Category Archives: Current Affairs

Nadia Popova R.I.P.

Current Affairs

Nadia_1

Nadia Popova is name you have probably never heard of unless you are Russian, were crazy about WWII airplanes as a kid, or are a woman military pilot (or, maybe, Peter Kuhlman). It is not a name that I remember although I read alot about World War II airplanes as a kid. What I do remember reading about were what the Germans called Nachthexen, or Night Witches. They were a group of Russian women pilots who terrorized the Germans.

We like to think that we won the war against the Germans, but the Russians did the heavy lifting. Three quarters of the German Army was on the Eastern Front, the first time the German Army was stopped was at Stalingrad, and most historians consider that the turning point of WW II in Europe. That was in late 1942. The Soviets had no material to speak of, just people to throw at the Germans – Stalin famously said Quantity has a quality all it’s own –  taking 1,150,000 causalities at Stalingrad alone. They had so few assault rifles, that, in the big push across the Volga, they attacked with two men for each assault rifle, when the guy with the rifle was shot, the other picked it up.

The Night Witches were equipped about as poorly. They flew at night in open, wooden, bi-planes with a top speed of 94 miles per hour against the Wehrmacht and the Luftwaffe – think about that for a second – in Belorussia, Poland and, finally, Germany. The women didn’t wear parachutes because they were too heavy. In four years, the Night Witches flew over 30,000 missions . The Atlantic points out that They were loathed. And they were feared. Any German pilot who downed a “witch” was automatically awarded an Iron Cross.

They were also amazing.

The most amazing was Nadia Popova. She was a girly-girl who loved to dance and wanted to be a teacher, and she flew 852 missions as a night bomber pilot. (The average crew of a B26, our most used medium bomber during WWII, flew just over 20 missions during their entire career.) After one mission, she returned with 42 bullet holes in her plane. In Poland, she reached her personal record of 18 sorties in one night. That means that she took off – in an open plane, in the dark, often in sub-zero weather – flew over German lines to dropped her bomb load, and returned to her base in the dark. Eighteen times in one night.

After all that, Nadia lived through the war, got married and had kids and grandkids. She died at 91 on July 8th of this year.

(If you are interested, more here and here)

 

1984 Redux

Americana, Current Affairs

 

MRE

It seems we are in perpetual war, just like Oceania and Eastasia, the allies fighting Eurasia in 1984. Without missing a beat, they ended up fighting each other, with Oceania and Eurasia allied against Eastasia. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter  authorized the United States Central Intelligence Agency to conduct Operation Cyclone. That was the code name to arm and finance the mujaheddin so they could fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan. These are the same mujaheddin we are fighting now, with the same forces – on our side – that  the Soviets had fighting on their side.

The good news is, I guess, because war promotes innovation on a grand scale – see a 1938 fighter below and a 1948 fighter below that –

P40-W000

 

lockheed-p-80-shooting-star-02

our permanent state of war has given us all sorts of great innovations. Two of favorites are MRE’s – Meal, ready to eat – which feature meat infused with caffeine to help keep our combatants awake, and Kevlar underwear to help keep their reproductive parts safe.

Kevlar-Underwear

 

Wouldn’t it be nice if we were willing to spend that kind of money on education.

Happy Mother’s Day

Around home, Current Affairs

Mom-0020

Helené Rambow Stern Parsons 1909-1985

It has been over twenty five years since my mom died. She was not my Ideal Mother. In many ways, she was a very unhappy person and that often made her a difficult person to be around. But, I miss her. I miss her sense of style. I miss her sense of humor and her curiosity.

Mom-0027She was born and grew up in Oakland where she went to school until she was 16. Then her family said something along the lines of You are sixteen now, Goodbye (all the more remarkable because her father, my grandfather, considered himself an intellectual).

Mom-0028She became an adult quickly, was married at 17 and divorced soon after, married and divorced again, and married my dad in 1939. Sometime during that period, my mom worked as a model at Ransohoff’s.

Mom-1

I don’t think that life was ever easy for my mom but she always had a sense of style. Happy Mother’s Day!

Mom-0009

Malala Yousufzai, Gabby Giffords, head injuries, and our wars

Current Affairs, War

Malala Yousafzai

Malala Yousufzai was shot in the head by a religious fanatic and Gabby Giffords was shot in the head by some-other-kind of fanatic. By all rights, they should be dead but they both seem to be prospering (prospering being a relative term here, I am sure that it has not been a net positive experience).

As an aside, I hold the position the anybody who tries to kill another human being is crazy. That may be my main definition of crazy, any body who thinks they have the right to kill somebody else is crazy. I suspect that alot of PTSD is otherwise sane people being forced to kill other human beings which is why drone pilots, living and working near Syracuse New York, get PTSD. End aside.

How disheartening that must be for the madmen that pulled the trigger on Malala, she is now a world wide celebrity living in England and he is living a life of an hunted animal. And poor, smiley,   Jared Lee Loughner after everybody argued over his sanity – in public – he will be spending life in prison without parole, reading about how terrific Giffords is. The new technology used to save both Malala and Gabby – if I may be presumptuous enough to use their first names – is a collateral benefit of our wars in the Gulf and Afghanistan.

In the Civil War, if somebody was wounded, they had only about a 40% chance of living. Those were the days before anesthesia or antibiotics like penicillin but it was also before IED’s or hollow-point bullets. In World War II, the odds climbed to about 70%. Now, in Afghanistan, it is better than 80%. With Malala and Gabby, it is 100%. Much of this is because of how fast we can get wounded people to help, but it is also because, once we get them to help, the doctors have learned so much about stopping the damage from getting worse and, then, repairing the damage.

It is extraordinary how far these little wars have pushed trauma medicine. I still don’t think they are worth it, though.

Shot schoolgirl treated in the UK