Air and Space: For World War II Pilots, the Race to Be an Ace Sometimes Turned Deadly

Air and Space: For World War II Pilots, the Race to Be an Ace Sometimes Turned Deadly

By John R. Bruning

During the end of World War II, the US was hopelessly outmatched by Japan in the air. The P-39 was nothing against the Japanese Zero. The Air Force had been chased out of the Philippines and New Guinea. But help was on the way. The new P-38 would eventually turn the tide of the war. The Japanese were running out of provisions and couldn't support their troops in New Guinea. With the new planes, the US Air Force began a heated Race of Aces.

    The Fifth Air Force was struggling to build an airstrip in a wet part of the Philippines, when their general gave them a challenge. Beat WWI ace Rickenbacker's kill score of 26. The top two pilots, Bong and McGuire, came out on top. Bong eventually ended up with 40, topping British pilot Johnnie Johnson. McGuire was upset because Bong achieved his final kill by violating a fundamental rule of an Air Force division. Teamwork. He spotted a plane and killed it by himself without any communication.

    Soon after, McGuire was removed from field duty because the army couldn't send Bong home with full honors only to have McGuire top him. He enlisted his friends to help on an ill fated mission to be the top ace. It was cloudy, and there hadn't been an enemy plane for weeks. McGuire and his squadron went out to a Japanese base and found a Japanese Zero returning from a scouting mission. Unfortunately, they had traveled far to get there, and had extra fuel tanks. As McGuire tried to bank sharply with 2000 pounds of extra weight, he spiraled out, crashing. The Race of Aces was over.

TedEd: Will there ever be a mile-high skyscraper?

A TedEd by Stefan Al

In 1956, Frank Lloyd Wright came up with a radical idea. He proposed building a mile-high tower. Critics laughed at him, saying the building would collapse under its own weight and that elevator waits would take forever. But today, we are getting closer and closer to his idea. The main difficulty was that a mile-high tower would have to handle an extreme amount of force. The higher a building goes, the more pressure is on it because the upper levels exert force on the lower ones. In ancient history, architects solved this problem by having large bases that support smaller uppers. Today, we have stronger materials like concrete that can avoid these inconvenient shapes. They are also reinforced with steel bars to make them stronger. Buildings also have steel supports called piles to prevent them from sinking or leaning over. They create friction against the ground to counteract the force of gravity. There is also the wind to contend with, which can be reduced by aerodynamic design and wind frames to divert the wind to the ground. Still, many buildings shake back and forth, so they employ a counterweight, called a tune mass damper, which oscillates with the building, absorbs the energy, and reduces shaking. The last issue is with moving through the building. Elevators must be fast enough to move people around the building. Elevators today are much faster and have complex algorithms to reduce clogging, so this has largely been mitigated. And in the future, magnetic suspension could make them even faster. It may just be a matter of time until Wright's fantasy becomes reality.