Japan surrendered after the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and August 9, 1945. DMA member Charles Salmans points out that the B-29 was also essential to the defeat of Japan because the U.S. needed a way to deliver such bombs. No aircraft had that capability before the B-29 and the design of this aircraft was revolutionary, only to be superseded as a World War II technological achievement by the development of the atomic bomb itself. Under the pressure of war, both the design and production of the bomber took place concurrently, beginning in 1940. Major design and engineering modifications were still taking place through 1945 with air crew, in effect, becoming test pilots. The B-29 was a huge technological advance, the first aircraft with a pressurized cabin. It had three times the bomb load and twice the range of any other bomber at the time, made possible in part by a revolutionary wing design. But it required the most powerful engines ever built, and these were its Achilles heel. Furthermore, it was designed for high level, precision bombing before there was understanding of the high-altitude jet stream, which was at its most powerful at the latitude of Tokyo and which blew bombs off target. Thus, bombing was anything but precise. Consequently, General Curtis LeMay had to alter the tactics to low-level firebombing and in a single night a raid on Tokyo caused more civilian casualties than either of the atomic bombs.
Hamish Lutris is Associate Professor of History and Political Science at Capital Community College, Hartford, where he receives top ratings from students as an engaging lecturer. He credits his ability to teach with a job when he was in college as an interpretive ranger at Gettysburg National Military Park, where his job was to talk about the battle and cemetery where Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg address. “With over 1.5 million visitors a year, not only was my job to provide accurate information, but to also entertain.” He has worked in some of America’s premier natural and historical sites, leading hiking and historical programs. He has also lectured extensively in the United States, Europe, and Canada, presenting programs on wide-ranging historical topics, including Native American history, the Civil War, Scientific History, Social and cultural history, World War I, World War II, and the American West
Mark Albertson, who is well known to DMA members as an entertaining and informative speaker and historian, will talk about George Washington’s Farewell Address, delivered in 1796. It’s one of the best by any departing president. Washington offers an array of prognostications along with his concerns, a number of which, unfortunately, have arisen over the course of our history. Washington himself, of course, is fascinating. He was a large landowner. He was a slaveowner. But here is a man who had the opportunity to take control of the country as General of the Army and refused to do so. Here is a man who served his two terms as president and then willingly vacated the highest political office in the land, setting the precedent of the two-term presidency. Into the 20th century all second term presidents willingly leave office. That is American Exceptionalism. America was blessed from the historical perspective that George Washington was not another Julius Caesar, Oliver Cromwell, or Napoleon Bonaparte, which is something that comes around once every Haley’s Comet.
