Nimrod MR.2 XV232 - Nimrod Preservation Group by stu norris

“Cold War on Five Continents” by Al McCoy is a brilliant book. REad my review here:

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Definitely go out, buy the book and read it.

ALT

Bradley AAWS-H, one of the prototype tank destroyers, developed by Vought to carry the LOSAT hypersonic kinetic energy missiles.

Inside the CIA’s Psychic Warfare Program

Here’s What the Records Show

We spent millions of dollars proving if the human mind could be used as a weapon.Now imagine walking into a Cold War research facility and finding soldiers staring at a goat.

Not as a joke. Not as hazing. Not for training in animal husbandry.

But because someone believed that focused intention might stop its heart.

It sounds absurd. It feels like satire. And yet…

Inside the CIA’s Psychic Warfare Program

The story of Unit 731 isn’t just about WWII — it’s about what happened after.

Justice was expected.
Instead, data was traded.

Was it strategy… or moral failure?

The Cold War wasn’t just about missiles and spies. It was also about perception.

When ISKCON expanded in 1970s America, intelligence culture was at its peak. Was scrutiny inevitable? Or misunderstood?

Exploring documented history — not conspiracy.

It is a nowadays mostly unknown fact, that the small Irish Air Corps also operated a small number of British Hawker Hurricanes in different versions.

The relations between the two neighbors were in 1939/40 extremely tense. There was not only the question about the partition of Ireland and especially the status of British controlled Nothern Ireland, but also British fears about a German invasion of Ireland. Or even a change to Axis side of Ireland. Great Britain delivered some older aircraft types to Ireland during that time, but the major mistrust and political tensions between the two nations de facto stopped any further deliveries from 1940 on. The Irish gouverment even feared a British Invasion for some time. This tense situation changed from 1941/42 on, at least in parts. Even if there were plans from Churchills side to occupy parts of Ireland, to make sure that the country would remain neutral and became no “launching pad” for any German military action against the British islands.

During these in parts tense years, Ireland confiscated several British aircraft which ended in Irish airspace cause of bad weather conditions or navigation errors. The pilots and crews were interned for a short time and then returned to the UK, but the Irish Air Corps kept the aircraft. Including some Hawker Hurricane MK I.

The first directly delivered British “Hurricanes” arrived in Ireland mid of 1943. In total 4 MK I were delivered to the Irish Air Corps, followed by 3 more in late 1943 and 4 in early 1944. In early 1945 Great Britain finally delivered also some more modern MK IIs. But just six. It were the last British aircraft which were delivered by Great Britain as part of British support for the defense of Ireland. The Irish Air Corps operated most of its “Hurricanes” until 1947.

Massive antenna system at Navy’s former Skaggs Island station.

This California Marsh Once Spied on the Soviet Navy

A top-secret military spy station operated for decades just west of Vallejo, Calif., staffed by Navy cryptologists who could intercept Soviet radio communications from thousands of miles away. Now hardly any trace of the Skaggs Island base remains and the site off State Route 37, on the north edge of San Pablo Bay, has returned to marshland.

Secretive, secure and self-contained, the U.S Naval Security Group Activity station handled communications and intelligence-gathering work for the Navy and the National Security Agency. The base, located about 25 straight-line miles from San Francisco on 3,310 acres purchased by the Navy in 1941, operated through World War II and the Cold War and was finally decommissioned in 1993.

The station’s huge Wullenweber antenna system, nicknamed the “elephant cage,” was similar to several other systems operated by the U.S. military throughout the Pacific. With a range of several thousand miles, “basically there was no corner of the Pacific Ocean that could not be listened to,” according to an Engineering Radio magazine article.

The antenna system looked like a series of tall, circular wire fences reaching several stories in height. The Skaggs Island station’s mission was to monitor Soviet naval activity throughout the North Pacific. Besides the high-tech eavesdropping, members of the station’s “Classic Bullseye” division were able to pinpoint locations of Russian surface ships and submarines.

“For us, being able to track their fleet was a requirement to protect the country against a surprise,” U.S. naval analyst, physicist and author Norman Friedman said in a 2014 San Diego Union-Tribune article. “Now that most people you don’t like use satellite communications, this is not the way to do it.”

The Soviets had a similar system, known as Krug, during the Cold War. Both the U.S. and Russia got the initial technology from Germany after World War II.

Monitoring by the Skaggs Island station went beyond the Cold War era. In American Cryptology During the Cold War, 1945-1989, author Thomas R. Johnson states that the base was concentrating on Soviet naval communications in 1945 and since 1944 had been training personnel to be Russian linguists – despite the official designation of the USSR as an ally at the time. Johnson’s book had been designated top secret but was approved for release by the NSA in 2007.

“Even though they were an ally they were not treated as a normal ally. They had spies all over the United States at pretty high levels. It started during World War II and continued for many years,” says cryptology historian Ralph Simpson, scheduled to discuss “Crypto Wars” Aug. 13 at Mare Island as part of the Mare Island Historic Park Foundation’s speaker series.

The Skaggs Island base, with a staff of up to 400, consisted of 150 buildings that housed administrative offices, gatehouses, a bowling alley, movie theater, library, gymnasium, chapel, bar and exchange, post office, public works department, power plant, fire station, hobby shop, barracks and rows of single-story homes. Also on the grounds were a pool, tennis courts, baseball field, gas station and a 125-foot-tall water tower visible for miles. A gray Navy bus brought children of base personnel to and from schools in nearby Sonoma.

Over the years, the Navy declined to comment publicly on the important cryptographic activity on the base. Its stated purpose was to serve as a communications relay center for the Pacific Fleet and beyond, assist with any large-scale search and rescue operations off the Pacific Coast, and conduct communications-related research.

After the station was closed in 1993, local police and fire departments used some buildings for training purposes. So did Navy SEALS, getting their forced-entry “breacher” qualifications by blowing holes in walls. The abandoned base also was targeted by vandals who ignored no-trespassing signs and broke windows, battered open doors and sprayed walls of many buildings with graffiti. There also were reports of methamphetamine labs at the site.

In a 2014 San Francisco Estuary magazine article, Wendy Eliot of the Sonoma Land Trust described Skaggs Island as “a scary place for a while. It was the Wild West, with lots of things happening under cover of darkness.” By 2013 all of the remaining, dilapidated structures were demolished.

Skaggs Island was part of 10,000 acres of marshland between Vallejo and Novato that in 1878 became the property of U.S. Sen. John Percival Jones of Nevada, a British immigrant who became a wealthy Comstock Lode silver baron. The island, surrounded by a network of four narrow sloughs, was first called Camp 6, one of a string of work camps.

Jones hired Chinese laborers, jobless following completion of the Central Pacific Railroad project, to hand-build levees and drainage ditches. It was slow going, and clamshell dredgers and tractors eventually were used to complete the muddy work. According to one story, recounted by Arthur Dawson in his Sonoma Baylands Oral History Project, one of the tractors sank into the mud and disappeared. By the 1920s the land several feet below sea level was finally protected by dykes and planted in salt-tolerant oat hay.

Skaggs Island was named after Safeway stores founder Marion Barton Skaggs who invested in the area during the Great Depression. The Navy paid Skaggs $53 an acre for three-quarters of the 4,390-acre island in 1941, but used only 60 acres for its operations. Most of the island remained farmland, with private ownership of the acreage not acquired by the Navy and with much of the Navy land leased out.

In 2011, Skaggs Island became part of the extensive San Pablo Bay National Wildlife Refuge, which was created in 1974 to protect migratory shorebirds and other waterfowl, and some endangered or threatened species of birds and mice. The transfer met the goals of environmentalists intent on restoring wetlands that had been wiped out through development over the years.

Brendan Riley

First Published July 14,2023

Vallejo and other Solano County communities are treasure troves of early-day California history. My Solano Chronicles column, running every other Sunday, highlights various aspects of that history. If you have local stories or photos to share, email me at genoans@gmail.com or message me on Facebook.

Current photo shows circular outline of the former antenna location.

Skaggs Island map.

Aerial photo shows Navy’s Skaggs Island station prior to its demolition.

Abandoned homes, now torn down, at Navy’s Skaggs Island station.

Vallejo Times-Herald photo shows Skaggs Island water tower being pulled down by a tractor in 2010.

Carrier based aircraft became to one of the most important and war decisive aspects of naval warfare during World War 2. Aircraft carriers and it`s air wings changed the way how the war was fought on the seas from the early 1940s on. They de facto ended the long era of massive, powerful and heavily armed warships, which dominated the seas for several decades.

As the USN started to enlarge its carrier fleet in a massive way after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the question came up how to train future Navy pilots in a kind of safe but effective envoirement for carrier based operations. A solution came from within the Navy. Why not to modify some of the large luxury vessels which were used on the Great Lakes in the North of the US? This large cruise ships were used to transport tourists and locals on the Great Lakes between the US and Canada. The idea became reality in late 1941 as the Navy High Command saw its advantages. The Great Lakes were a safe envoirement, with a nearby US Navy base at Chicago and the modification of some of the Great Lakes cruisers were a much more efficent solution as to use “real” aircraft carriers and to train the pilots directly on open seas.

In total three such cruise ships were modified and re-built to aircraft carriers. The USS “Wolverine” (Former cruise ship “Seeandbee”), the USS “Sable (Visible on these photos and former cruise ship "Greater Buffalo) and the USS "Wilmette” (Former cruise ship “SS Eastland”). They got a flight deck, additional installations, the “island” which housed the command deck and dozens of other modifications which made them to “real” small aircraft carriers. The flight deck of these modified ships were two thirds of the lenght of one of the “real” large USN aircraft carriers.

USS “Sable”, which is visible on these photos, entered USN service on the Great Lakes in early 1942 and became to one of the most important training elements for the USN during the war. Thousands of USN pilots conducted their first take offs and landings on a carrier on her flight deck. The photos show the use of F6F “Hellcats”, TBF “Avenger” torpedo bomber and SNJ-5 “Texan” trainer aircraft (SNJ-5 was the Navy designation for the T-6 “Texan trainer) on her flight deck.

As the USS "Sable” left active USN service in November 1945 she trained over 6000 pilots, including later US President George H.W. Bush and over 50.000 landings and take offs were conducted on her deck.

The use of these three modified Great Lake cruise ships is surely a more unknown aspect of US Naval Warfare during World War 2. But it was a absolutely important one.

❤️‍🩹I really like this one

Honduras was during the early 1980s a kind of “frontline” state for the US. Located in a strategically important position between two local hot spots of the Cold War in Central America, El Salvador and Nicaragua, it changed during the 1980s to one of the most important Allies for the US in the region. The photos showing OA-37B “Dragonfly” and Cessna O-2 “Skymaster” of the 169th Tactical Air Support squadron of the Illinois Air National Guard. The aircraft were part of the joint Honduran - US exercise “Granadero I” in May 1984.

The early 1980s saw an increasement of US military activity in Central America, especially in Honduras, which became to the most important US forwarded location for their secret war in the region. The country became a kind of “safe haven” for the CIA financed and supported paramilitary groups and organizations which fought against the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. Better known under the umbrella term “Contras”. But the US coordinated from Honduras also most of their military and covert actions in El Salvador.

The A-37 was a interesting example how a small and light aircraft, developed by the famous aviation company Cessna as a twin seat jet engined trainer, evolved during the years to a powerful and effective ground support aircraft. The increasement of smaller and limited low intensity conflicts from the late 1950s on and especially the US involvement in South East Asia led to the need for light but heavily armed aircraft types which were able to operate from difficult terrain and conditions. COIN (Counterinsurgency) aircraft became the common and popular term for such small but specialized aircraft.

Tests of the US Air Force during the early 1960s with two T-37 trainer aircraft, led to the decision for a whole test program with modified T-37 aircraft in South East Asia. For this new role, Cessna added some modifications to the aircraft. They got a strenghtened fuselage and wings, extra fuel tanks, a new more powerful engine, radio equipment, hard points and a GAU 2B/A 7,62 mm Gatling Gun. Cessna modified 25, now as A-37 designated aircraft, which went under program “Combat Dragon” in late 1967 to South Vietnam. The results were extremely succesfull and the aircraft got quickly the nickname “Super Tweet” by its crews. Its official nickname was “Dragonfly”.

The “B” version, also visible on the photos, got again a new more powerful engine as Cessna made the “B” models larger and heavier. Over 500 were manufactured and some of them were forwarded during the 1980s to Air National Guard units and became OA-37B`s, specialized on the FAC role (Forward Air Controller).

Also the Honduran Air Force operated 15 of them.

The British Hawker Fury was one of the last powerful piston engined aircraft in use by several different Air Forces during the 1940s and early 1950s. It belonged to the last row of such aircraft which were developed, until jet engined aircraft designs nearly completely replaced them. A Naval version, the Hawker Sea Fury, even entered service several years after Wars end. The Fleet Air Arm of the Royal Navy got their first Sea Furys in 1948. But not only the Royal Navy operated this type. Also the Royal Canadian Navy.

It is nowadays nearly completely forgotten that also Canada operated aircraft carriers back in the days. To equip this carrier, they bought 74 Hawker Sea Furys of the version FB.11, specialized for ground attack missions in 1948. It got additional armor around the cockpit section and several hardpoints under the wings, which made it possible to carry a variety of armament like bombs, napalm canisters and unguided rockets. The FB.11 version was also able to use rocket boosters for the take off process.

The Canadian Sea Furys entered service at No. 803 and No. 883 Squadron of the Royal Canadian Navy. They operated from Naval bases on land but also from the Canadian aircraft carrier HMCS “Magnificent”. This carrier was a former Royal Navy carrier of the “Majestic” class and entered Royal Canadian service during the same year as the Sea Furys. It remained in active service until 1957 and was then replaced by a more modern carrier. The Sea Furys were retired one year earlier. Surely two interesting facts. That Canada operated the Sea Fury and aircraft carriers.

Monroe Doctrine: The Controversial Cornerstone of US Foreign Policy

The Monroe Doctrine, a significant piece of United States foreign policy, was first articulated by President James Monroe in 1823, and it essentially warns the powers of Europe from meddling in the affairs of the Western Hemisphere, claimed by the US as its own sphere of influence. Initially, the doctrine was meant to oppose European colonialism while simultaneously asserting the US as a rising regional power. By the turn of the 20th century, it had taken on a new meaning and was often used as justification for the ‘policing’ of Latin America by the US. Since its inception, the Monroe Doctrine has routinely been invoked to justify various US foreign policy positions and remains relevant today.

Origins

Towards the end of the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815), a wave of revolutions swept across Latin America. Spain had been ravaged by the armies of Napoleon I (reign 1804-1814; 1815) and could barely afford to keep control over its colonial empire in the Americas, a weakness that liberty-seeking revolutionaries managed to exploit. Under the leadership of men like Simón Bolívar (1783-1830) and José de San Martín (1778-1850), the revolutionaries cast off the shackles of Spanish colonial rule and established independent republics based on the ideals of the Enlightenment. But even then, with the taste of victory still on their lips, it was clear that these republics’ grasp on independence was tenuous at best. As the great European powers rallied and rebuilt after the downfall of Napoleon, it was clear that it would be only a matter of time before they turned their imperialist eyes back West, toward the lost colonies of the Americas.

Indeed, plans to recolonize the New World were already materializing in the Old. Austria, Prussia, and Russia – three of the victors in the wars against Napoleon – sought to cleanse the world of radical Enlightenment ideals and restore the kind of absolute monarchism that had been the status quo before the French Revolution (1789-1799) had turned the world upside down. These empires formed a coalition called the Holy Alliance and vowed, among other things, to return the Bourbon Dynasty to the Spanish throne and resubjugate the Latin American peoples to Spanish domination. Naturally, this worried the fledgling republics, which knew that they could do little to resist a European incursion upon their shores. Fortunately, there seemed to be two stronger nations that opposed the Holy Alliance and might be able to help.

The first of these potential allies was Great Britain, then the foremost world power. A constitutional monarchy, Britain was ideologically opposed to the absolutist empires of the Holy Alliance. Moreover, the British had spent years cultivating a lucrative market for trade in South America and would be loath to see these eager customers fall back under Spanish rule. The other nation, of course, was the United States. Another republic founded on Enlightenment ideals, the US had won its own independence barely half a century earlier and would not stand to see absolutism take root in its own backyard. Less altruistically, the US dreamt of expanding its own empire ever westward – an “empire of liberty” as Thomas Jefferson once put it – which would eventually put it at odds with Russia, which had long laid claim to the Pacific Coast, and a post-Napoleonic France, which was eyeing its own return to the Americas. If the US could not prevent European recolonization, it may as well kiss its own imperialist dreams goodbye.

Seeing as both Britain and the US opposed the Holy Alliance’s intervention in Latin America, it seemed sensible for them to make common cause. Indeed, British Foreign Minister George Canning offered to do exactly that and proposed that the two nations issue a joint statement warning the Holy Alliance to stay out of the Americas. At first, US President James Monroe (served 1817-1825) thought this was a good idea, but he was soon dissuaded by his secretary of state, John Quincy Adams (1767-1848). A shrewd diplomat, Adams understood that by making a joint statement, the US would be perceived as merely a junior partner doing the bidding of Britain. But if the US were to issue a statement on its own, it would be asserting its authority in the Western Hemisphere and would be claiming the status of a rising power. “It would be more…dignified,” Adams wrote, “to avow our principles explicitly to Russia and France then to come in as a cockboat in the wake of the British man-of-war” (quoted in Crandall & Crandall). Monroe, ultimately, agreed.

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⇒ Monroe Doctrine: The Controversial Cornerstone of US Foreign Policy

In the heat of the Cold War, one small dog bridged a giant divide 🐕🚀 Discover how Soviet space pup Albina and her puppy Pushinka went from secret missions to playing on the White House lawn ⬇️ https://hyperlocalnews.website/wiki_en/albina-and-pushinka-the-space-dog-who-gave-a.html

A MIG-23MLA of the Soviet Air Defense Forces “escorted” a US EP-3E “ARIES II” electronic warfare and reconaissance aircraft over the Baltic Sea. The photo was made during the early 1980s. The EP-3E was a highly specialized and modified version of the maritime long range reconaissance P-3 “Orion”. Fully equipped with state of the art electronics and surveillance equipment, it should gather intelligence through SIGINT, ELINT and COMINT. For this task areas, the aircraft operated a crew of 24, including Officers, Maintance personel and operators for the electronical equipment.

Note the armament of the MIG-23. A R-60M IR AAM on a hardpoint under the fuselage and a R-24R AAM with a SARH (Semi Active Radar Homing) seeker on the launcher under the inner wing. The “MLD” version of the MIG-23 was the first, which was able to operate the R-24 AAM.

F9F-8 “Cougars” of Air Development Squadron 5 (VX-5 “Vampires”) conducted some tests with the LABS (Low Altitude Bombing System) at Naval Air Facility, China Lake, California in 1956. The bomb type which was used during the tests, was a dummy version of the US MK-12 Nuclear Bomb.

The “real” MK-12 had a explosive power of 14 kilotons and was one of the first nuclear weapons specifically developed and designed for the use by small fighter bomber jet aircraft. The first row of tactical weapons, which was used by the USAF but also USN. It entered service mid of the 1950s, during a time as the tensions between the two superpowers calmed down. At least for a moment. Both, USAF and USN, introduced during the 1950s new tactics, weapons and aircraft. Large parts of their structures were changed or improved. The Nuclear monopol, which was claimed by the USAF, especially SAC, ended as also the USN specialized on the use of Nuclear Weapons by carrier based aircraft. Their main argument was that such aircraft were much more flexible and could be moved and deployed faster to hot spots all around the world. Especially compared to SAC`s massive bombers.

It were USN aircraft like the F9F “Cougar”, a heavily improved version of the iconic F9F “Panther”, which should be used for this new nuclear role of the USN during the 1950s. The “Cougar” was in fact a swept winged, modified version of the regular “Panther”. Beside the change of the wing design, it included a enlarged fuselage, improved avionics, much more fuel capacity and a more powerful engine.

The first production version of the “Cougar”, designated F9F-5, entered USN service in late 1952. The version which is visible on these photos was the last production version, designated F9F-8. It included a again enlarged and strenghtened fuselage, additional fuel capacity and a change of the engine. This time from the J48-P-8 to the improved versions J48-P-8A and C. Later production batches got also the ability to operate the new “Sidewinder” AAM.

The aircraft on both photos belonged to a small number of specially modified “Cougars” which were able to operate Nuclear Weapons. Designated the F9F-8B. They were equipped with the LABS system which included a kind of small mechanical computer system and a additional cockpit instrument, called the “dive and roll indicator”. The system worked as following.

The pilot chose from a prepared set of maps a so called “initial point” close to the main target, for example a Soviet airfield in East Germany. After take off, he navigated to the target area and as soon as the crossed the “initial point”, he activated the LABS system. The system calculated the release point and the pilot focused on the indicator instrument. This instrument included a vertical and horizontal needle. The main task of the pilot was to keep both needles centered, until the LABS system automatically released the bomb. After it was released, the pilot directed his aircraft away from the target area. This system, which in fact “tossed” the bomb, gave the pilot enough time to reach a distance which would not threaten the aircraft and the life of the pilot.

Balkan Migrant Route Contact Numbers, Abandoned Željava Secret Military Aerodrome, Border of Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, 2025.

Forest Clearing and Track Marking the Border between Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, Above the Abandoned Željava Military Aerodrome, 2025.

A major crossing point on the Balkan migrant route. 

The CIA’s Secret Art Plot | How Abstract Painting Became a Cold War Weapon | Dim Eye Show

Honestly, this video on how abstract painting became a Cold War weapon is wild. So much hidden history.