An Interesting Historical Event, Worthy of Attention

When a President signs a death sentence, it seems an event worthy of attention. Read this from a Charter news thingy. (Monday, July 28, 2008 11:38 PM EDT The Associated Press By DEB RIECHMANN Associated Press Writer)

This April 1988 picture shows Ronald A. Gray in handcuffs and chains, escorted by military police leaving a Fort Bragg, N.C. courtroom. President Bush on Monday, July 28, 2008 approved the execution of the Army private, the first time in over a half-century that a president has affirmed a death sentence for a member of the U.S. military. Gray was assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg. (AP Photo/The Fayetteville Observer, Marcus Castro)
Bush OKs execution of Army death row prisonerMonday, July 28, 2008 11:38 PM EDT The Associated Press By DEB RIECHMANN Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Bush on Monday approved the execution of an Army private, the first time in over a half-century that a president has affirmed a death sentence for a member of the U.S. military.
With his signature from the Oval Office, Bush said yes to the military's request to execute Ronald A. Gray, the White House confirmed. Gray had had been convicted in connection with a spree of four murders and eight rapes in the Fayetteville, N.C., area over eight months in the late 1980s while stationed at Fort Bragg.
"While approving a sentence of death for a member of our armed services is a serious and difficult decision for a commander in chief, the president believes the facts of this case leave no doubt that the sentence is just and warranted," White House press secretary Dana Perino said.
In the military courts, "Private Gray was convicted of committing brutal crimes, including two murders, an attempted murder and three rapes. The victims included a civilian and two members of the Army. ... The president's thoughts and prayers are with the victims of these heinous crimes and their families and all others affected."
Unlike in the civilian courts, a member of the U.S. armed forces cannot be executed until the president approves the death sentence. Gray has been on death row at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., since April 1988.
Members of the U.S. military have been executed throughout history, but just 10 have been executed by presidential approval since 1951 when the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the military's modern-day legal system, was enacted into law.
President Kennedy was the last president to stare down this life-or-death decision. On Feb. 12, 1962, Kennedy commuted the death sentence of Jimmie Henderson, a Navy seaman, to confinement for life.
President Eisenhower was the last president to approve a military execution. In 1957, he approved the execution of John Bennett, an Army private convicted of raping and attempting to kill an 11-year-old Austrian girl. He was hanged in 1961.
The death penalty was outlawed between 1972 and 1984, when President Reagan reinstated it.
Gray was held responsible for the crimes committed between April 1986 and January 1987 in both the civilian and military justice systems.
In civilian courts in North Carolina, Gray pleaded guilty to two murders and five rapes and was sentenced to three consecutive and five concurrent life terms.
He then was tried by general court-martial at the Army's Fort Bragg. In April 1988, the court-martial convicted Gray of two murders, an attempted murder and three rapes. He was unanimously sentenced to death.
The court-martial panel convicted Gray of:
—Raping and killing Army Pvt. Laura Lee Vickery-Clay of Fayetteville on Dec. 15, 1986. She was shot four times with a .22-caliber pistol that Gray confessed to stealing. She suffered blunt force trauma over much of her body.
—Raping and killing Kimberly Ann Ruggles, a civilian cab driver in Fayetteville. She was bound, gagged, stabbed repeatedly, and had bruises and lacerations on her face. Her body was found on the base.
—Raping, robbing and attempting to kill Army Pvt. Mary Ann Lang Nameth in her barracks at Fort Bragg on Jan. 3, 1987. She testified against Gray during the court-martial and identified him as her assailant. Gray raped her and stabbed her several times in the neck and side. Nameth suffered a laceration of the trachea and a collapsed or punctured lung.
The six-member court-martial panel returned its unanimous verdict after about two hours of deliberations. The panel also reduced Gray from Spec. 4 to private, forfeited all his pay and ordered him to be dishonorably discharged from the Army.
Gray has appealed his case through the Army Court of Criminal Appeals (then known as the U.S. Army Court of Military Review) and the Court of Appeals for the Armed Services. In 2001, the Supreme Court declined to hear the case.
Silas DeRoma, who left active duty in 1999, was one of several military attorneys who represented Gray on appeal.
"It's disappointing news, as you can imagine," said DeRoma, who now works as a regulatory attorney in Honolulu for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. He said the basis for some of Gray's appeals focused on the prisoner's mental competency and his representation at trial.
Bush got the secretary of the Army's recommendation to approve Gray's death sentence in late 2005. Since then, it's been under review by the Bush administration, including the White House legal counsel.
Complicating the administration's deliberation was a case under review this year by the Supreme Court.
The court ruled in April to uphold the most common method of capital punishment used across the United States. The justices said the three-drug mix of lethal-injection drugs used by Kentucky and most other states does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment. The ruling in the case of Baze v. Rees cleared the way for a resumption of executions nationwide.
It was unclear where Gray would be executed. Military executions are handled by the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
Bush's decision, however, is not likely the end of Gray's legal battle. Further litigation is expected and these types of death sentence appeals often take years to resolve.
The military also has asked Bush to authorize the execution of Dwight J. Loving, who has been at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., since 1989 after being convicted of killing two taxicab drivers while he was an Army private at Fort Hood, Texas. But that request is not yet ripe for a presidential decision. The White House declined to discuss the case.

I approve of the death penalty. I disapprove of such heinous crimes as murder and rape. Although I dispise Foucault, I agree that even though there is the possibility of a death sentence it does not stop potential killers and rapists from doing what they do. Punishment must be swift, or it will be of little use. There are those who abhore violence and there are those who desire it, how do we stop them?

Nukes in Minot

I am sure you recall last fall when a B-52 was loaded with 6 nukes and flew across country unaware of their payload's lethality. Well, apparently the boys at Minot were not so hot yet again. This is an interesting blog entry. Seems to me that the base commander would be on the ass of every person assigned to be on their best behavior. Is it just me or wouldn't you want to avoid getting your ass reamed? So, the security forces were apparently playing games on their cell phones while they should have been repelling a simulated attack. Maybe they were texting loved ones about their coming courtsmartials.

Considering the amount of security surrounding nukes in the Cold War, this comedy of errors is evidence of today's kids and their inability to appreciate the gravity of such things. I am not as scared of radiation as I once was (flashback to 1986, when Chernobyl had blown and rain across the US was said to be possibly somewhat radioactive. I was 12, but I recall being aware that it was a bad thing to be soaking in the rain at the time). I have a much better understanding of radiation and blast effects. I am not stupid, I know that any nuclear blast would be a bad thing. I simply am not over-worried about the prospects. Still, these are things best kept in controlled places. Part of the control is a security force that should be on the ball...apparently, we need to work on that. I would expect an all volunteer force to work better than it sometimes does. Maybe it is the group culture that has evolved in the modern US...who knows. I suppose we shall have to wait and see.

Progress is slow

I continue to be interested in wrecks and such, but getting my Master's comes first...however long that takes. I have some good news on the front of Exercise Coulee Crest. I got an e-mail a week or two ago that told me they were backlogged and would send the info I had requested in a few weeks. The person added that there was quite a bit of information on Exercise Coulee Crest, so it may be sent in a couple packets.

I saw a couple jets flying formation yesterday. They landed at Yakima Airport. I called the air museum and asked what they were, since I could not see them clearly. They were definitely NOT A-6 Intruders like we normally see here. The museum folks were not helpful, though. They did not know what the jets were, but they could tell me they were navy jets. Apparently they stopped at the terminal. I still need to call and see if anyone finally figured out what they were. They might have been Hornets since the gentleman I spoke to said he thought they were Tomcats...Tomcats have been retired since September of 2006. So, there youhave it, sorry for the tardiness...

B-47 vs. Milk Man

I sent an info request about Exercise Coulee Crest to the AFHRA. I asked them for any information they could provide on the exercise. I thought they had forgotten about me, but about a week and a half later I got an email saying they had received my letter and that they were working on my request and it might be a few weeks due to their back log. But, the person added, they DO have a lot of information on Exercise Coulee Crest.

I am happy about that.

Now, I present a short summary of a story written by Major John P. Noonan. There was a B-47 on a training flight. The pilot lamented that there was no “weather” to fly through so he could get some IFR time. The Navigator in the nose thought this a tragedy and held the milk carton from his flight lunch up to the periscope sextant port, where he difference in pressure between the cabin and the high altitude of the aircraft sucked the milk out of the carton. It lit upon the windshield and froze. They had a good laugh about it, since now the pilot needed to use IFR to fly the aircraft, but then the milk would not go away. It would be embarrassing and possibly detrimental to some careers were this to get to Brass. They were running low on gas when someone suggested a rain shower. The pilot called control and asked to be vectored THROUGH a rain shower. This was an odd request and piqued controls’ curiosity. He gave them a vector, but the rain quit before they got there. Then he asked again for a nearby shower. This time, they got one. It successfully rinsed off the milk. “thanks approach!”

Approach said, “By the way, why did you want to be vectored INTO a shower?”

“To wash the milk off the windshield approach control.” The pilot said.

“Say again?”

“Milk.”

Approach asked how that happened. Not wanting to say anything over the air that might get them in trouble, he said, “We hit a cow, Approach.”

I got this from the book Boeing B-47 Stratojet: True Stories of the Cold War in the Air by Mark Natola. I recommend it!

Northwest Aircraft News

Good news, Paul Allen has finally made his collection of aircraft more available to the public. Before you had to call ahead and make plans and hope you got the hour right, but now, it is a real museum with regular hours and stuff!!! See it here.

The collection has some REAL RARITIES! A Polikarpov I-16, an Me-109, an Me-163 Komet, an A6M Zero, a Ki-43 Oscar and a Focke Wolfe Fw-190. at one time, his sight showed that he had an Me-262, but it does not show that anymore. The museum is at Paine Field, in Everett, Washington.

Another North West gem: The Storm Birds Project! They built or are building five NEW Me-262 Schwalbes. They took an original and used it to make jigs and patterns. They also got serial numbers from the original builder. Mind you this is a WWII aircraft. German, at that. You cansee the pictures and the site here.

B-24D Down Near Spokane, 41-23648

On July 16, 1942, Pilot 1st Lt. William P. Marsh Jr. flew his B-24D into a mountain some 15 miles southeast of Spokane, Washington. Ceiling was at 5400’, and Marsh flew his B-24 to practice night landings. At about 0300 he took off in B-24D #41-23648 on a local night flight. He flew through a small shower and then, apparently disoriented flew Southeasterly over the homes of Mr. Dean D. Triggs and Mrs. J.J. Wagner. The latter was on the slope of Signal Peak. At this point the aircraft was “dangerously low.” A short time later he hit near the top of the hill.

The aircraft was a total loss. The forces of the crash and “explosion had blown bodies and the plane to pieces.” The copilot was found still strapped in his seat, but was thrown clear of the wreck. The engineer was found in the vicinity of the Bombay with his parachute on and the rip chord pulled. The chute was somewhat spread out on the ground near him. The report indicates that if he did jump, it was at the same time the crash happened and it was obviously too late.

The ceiling was between 4 and 6000’ and the night was very dark with no horizon. The cause was attributed to 85% pilot error, with 5% each to contributing factors of Weather, Terrain, and Darkness.

The report contains several interviews of officers and men at the airfield, in this case Geiger AAF. Questions range from “What was the weather like?” to “What sort of officers were flying that night?” There are a few pictures. One of which shows wreckage of the aircraft and in the distance some sort of body of water. My brother-in-law, who lived in the area, suggested it may be Lake Coeur de Alane, possibly looking down on to Mica Bay.

Most of these reports come from accidents that happened while training. All are evidence of the way training ramped up during WWII and how the entire country became an “Arsenal of Democracy.” If one looks at the subcontracting for a single aircraft, it is easy to see how the whole country was part of the war effort, let alone examining the entire war industry. War is not a “safe” industry and it seems that casualties are expected. The estimated number of losses in aircraft accidents in the continental US is staggering.

Nose Wheel Roulette

I have been reading about military matters for sometime. I enjoy reading about the camaraderie and even the mundane. I have been aware for sometime of the propensity of military men to gamble among themselves. I know that Craps and Poker were popular games in WWII, and Acey-Ducey in WWII submarines. I am also aware of such things as Anchor Pools. The new thing to me was “Nose Wheel Roulette.”

An Anchor Pool was where seamen would pay a small amount and place his name in a square, one of sixty, on a sheet of paper. Before all the squares were filled, a similar sheet with the same amount of squares was filled with numbers, 1-60, randomly dispersed and placed behind it, with a piece of carbon paper between. This way, when the seaman placed his name on the front sheet, his name also transferred to the back sheet, over a number. The military is well known for its paperwork and bureaucracy; every time a flight leaves or a ship anchors someone writes it down on a sheet of paper or log, along with the time and date. This final item is what the Anchor Pool relied on. On a ship’s bridge, the quartermaster of the watch (sometimes other ratings would record logs) would record orders and changes in course or speed. The Quartermaster of the watch would also record the time that the Officer of the Deck (OOD) or other bridge personnel reported to the OOD that the ship was docked, anchored, or in some other way made fast and not moving. He would write the time…down to the minute. It was this last thing that the pool was interested in. If the time that the Anchor was set was at 0904, the guy whose name was in the “04” box got the pool. Gambling is frowned upon in the military, so these pools were kept quiet.

This new item, Nose Wheel Roulette, though, is different…the officers were in on it. The idea was to mark the nose wheel in chalk with numbers corresponding to the number of crewmen aboard. The Pilot was usually one, and the Copilot was usually 2. The airplane type I was reading about was the C-133, so several crewmen could be aboard. Usually the pilots were the only officers aboard. The number closest to the ground at engine shutdown would buy the crew the first round at the bar. The author of this book, Cal Taylor, related that the pilot and Copilot almost always ended up buying rounds. He explained that there was a reason for this. The man in the observer’s hatch (above everyone on the flight deck to aid in taxiing the large aircraft) was usually an enlisted man, as was the man in the “Follow Me” truck. The Pilots apparently never got suspicious of the "forward a little bit more" instructions from ground personnell. (Source: Remembering An Unsung Giant: The Douglas C-133 Cargomaster And Its People, 2005)

Strictly speaking, this has nothing to do with wreckchasing, but I figure it is close enough.

I have not gotten much further with information on Exercise Coulee Crest around here. The Electrician at work thought his father might know about it. He did, and he related the beer experience I wrote in the prior post. He also noted that camps were south of the ridge, close to Moxee. I look forward to anyone with even a little information illuminating me further on this subject.