19FortyFive
Verified
Online/Digital
The year 1945 was one of the radical changes for all of humanity. Some think of it as the year World War II ended. Others think of it as the marker for the beginning of the atomic age. Many bundles together countless wartime, political and economic events and consider it the start of U.S. primacy and dominance across the globe. Refounded after spending years as a regional defense publication, it was in the darkest days of the Coronavirus pandemic in 2020 that we rebooted our mission.
Actions
Media Outlet details
| Scope | National |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Country | United States of America |
Similarweb UVM
|
Request pricing |
Comscore UVM
|
Request pricing |
Recent Articles
Search ArticlesCenturies Later, Napoleon’s Best Line on Courage Is Still the One of the Greatest Military Quotes in Armed Forces History
Summary and Key Points: “Courage isn’t having the strength to go on — it is going on when you don’t have strength.” The line is attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte, and whether or not he said it, his own campaigns are the hardest possible test of it. In June 1812 he crossed into Russia with the Grande Armée, more than 600,000 men, the largest field army Europe had ever assembled. The Russians refused to fight him, retreated, and burned everything behind them.
Decades Later, General George S. Patton’s Best US Army Line Is Still the One of the Greatest Military Quotes in Armed Forces History
Summary and Key Points: “Better to fight for something than live for nothing.” General George S. Patton said that, and then the shooting stopped, and he outlived it by seven months. On 9 December 1945, in occupied Germany, his staff car collided with an Army truck. Patton broke his neck. He was paralyzed from the neck down, lingered for 12 days, and died in his sleep at about six in the evening on 21 December, aged 60, of pulmonary edema and congestive heart failure.
China Has About 21 Type 039 Yuan-Class Attack Submarines, Each With 6 533mm Torpedo Tubes. They Do Not Have to Chase a US Navy Carrier Strike Group — They Can Sit in a Chokepoint and Wait for It.
Summary and Key Points: China operates around 21 Type 039 Yuan-class attack submarines, each 77.6 meters long, displacing about 3,600 tons submerged, and carrying 6 533mm torpedo tubes loaded with Yu-6 heavyweight torpedoes and YJ-18 anti-ship cruise missiles. They are slower than any American nuclear submarine, and they will always be slower. That does not matter, because a Yuan-class boat is not built to chase a US Navy carrier strike group across the Pacific.
It Took the US Navy 4 Weeks to Deliberately Sink Its Own Aircraft Carrier USS America in 2005. Iran Does Not Need to Sink a Carrier — It Only Needs to Stop 1 From Launching Aircraft.
Summary and Key Points: When the US Navy set out to sink the decommissioned aircraft carrier USS America in 2005, it took 4 weeks. There was no crew aboard, no one fighting the flooding, and no one trying to save her. That is the measure of how hard it is to put a supercarrier on the bottom, and it is why sinking one was never a realistic objective. A carrier’s entire contribution to a battle is its air wing.
The US Air Force Wanted to Retire All 162 A-10 Warthogs in 2026. Congress Wrote a Law Forcing It to Keep 126 of Them Flying Until 2033 and Named the Law After the Sound the Gun Makes.
Summary and Key Points: Congress has written a law named after the sound an aircraft’s gun makes. The Bolstering Recognition, Resurgence, Retention, and Remembrance of the Thunderbolt Act spells BRRRRT, which is what the A-10 Warthog’s GAU-8/A 30mm cannon sounds like, and it would require the US Air Force to keep at least 126 A-10s in service through FY2033 unless it can certify that a fully capable replacement has reached full operational capability.
Boeing Spent $67,000,000 of Its Own Money Building the YF-118G Bird of Prey Stealth Aircraft. It Flew 38 Times on Landing Gear From a Beech King Air and an Ejection Seat From a Harrier.
Summary and Key Points: Boeing built a stealth aircraft with its own money, out of parts taken from other airplanes, and flew it 38 times at Area 51 before anyone outside the program knew it existed. The YF-118G Bird of Prey cost roughly $67,000,000 — Boeing’s own, not the Pentagon’s — and the savings came from refusing to build anything it could buy. The landing gear was adapted from Beech King Air and Queen Air light aircraft.
Forget the F-35 Stealth Fighter: At 87,000,000,000 Operations Per Second, the US Air Force F-15EX Eagle II Is a Real Flying Supercomputer
Summary and Key Points: The Boeing F-15EX Eagle II is not stealthy, and the US Air Force bought it anyway. It flies at Mach 2.5, whereas the stealth F-35 manages Mach 1.6 and the F-22 Raptor manages Mach 2.25. It carries 12 missiles, including the AIM-120D and the AIM-9X. It runs the Advanced Display Core Processor II, a computer that performs roughly 87,000,000,000 operations per second, which drives its radar, electronic warfare, threat warning, and networking.
NASA Spent About $230,000,000 Over 8 Years on the Mach 9.6 X-43A Hypersonic Scramjet. It Flew 3 Times, the First 1 Was Destroyed by Its Own Booster, and the Engine Ran for Roughly 11 Seconds.
NASA’s Hyper-X program ran for 8 years, cost roughly $230,000,000, and produced exactly 3 flights. The first ended in wreckage — the booster rocket carrying the X-43A lost control and the aircraft was destroyed with it. The second reached Mach 7. The third, in 2004, reached Mach 9.6, nearly 10 times the speed of sound, and holds the Guinness World Record for the fastest aircraft ever flown on an air-breathing engine.
France’s 42,000-Ton Nuclear Aircraft Carrier Charles de Gaulle Went to Sea With a Flight Deck 4.4 Meters Too Short and Lost a Propeller in the Atlantic. She Then Sailed 6 Years on Spare Screws Built for 1960s Carriers.
Summary and Key Points: France’s Charles de Gaulle went to sea trials with a flight deck 4.4 meters too short to fly the E-2C Hawkeye her air wing was built around, and the deck had to be lengthened after the fact. On the night of 9–10 November 2000, on her final long-distance trials, her port propeller broke in the Western Atlantic.
General George Patton’s Quote on People Is Still the Greatest in US Army History 79 Years Later
Summary and Key Points: “Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do, and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.” General George S. Patton said that, and on 16 December 1944 he got the chance to prove it. Germany attacked through the Ardennes with 29 divisions and 250,000 men, tore open the Allied line and trapped the 101st Airborne Division in Bastogne. Patton did not wait to be asked.