around them it looked like darkest night. They went down to the sea to see if it was safe to set sail, but the ocean was still very rough. My uncle found some sail cloth and lay down on the shore. He called for some cold water. As he was drinking it, flames surged out of the volcano, and with them came a strong smell of sulfur. Everyone began to run, but my uncle had not taken two steps when he was overcome by the sulfur fumes and died.The darkness during the daytime lasted for another day. On the third day there was light again…”

    

The archaeologists plastered the bodies in such a way, that you can see the position they were in, the clothing, and the hairstyles, and also facial expressions that they had when they died. Archaeologists have discovered many things just by the plaster of the body.There was a male, female, boy, and girl together, which they supposed to be a family. They have discovered many other interesting things, which would take all day to talk about.

This was definitely a judgment from God, because of their wickedness. What lesson can we get from Pompeii today? Well, it shows us how powerful God is, but it also shows us that God does not take sin lightly; he takes it very seriously.

                       

Axis Mega-weapon: WW2 Kamikaze

     One of the Axis mega-weapons, out of many, was the kamikaze. Kamikaze was a Japanese pilot group that would make suicide missions in the hope to sink enemy ships. The Japanese usually made their suicide missions in their zero, but several weapons were made for the kamikaze.

       Japan had captured the Philippines and then began fighting America. Because they had pulled America into the war, it began liberating the Philippines. What this meant for the Japanese is that they would soon loose trade with the Philippines. Japan didn't have a great air force so they decided to make the Kamikaze to crash into the ships in the fleet and would hopefully sink the ships. To make a bigger explosion, they attached a 500 LB. bomb to the fuselage. When the airplane hit, it would act as a bomb and double the explosion with the bomb on the bottom.   

      The Japanese were very ritualistic and traditional. It was a shame for the Japanese if they could not die for their country. It came from the Samurai time period. The Samurai would either die in battle or commit suicide if they came back alive. When the "inventor" of the kamikaze asked a soldier to act as a suicide pilot he didn't turn the offer down because he would be a disgrace if he did turn it down.









      Like I said before the kamikaze were suicide pilots but most of these pilots were teenagers.  The pilots would crash into destroyers and cruisers but especially aircraft carriers. The man who came up with the kamikazes was really a nut. He was destroying the air force further than it already was and destroying the soldiers. It would be like lining up a whole bunch of soldiers and shooting them and bombing some air bases.

    
     They were helping the enemy and sometimes not even sinking the ships that they hit. There still was not enough of an explosion so they came up with two other kamikaze tools: 1. The Ohka 2. The Kaiten torpedo these two tools seemed to be the answer to their questions, but still they were downsizing their military. In the following few paragraphs I will try to explain these to kamikaze weapons. 

     The Ohka was a giant missile made to be directed by a small pilot. There would be a 4-5 FT. warhead in the front, a driver would sit in the middle, and there would be a flammable fuel in the back. These missiles were usually dropped from a heavy bomber. It had a jet power system in the back which was operated as follows: fuel would be fed into three tubes in the back. When the air would come in the fuel would ignite and shoot out the back. This would shoot it at a speed of 250-300 MPH. In the first Ohka mission, the missile hit the ship square in the middle. This made the leader of the campaign very pleased so he sent more Ohkas out to see.

   
     The Kaiten was a forty-eight FT. long torpedo. That is about the height of a three story house. This had a similar design to the Ohka except it was a lot bigger. When the first Kaiten exploded the Japanese thought that they had sunk five ships because there was such a huge explosion. The thing about the Kaiten was that it never left a trail behind it so the Americans could not see it.
     The Kamikaze time period was a sad time and it gave the Japanese a great military disadvantage. We should always remember the people who died in this campaign.

Weapons that Changed the World

     Weapons are made in many shapes and sizes. In World War 2 the age of wooden ships and cannons firing iron balls changed. There was a birth of many new weapons:
-The tank
-The airplane
(There are more but I'll only talk to you about these for now)
     In this time I would like to show you how these weapons changed the war and the world.

                                               

     The tank above is called the M4 Sherman. This tank was our tank and is numbered with the top 10 tanks of WW2. This tank is a good  tank but it has some things that were critical during the war and were not good. The first thing was: It started on fire easily. When you are riding out to battle in this 67,000 LB. weapon you wanted it to be very reliable . When you have shells flying right at you, you wouldn't want your tank starting on fire when a shell hits your magazine. Most tanks would explode if a shell hit their magazine but they also had thick armor to shield it from the explosion, which brings me to my second point: the Sherman didn't have thick armor. When you are riding out to battle you don't want your armor to get pierced from strafing aircraft. The thing this tank did have was good fire power. If I had a choice, I would not ride in a Sherman. My choice would be the T-34 which I'll talk about next.   

The T-34 is wonderful tank because it didn't have anything the Sherman had except the exceptional gun power. It had slanted sides so that on-coming shells would bounce off. It had thick armor but not the so thick that it would slow it down this tank had a speed of 31 MPH yet it was the equal of the German Tiger 1, one of the best tanks of the war.  

     This big tank was a monster and struck fear in everyone besides for the T-34. This had 6- inch armor in the front and half that much in the back. It had amazing gun power and also the slanted sides. Some Sherman commanders refused to fight this tank because it was like committing suicide. One tactic they had was to sneak to the back of the tank and shoot there, where the armor is thinner, but sometime that didn't even work.

They made many different tanks for different purposes. Some were used as mine diggers,others were used for: flamethrowers, basic cannons, ramp carriers and some just carried machine guns. Now days, we have one tank for many different purpose. You can see how today's tanks are different even in the feats they can do. 

     Planes played a bigger part in the war then tanks. They were used to almost level Germany and Italy. Airplanes like these two (above) were used to strafe Germany and Italy with tons of bombs.The B-17 (plane on the left) was Britain's plane. It was very effective plane but could only drop 17,000-20,000 LB. of bombs to the B-24 Liberator's 20,000-25,000 LB. of bombs. The problem with the Liberator is that it crashed very easily. I personally would like to fly in the B-17.

   So you see the difference from a WW1 plane (down below) to the well armored WW2 plane but still they had their problems and weren't that reliable.

                                                   

  

A Summary of Four Years of Wonderful Teaching

Well blog viewers, I am so sorry that we haven't been consistent with posting a blogpost. It is the end of another school year, and also the fourth year in which Lynnae has poured herself into teaching the three of us. One of the nicknames that has been given to her is Nae Nae, and she has been called that ever since... who knows how long. She is such a wonderful teacher, and we love her so much.

Whoever knew that this cute little girl would become a teacher of three rambunctious kids:)

One of the things that Lynnae has done, is taken us on many trips to the library empty handed, and we always come home with almost the whole library! :) The only problem is, we only read about half of the books that she gets.

Another thing that has never been lacking when Lynnae's been around is dessert. Lynnae has always loved to be in the kitchen. She also is very good at multi-tasking, and can have something cooking in the kitchen and be outside working; or she can have something on the stove and be baking some dessert and cleaning up. She is so amazing and none of us know how she does it all. When it rolls around to someone's birthday, whatever meal they choose, she helps choose all the dishes for it, and bakes most of it herself. It usually consists of 8-10 dishes.

What would be the ending of a school year without a tea party? That has always been something that we can remember her doing ever since the end of her first year of teaching.

     

       

Group subject time with Nae Nae:)

                                                                                                                                             

Home-EC is always a wonderful time of school. I mean real Home-EC. Not the kind where you  make a peanut butter and honey sandwich, but where you learn to make REAL doughnuts. 

One thing that Lynnae has tried to do, is pick out a book to read to each of us individually. For me she decided to read the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy.

When the end of school rolls around, Lynnae has each of us prepare poster boards and a presentation on what we have learned. On the second year of her teaching, we studied the Civil War. It was an amazing study, and we really enjoyed it. 

                           

                                                   

Well, on top of the presentations, she had us do a short Civil War play. Austin was chosen to be Abraham Lincoln. 

When daddy went  on one of his business trips to Chongqing, China, he told to study up on Chongqing and do a presentation on it when he got home.

                                   

This is the result of an experiment that Lynnae had us do for school.

Mom has also been a great support. Lynnae tutored us in History and Science, and Mom has done Math, English, and Spelling. The Lord has surely blessed us with a wonderful teacher!