Postblogging Technology, February 1953, I: The Dyke Breaks

 R_. C_.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada




Dear Father:

As February winds its way to the end, a long overdue installment in these letters. If I have any excuse at all, it is that the end (at long last)  of my school days, and other momentous events, are galloping ever closer, and an intimation has been given in certain quarters that next year will be in London!

As if that were not enough, much of the month has been spent around here in high emotion as the news, mainly of Holland but also of the east of England, comes in. Amidst all the fund raising and the tears, I get the feeling that something more might be going on. Iknow that it is slightly incredible to think that a flood might accomplish what WWII did not, but there seems to be a swell of sentiment in favour of letting a few refugees into the country! (Along with an unkind suggestion in other quarters that the Dutch are among the rare few white enough to qualify.)

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

A Technnological Appendix to Postblogging Technology, January 1953: 488,000lb of Actor-Network Theory

 

So, anyway, from Wikipedia:

 B-52 strikes were an important part of Operation Desert Storm. . . . a flight of B-52Gs flew from Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana, refueled in the air enroute, struck targets in Iraq, and returned home – a journey of 35 hours and 14,000 miles (23,000 km) round trip. It set a record for the longest-distance combat mission, breaking the record previously held by an RAF Vulcan bomber in 1982; however, this was achieved using forward refueling.^[9][194]  . . .  B-52Gs operating from the King Abdullah Air Base at Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, RAF Fairford in the United Kingdom, Morón Air Base, Spain, and the island of Diego Garcia in the British Indian Ocean Territory flew bombing missions over Iraq . . . In August 2007, a B-52H ferrying AGM-129[s] . . . from Minot Air Force Base to Barksdale Air Force Base for dismantling was mistakenly loaded . . . ^[218][219] Four of 18 B-52Hs from Barksdale Air Force Base were retired  . .  at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base.^[220]

B-52H "Ghost Rider" leaving the "bone yard".

 .  . . B-52s are periodically refurbished at USAF maintenance depots such as Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma.^[223]  On 9 April 2016, an undisclosed number of B-52s arrived at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar as part of Operation Inherent Resolve, part of the military intervention against ISIL. T as a platform to test a Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept (HAWC) missile.^{[239] . . .}In late October 2022, ABC News reported that the USAF intended to deploy six B-52s at RAAF Tindal in Australia in the near future, which would include building provisions to handle the aircraft.^[240]

 I'm mainly familiar with Actor-Network Theory from Bruno Latour vanishing up his own butt in Aramis, or, The Love of Technology, and considering that I've never taken a serious crack at the book, that might be grossly unfair. The thing is, this 

"Actor–network theory (ANT) is a theoretical and methodological approach to social theory where everything in the social and natural worlds exists in constantly shifting networks of relationships. It posits that nothing exists outside those relationships. All the factors involved in a social situation are on the same level, and thus there are no external social forces beyond what and how the network participants interact at present. Thus, objects, ideas, processes, and any other relevant factors are seen as just as important in creating social situations as humans"

sounds like the kind of academic bafflegab too easily reduced to the kind of cynical nihilism that makes everything about politics. And then you realise that, never mind never-built new paradigms of subway transit being characters in their own sociological studies, the B-52 doesn't exist. (Except as the mediator of a network of relationships between the natural, technological, and social worlds.)

A Technological Appendix to Postblogging Technology, January 1953: Vae Victis

 

I am not going to apologise for using this wonderful picture of a B-37 taking off with RATO assist again. Newsweek, "the magazine of news significance," has/had two reasons for existing: It was less louche than Time, and it had good pictures. And, yes, I miss Time's back pages, and might well bring it back after Army-McCarthy. The reason I'm using it again is that the B-47 was kind of a goofy plane, and the B-52 is an upsized B-47.
 

On Christmas Eve, 1952, the "Handley Page 80," now christened the Handley Page Victor, was released from the Secret List. And doesn't Correlli Barnett look pretty much how you imagined him? That is the face of a Tory lout. For all that he has been the bete noire of my literary life, today is the first time I have ever looked at his Wikipedia page, and so it is news to me that he did his national service as a sergeant in the Intelligence during the Palestine Emergency. 

It figures. (On the other hand, he was right, and I was wrong, about the Gulf War, and I have warmed to his description of the invidious role of coal mining in the history of the British economy.) Today, we are on about the shots so blatantly fired by E. S. Stafford against the B-52, as he explains that the advantage of the Victor's crescent sweep wing is that straight swept wings "cannot be used except at very low aspect ratio owing to poor stalling qualities, [and] would look like a Christmas tree with engines and fuel tanks hanging from the wing, and the undercarriage, like a child's scooter, taking up all the useful space in the fuselage. Such a design would be impossibly heavy and out of the running as a long range bomber. As the figures show, practicable wing thickness at a high Mach number can be achieved if combined with [compound, or crescent] sweep." (The Engineer, 9 January 1953 [Vol. 195, N. 5059], 57.)

Postblogging Technology, January 1953, II: Outsourcing Leviathan

R_. C_.,

Shaughnessy,

Vancouver,

Canada

Dear Father:

I would comment to the effect that I am feeling much better this week except I would be setting myself up for patronising comments about the "little ladies." I am writing these words absolutely the last for this month, which is what you get when I end up doing both installments together. Which is to say that I have a full month of the last semester of law school under my belt, and get to trade stories about trying to find articling positions with stories about my condition that no-one wants to hear. It is a beautiful mystery they say, and then stick their fingers in their ear. Honestly, we live in a world of treading lightly with fingers in our ears these days. If you can't hear about Communism, you can't be a communist! (Although some say that the fever peaks before it breaks, and when McCarran and McCarthy see Communists deporting Jews, the gears will finally strip. We'll see.)

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie