Blog – Page 3 – Cold War Giants

May 10, 2022May 17, 2022

Pro Football Breaks Color Barrier (1946) the year before Jackie Robinson (1947)

With hundreds of MLB and NFL pro athletes serving in WWII, when the war ended in 1945 there was a plethora of both baseball and football players. A group of wealthy investors started a league to compete with the NFL and called it the All American Football Conference (AAFC).

Paul Brown was an iconic coach from Ohio, the state football originated in and where it had immense popularity. Brown had won a state championship as a High School coach and then a national title with Ohio State. His brand of coaching was unique in a time when coaching was a seasonal endeavor, he worked at it full time. He was an innovator and would change the field of football coaching forever. He required his players to spend as much time in the classroom learning plays, reviewing films, and studying opponents, as they spent on the practice field. He demanded a smart and disciplined team. If you didn’t perform well in his classroom, you weren’t going to play in the game. Brown signed on with the new AAFC teams that out of respect for him was given his name, the Cleveland Browns.

Paul Brown was also the first coach that determined “football speed” by making his players sprint a unique distance, 40 yards, and that has become a standard which college and pro football players are judged by today.

In the NFL, in 1945 and 1946 the Cleveland Rams were the most successful team playing for the NFC Championship both years and winning it in 1946. Fearing they would be less popular than the new Browns team they took an offer to play in the largest and newest stadium in the country, the LA Coliseum. It is the first and only time a Championship team has moved out of their home city while being World Champs.

Well Paul Brown was a no nonsense coach who judged his players by their classroom and field performance. He had his former players from his championship teams tryout for the Browns and two African American players were standouts and made the team. When asked by the news writers about breaking the racial barrier, Coach Brown refused to discuss anything but what his team did on the field. As Jim Brown, the Hall of Fame running back said, “Coach Brown broke the color barrier in professional sports the way it should have been done. He did it and didn’t talk about it.” In fact, even today, it seems that nobody talks about it.

How can Jackie Robinson be so famous and the men who broke the pro-football barrier be unknown? I’ll leave that to your opinion, as I have my own. Legend has it that Brach Rickey heard of the 2 Browns: Paul Willis and Marion Motley, and that gave him the courage to promote Jackie Robinson to the Dodgers the following year.

The first Browns regular season game in Cleveland broke all Cleveland football attendance records with >70,000 fans in attendance. Estimates were as high as 1/3 of the gate were African Americans. Paul Brown went onto win 4 straight AAFC Championships before the Browns were merged into the NFL in 1950. Led by QB Otto Grahm and to the surprise of the NFL owners, the Browns won the NFL Championship in 1950. Willis Motley had stellar careers and are now in the NFL Hall of Fame.

My opinion is, like Jackie Robinson, they were singled out for abuse by many opposing players and fans and had to be model citizens to pave the way for all teams to allow for more diversity in the NFL. They are deserving of a statue somewhere in this country beside the HOF. Below is a couple of pictures of this great tandem.

May 3, 2022May 17, 2022

Early Atomic Artillery

As noted in previous writing, during the period of the Cold War when deterrence by amassing more nuclear weapons than the Soviets was the goal, the critical question in addition to “who has more” was “who can hit the target fastest? This was a time before long range Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs), and time to deploy and fire was an important factor.

Especially worrisome to President Eisenhower and his Army Joint Chief of Staff, General Joe “Lightning Joe” Collins was the deployment of 200,000+ Soviet infantry on the line dividing East and West Germany. It was said that in the area of the Fulda Gap German and US troops could see each other through the flimsy barbed wire fence that divided the country in half. The Fulda Gap, a flat plain between mountain ranges, was the area identified by the US military as most likely to stage a Soviet invasion of West Germany.

With the onset of the Korean War in 1950 and our belief it might be a Soviet decoy-war so they could invade West Germany. In 1950, President Truman recalled 5-star General Eisenhower to military duty and made him the Supreme Commander of NATO forces in Europe. Ike immediately deployed the US Army 3rd Infantry Division to the frontlines at the Fulda Gap to replace the green UN forces that were there. This was a message to Stalin the WWIIs most renowned and famous General was ready for any Soviet Army advance.

On the weapons front in the early 1950s, development and testing of atomic artillery was being heavily funded to get these precision nukes to our front line troops. Top Secret documents of Army JCS General Collins showed time to target was considered best, 3 hours, with an atomic cannon and worst with an aircraft bomber(10 hours). The Honest John Rocket was also fast at 4 hours but early versions had liquid fuel rockets that took a while to fill with fuel and risked explosion during filling. Both Corporal and Redstone missiles, or guided rockets, were being developed but hadn’t tested up to needed specifications.

The Uranium in the early atomic shells reached criticality by a “gun style” mechanism, that is an internal explosion in the warhead shot a small mass of uranium-235, shaped like a ball, into a donut shaped ring of Uranium-235. Together inside an 800 pound, 4,5’ long, warhead (the donut and the inserted “donut ball” achieved critical mass and exploded with the force of the 10,000 Fat Man that we dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.

These warheads, developed in 1950-1955 were named W7 and W9 warheads and were used on the earliest nuclear-capable artillery: Atomic Cannon, Corporal Missile and Honest John Rocket.

April 28, 2022May 17, 2022

KOREAN WAR 1950-1953

Without a warning or declaration of war, on June 24, 1950, the communist North Korean Army sent its new Russian tanks on a Blitzkrieg mission into South Korea with the goal of obliterating the South Koreans and bring the Korean peninsula 100% under control of the communists.

Since the United States and withdrawn all of it’s troops and much of it’s artillery from South Korea, the communists were able to capture 90% of the country within the first week of the war. The United States quickly mobilized it troops that were occupying Japan and landed them on the distant tip of Korea. But lacking the newer weapons both the United States and South Korea had substantial casualties, as they were surrounded on the tip of the Peninsula.

With 14 communist tank divisions attacking and 12 tank divisions defending the South Korean and US Armies were close to annihilation. The anti-tank 2.36” bazookas from WWII were no match for the new T-135 Soviet tanks as their rockets were bouncing of the enemy tanks. Said Colonel James M. Gavin:

“The bazooka rockets were bouncing off the tanks and the tanks were then chewing up our troops. The next day we actually buried some troopers with pieces of bazooka ground into them by tank tracks.”

The South Korean and US Armies needed better bazookas and Picatinny Arsenal answered the call, preventing these armies from being pushed into the Yellow Sea. Picatinny

hadn’t thoroughly tested the new 3.5” bazooka rockets but sent them emergently to Korea.

As the communist tank divisions made 4 attempts to end the war, the South Koreans, American and United Nations Armies defended the “Pusan Perimeter”, and positive messages were received at Picatinny Arsenal.

“Five new bazookas fired, 4 tanks destroyed”.

The newer more powerful bazooka rockets could penetrate the reinforced plating on the Russian tanks and explode inside the tank, killing it’s crew.

With the start of the Korean War the need to develop battlefield or tactical nuclear weapons was elevated as funding for their production poured into several of our nations arsenals.

The US wanted an upper hand on the communists with atomic artillery capabilities.

In the opening weeks of the Korean War the US and South Korean forces were on the verge of losing and being pushed into the sea. The 12 divisions managed to defend the Pusan perimeter with the help of the Picatinny 3.5” bazookas.

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