Operation Torch, WWII turning point

Operation Torch, the North African landings was a fantastic operation.  New green American troops boarded ship in Norfolk Virginia, steamed across the U boat infested South Atlantic, landed on beaches all around North Africa, and with General Patton in command, smashed the Nazi forces.  We caught the Germans in between the British 8th army coming west from Egypt, and the Americans coming east from Casablanca.  Eventually the Germans surrendered and we took 250,000 prisoners, nearly as many as the Russians took at Stalingrad a few months earlier.
   Torch only happened because of Winston Churchill.  Right after Pearl Harbor the US Joint Chiefs of Staff agreed on "Germany First" as strategy and it was obvious that only a huge army landed as close to Germany as possible (Northern France) would do the job.  The Chiefs wanted to concentrate everything on building up the huge army needed, which would take a couple of years, and not engage in wasteful side shows.  In short ask the entire country to stand around, enduring war time shortages and hardships, while nothing much happened. 
   Churchill recognized that the Allies had to do something, anything would do, right now, in 1942, in order to maintain domestic support, both in Britain and in the US, for the war.  Torch was doable, in 1942.  The Germans didn't have all that many troops in North Africa, and  the Allied navies were strong enough to hold off the U boats and lay serious naval gunfire on anything ashore that was giving trouble.  Churchill managed to talk Franklin Roosevelt around to his way of thinking.  Roosevelt turned around and ordered the US Joint Chiefs to do North Africa and do it now, and no quibbling. 
   After crushing German resistance in North Africa, one thing led to another.  Sicily was not that far away and so it was invaded next.  And with Sicily in hand, Italy was the obvious next step.   That didn't work out as well as we had hoped but it gave a lot of green troops some combat experience before doing D-day in 1944. 

I remember the Asian Flu of 1957

I was in boarding school  (10th grade) at the time.  Every kid in the school caught it.  Fortunately we didn't all catch it at once.  The first victims were recovering by the time the last victims caught it.  Things were so tight you had to show a temperature over 100F to get admitted to the infirmary.  My room mate and I spent several low key days in our dorm room, telling stories, reading Playboy, and sipping hard cider.  Back then the farmers sold unpasteurized apple cider.  Put a gallon jug of it in your closet, wait 4 maybe 5 days and it became nice fizzy hard cider.  Not too much of a kick to it, but better than nothing.  You did have to take care to loosen the cap, lest fermentation generate enough CO2 pressure to burst the jug.  That happened to one kid, made one helova mess in his closet. 
   But, they kept playing baseball, going to school, running the trains.  No runs on toilet paper, or anything else.  Today we panic (largely egged on by the media who want to sell papers and attract viewers) and we are shutting down the entire country. 

So how bad is Corona virus a week later

It's got a new name COVID-19.  Death rate is now worse, about 2 or 3 % compared to 0.5% last week.  Tests are getting out in the field and that has raised the number of cases in the US to 3 thousand or so, a big up since last week where it was 244.  That's probably the result of testing.  A week ago the tests were not out there, and we were not calling COVID-19 infection unless we had tested for it.  Now that we have more tests, we are finding more cases.  So far New Hampshire is doing OK, only 6 cases so far.
    Apparently people under 50 can mostly shake it off, death rate for them is way less than 1%.  For old fogies like myself, the death rate can be as bad as 10%.  Youngest son called today and urged me to be careful.  If things keep getting worse, they may cancel Senate sessions down in Concord, at which point I can just sit back, relax, and  work on my HO train layout here at the house.  My old school has just canceled Alumni Day coming up in May.  Too bad, I was going, it would have been my 60th high school reunion. 

So how bad is that Corona Virus?

Hard to tell.  Today's TV news listed 244 known cases in the US with 12 deaths.  That yields a death rate of 0.5%.  That may change.  In patients, the Corona virus looks like plain old flu.  The only way to tell that the patient has Corona virus is a blood test, which up until the other day was only done by CDC in Atlanta.  Only patients with recent travel to China or other hot spots, or had contact with other Corona virus cases got tested.  Those 244 know cases represent the few patients who have been tested.  That's getting fixed, as I write this.  As of maybe Monday test kits will be widely distributed, and the number of tests will soar.  Expect the number of cases to climb, a lot.  That will reduce the computed death rate, a lot. 
   My sources tell me that the test coming out is pretty good at detecting Corona, but it also gives positives for a number of other common viruses (virii).  These false positives will further increase the number of cases, again reducing the death rate.  Some experts expect the final death rate for Corona will come out lower than for plain old ordinary flu. 
   The TV news has been yammering about Corona cases popping up in people with no travel and no contact with known Corona virus patients.  A likely explanation is some people are mostly immune to Corona and although infected, they don't show symptoms, and don't feel bad.  So they are out there, going about their business.  But they can infect other people.  I expect wide spread testing will find these people (if they exist). 
   And, based on the mere 244 cases that we know about today, we have been doing a pretty fair job keeping Corona virus out of the US.  The Democrats ought to get off Trump's case.  On the evidence he is doing a pretty good job keeping Corona out of the country.

I wonder where their voters will go. The Bern? Uncle Joe?

Been some thinning out over in the Democrat party.  Buttigieg, Steyer, and Klobuchar  have all thrown in the towel.  They all had some voter support.  Those voters will now move over to one of the surviving Democrat contenders.  Where will they go and are there enough of 'em to make a difference on Super Tuesday, which is upon us, polls ought to open in about four hours.  I'd expect these freshly orphaned voters would go for either The Bern, or Uncle Joe.  Somehow Mike Bloomberg doesn't look all that attractive.  Elizabeth Warren is coming from the same place as The Bern but she doesn't look as electable as The Bern.  There must be a couple of others still in the race but I cannot think of their names right now.

USAF tanker boodoggle[s]

Air refueling tankers are a range extender.  The KC 135's were purchased way back during the Eisenhower administration to refuel the B-52's.  The B-52's and their nuclear weapons were kept on US stateside bases for security reasons.  To bomb Moscow, the B-52s would be refueled somewhere over Europe before pressing on to Moscow.  And refueled a second time on the way back.  In Viet Nam the KC135s refueled our F105s just before they penetrated North Viet Nam air defenses, and a second time on the way home.  Without the tankers, the Thuds simply could not reach Hanoi from our bases in Thailand.  I expect that we will need the tankers to strike just about any foe we may encounter. 
   USAF has been trying to buy a new tanker to replace the 60-70 year old KC135s.  The KC135 is a good plane but 60-70 years of hard flying is asking a lot from it.  It's time for a new one.  And, a new tanker is a straight forward job, pick a jet liner in mass production for civil airlines.  Buy a bunch of 'em, take out the seats and the galley, put in fuel tanks and a refueling boom.  After  couple of bidding catastrophes, USAF managed to get a contract with Boeing to do just that.  They would take a Boeing 757 or 767 (can't remember which) and call it KC-46.  Except, USAF (or perhaps Boeing, they love gold plate as much as anyone)  speced a fancy TV system to allow the boom operator to sit up front with the rest of the crew and steer the boom out to meet the customer aircraft by TV.  The TV system has been unsatisfactory, (and unacceptable to USAF).  Last year they bitched about low contrast when the camera was looking into the sun.  This year they are bitching about "the rubber sheet effect" some kind of distortion of the image.  The Air Force is refusing to fly the plane.  Boeing is delivering them, USAF is withholding $8 or $12 million from the price of each KC46 until the TV system is satisfactory.  Aviation Week has a big color photo of  five finished KC46's parked on the ramp, canvas covers over the engines to keep out the rain. 
   This entire boondoggle could have been avoided by putting the boom operator in the tail and giving him a nice big window, glass or plexiglas, no moving parts, no contrast or "rubber sheet" distortion.  This worked just fine on the old KC135, and the much newer KC10.  But that was beyond USAF and Boeing, so we have Boeing loosing $8-$12 mil per aircraft, and they are just cluttering up a ramp somewhere, not flying missions.  Aviation Week has the story in the 24 Feb issue.

Cannon Mountain Ski Weather

Sob.  No snow all night.  All we got was and inch maybe an inch and a half from yesterday.  It helps, mountain ought to be quite skiable.  But we were anticipating a lot more snow.