DWARKA AND THE MAHABHARATA

Every Indian, either living in India or living outside India, knows about the two epics that dominates the Indian psyche and the psyche of the terra firma. These epics are the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. The Mahabharata has exercised a continuous and pervasive influence on the Indian mind for millennia. The Mahabharata, originally written by Sage Ved Vyas in Sanskrit, has been translated and adapted into numerous languages and has been set to a variety of interpretations. Dating back to “remote antiquity”, it is still a living force in the life of the Indian masses.   With more than 74,000 verses, long prose passages, and about 1.8 million words in total, the Mahabharata is one of the longest epic poems in the world. The Mahabharata has a total length of more than 90,000 verses.

Everything about the Mahabharata is huge, from its sprawling length, to the enormous breadth of its vision. The longest of all epics is like an encyclopedia, a world all on its own. At its core is the powerful and moving story of the Pandava and Kaurava cousins who ultimately fight the greatest war of all, Kurukshetra. But that is not all, the Mahabharata is full of mythic stories, vast time spans of history, detailed geography and a massive body of spiritual teachings.

The author of the massive epic is Rishi Vyas, who, according to the text itself, spent three years creating it, rising every morning, and working on it every day. His abode was Vyas Gufa, a cave high in the Himalayas, which is still visited today by travelers on their way to Mansarovar.

In Mahabharata’s Musal Parva, the Dwarka is mentioned as being gradually swallowed by the ocean. Krishna had forewarned the residents of Dwaraka to vacate the city before the sea submerged it. The Sabha Parva gives a detailed account of Krishna’s flight from Mathura with his followers to Dwaraka to escape continuous attacks of Jarasandh’s on Mathura and save the lives of its subjects. For this reason, Krishna is also known as RANCHHOR (one who runs away from the battle-field). Dr. SR Rao and his team in 1984-88 (Marine Archaeology Unit) undertook an extensive search of this city along the coast of Gujarat where the Dwarikadeesh temple stands now, and finally they succeeded in unearthing the ruins of this submerged city off the Gujarat coast.

The first archaeological excavations at Dwaraka were done by the Deccan College, Pune and the Department of Archaeology, Government of Gujarat, in 1963 under the direction of H.D. Sankalia. It revealed artifacts many centuries old.

Marine Archaeology Unit (MAU) jointly by the National Institute of Oceanography and the Archaeological Survey of India. Under the guidance of Dr. Rao, a great marine archaeologist, a team consisting of expert underwater explorers, trained diver-photographers and archaeologists was formed. The technique of geophysical survey was combined with the use of echo-sounders, mud-penetrators, sub-bottom profilers and underwater metal detectors. This team carried out 12 marine archaeological expeditions between 1983 to 1992 and articles and antiquities recovered were sent to Physical Research Laboratory for dating. By using thermo-luminescence, carbon dating and other modern scientific techniques, the artifacts were found to belong to the period between 15th to 18th century B.C. In his great work, The Lost City of Dwaraka, Dr. Rao has given scientific details of these discoveries and artifacts.

Between 1983 to 1990, the well-fortified township of Dwaraka was discovered, extending more than half mile from the shore. The township was built in six sectors along the banks of a river. The foundation of boulders on which the city’s walls were erected proves that the land was reclaimed from the sea. The general layout of the city of Dwaraka described in ancient texts agrees with that of the submerged city discovered by the MAU.

The ASI conducted a second round of excavations in 1979 under S.R. Rao’s direction. He found a distinct pottery known as lustrous red ware, which could be more than 3,000 years old. Based on the results of these excavations, the search for the sunken city in the Arabian Sea began in 1981. Scientists and archaeologists have continually worked on the site for 20 years.

The UAW began excavations at Dwaraka again from January 2007. Dr. Tripathi said: “To study the antiquity of the site in a holistic manner, excavations are being conducted simultaneously both on land [close to the Dwarakadhish temple] and undersea so that finds from both the places can be co-related and analyzed scientifically.”

The objective of the excavation is to know the antiquity of the site, based on material evidence. In the offshore excavation, the ASI’s trained underwater archaeologists and the divers of the Navy searched the sunken structural remains. The finds were studied and  documented.   

On land, the excavation is being done in the forecourt of the Dwarakadhish temple. Students from Gwalior, Lucknow, Pune, Vadodara, Varanasi and Bikaner are helping ASI archaeologists. In the forecourt, old structures including a circular one have been found. A small cache of 30 copper coins was discovered.

“Within the past few months, the engineers began some dredging operations there and they pulled up human fossil bones, fossil wood, stone tools, pieces of pottery and many other things that indicated that it indeed was a human habitation site that they had. And they were able to do more intensive sonar work there and were able to identify more structures. They appeared to have been laid out on the bank of a river that had been flowing from the Indian subcontinent out into that area. ( That river was the legendary saraswati river ) According to the news releases, they have done a radiocarbon testing on a piece of wood from the underwater site that is now yielding an age of 9,500 years which would place it near the end of the last Ice Age. There were actually two radiocarbon dates: one about 7500 years old and another about 9500 years old. The 9500 year old one seems to be the strongest one. That’s the one they are going with. This was announced by Minister Joshi ( Murli Manohar Joshi was the Indian Minister for Ocean Technology then ). Mahabharata was then a reality and it was not a cock and bull story concocted by Ved Vyas.

Ved Vyas also described the city of Dwarka in great details. The poets described Dwarka as a city so golden that it cast its radiance on the ocean for miles around it. Dwar means door, and Dwarka is a city of many doors or a gateway. It was an island, connected to the mainland by many bridges, and legend says that Krishna asked Vishwakarman, the architect of the gods to build him a city more beautiful than any before it.

Krishna chose a remote location, far beyond the reach of Jarasandh. He picked distant Dwarka on the western coast of India, far from Mathura, and spent a year putting his plans into action. He built on the sunken remains of a previous kingdom, Kushasthali, which itself was built on older ruins, all underwater. Krishna reclaimed a hundred miles of land from the sea and called in Vishwakarman, the architect of the gods to give him a city that was the envy of the world.

The Mahabharat and the Bhagwat Puran and other texts, describe the wonders of Dwarka. The most expensive and luxurious materials were used. In those days of unbelievable riches, it was quite common to use precious stones, gold and silver as construction material. Royalty and rich nobles invariably used gold, those who could not afford it used silver or metal.

Dwarka was a city of rose and gold. The palaces and many of the mansions were built of gold, over which pink lotus domes towered, topped by soaring golden spires. The floors were made of emeralds. Precious stones studded the walls and crystal arches curved overhead, inlaid with gold. The houses were beautifully decorated and sculptures adorned the walls. Even the cowsheds were made of silver, brass and iron.

Seen in this beautiful picture is lord Krishna coming to the island city of dwarka

Dwarka was a very well planned city, following the highly developed science of town planning. The architect, Vishwakarman, first mapping out the highways, lanes, gates and parks. He sectioned off plots and divided the city into six zones, residential and commercial. He planned out the port and created the bridges and gateways and the fortifications. Everything was laid out in detail before the construction began.

Like many kingdoms of the time Dwarka had a passport system. Its citizens were issued with a clay seal which had to be presented when they entered or left the massive gates. The seal of Dwarka was a mythical three headed dog and seals matching the description have been found in the undersea ruins today.

In the Newspaper The Hindu dated 23 Feb 2007 an article was published which I reproduce here vervatim.” CHENNAI: Ancient structural remains of some significance have been discovered at Dwaraka, under water and on land, by the Underwater Archaeology Wing (UAW) of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). Alok Tripathi, Superintending Archaeologist, UAW, said the ancient underwater structures found in the Arabian Sea were yet to be identified. “We have to find out what they are. They are fragments. I would not like to call them a wall or a temple. They are part of some structure,” said Dr. Tripathi, himself a trained diver.

Thirty copper coins were also found in the excavation area. The structures found on land belonged to the medieval period. “We have also found 30 copper coins. We are cleaning them. After we finish cleaning them, we can give their date,” he said.

Dwaraka is a coastal town in Jamnagar district of Gujarat. Traditionally, modern Dwaraka is identified with Dvaraka or Dvaravati, mentioned in the Mahabharata as Krishna’s city. Dwaraka was a port, and some scholars have identified it with the island of Barka mentioned in the Periplus of Erythrean Sea. Ancient Dwaraka sank in sea and hence is an important archaeological site.” My idea is not to go in the discussion of how the city went under the sea but the fact is that this city is now approximately under water of the Arabian sea some 135 feet below water. This city has been mentioned in the Mahabharata and that this city has been found, dated, and mapped. The probable date of this city is between 9500 to 7500 years before present which will put it as 7500 to 5500 years BC.

Mahabharata was not a fictional epic but a reality is also evident from the works of many scholars who have done extensive work in this area, and by getting all the facts together what comes out of the whole is the fact that the near about exact dates of the major happenings in the epic has also been identified. This at least proves that the Vedic civilization is a much older phenomenon than perceived by many western scholars till date.

 There is a striking inscription which has been found  in  the  Jain Temple  at  Aihole prepared by  one Chalukya King Pulakeshi.  It says, according  to  scholars,  that  the  temple   was     constructed   in 30+3000+700+5  = 3735 years, after the Bharat War and 50+6+500 =   556 years of Shaka era in Kali era. Today Shaka era is 1910.  Hence  1910- 556  =  1354  years  ago the temple was constructed.  Thus the year of inscribing this note is 634 AD.  At this time 3735  years  had  passed from the Bharat War. So the date of the War comes to 3101 BC.  This is also the date of Kali Yuga Commencement. Naturally, it is evident that relying on the beginning of Kaliyuga Era and holding that the War took place just before the commencement of Kaliyuga,

The verse inscribed is :

Trinshatsu Trisahasreshu Bhaaratdahavaditaha | Saptabda  Shatayukteshu

Gateshwabdeshu Panchasu | Panchashatasu Kalaukale Shatasu Panchashatsu

cha | Samatsu Samatitasu Shakaanamapi Bhoobhujaam ||

The verses has been interpreted by considering the  clauses  of  the verse.  It  says “3030 years from the Bharat War” in the first line, ( Trinshatsu Trisahasreshu Bhaaratdahavaaditaha) where the first  clause of  the  sentence  ends.  in the second line, the second clause starts and   runs   up to   the   middle   of   the   third   line   thus ( Saptabda…..Kalaukale) This means 700+5+50 = 755 years passed in the Kali Era. It is clear from the former portion of the verse that 3030 years passed from the Bharat War and 755 years  passed  from Kali  Era.   Kali  Era started from 3101 BC.  755 years have passed so 3101-755 = 2346 BC is the year when 3030 years  had  passed  from  the Bharat  War.   So 2346+3030 = 5376 BC appears to be the date of Bharat War.

The Greek Ambassador Magasthenis has recorded that 138 generations have  passed  between  Krishna  and Chandragupta Maurya. Many scholars have taken this evidence, but taking only 20 years per generation they fixed  the date of Krishna as 2760 years before Chandragupta. But this is wrong because the record is not of ordinary people to take 20 years per  generation. In the matter of general public, one says that when a son is born a new generation starts. But in the  case  of  kings,  the name  is  included in the list of Royal Dynasty only after his coronation to the throne. Hence, one cannot allot 20 years to one  king.  We have  to  find  out  the average per king  by  calculating on  various INDIAn Dynasties. I have considered 60 kings  from  various  dynasties and calculated the average of each king as 35 years. Here is a list of some of important kings with the no. of years ruling.

      Chandragupta Mourya      330-298 B.C.     32 years.

      Bindusar                         298-273 B.C.     25 years.

      Ashok                            273-232 B.C.     41 years.

      Pushyamitra Shunga       190-149 B.C.     41 years.

      Chandragupta Gupta       308-330 A.D.     22 years.

      Samudragupta                330-375 A.D.     45 years.

      Vikramaditya                  375-414 A.D.     39 years.

      Kumargupta                   414-455 A.D.     41 years.

      Harsha                          606-647 A.D.     41 years.

                                                ———

                                                327 years.

      The average is 327/9 = 36.3 years.

Multiplying 138 generations by 35 years we get 4830 years before Chandragupta  Mourya.  Adding  Chandrgupta’s  date 320 B.C. to 4830 we get 5150 B.C. as the date of Lord Krishna.

Megasthenis, according to Arian, has written that  between  Sandrocotus  to  Dianisaum  153 generations and 6042 years passed. From this data, we get the average of 39.5 years per king. From this we can calculate  5451  years  for  138  generations.  So Krishna must have been around 5771 B.C.

Pliny gives 154 generations and  6451  years  between  Bacchus  and Alexander.  This  Bacchus may be the famous Bakasura who was killed by Bhimasena. This period comes to about 6771 years B.C.

Thus Mahabharata period ranges from 5000 B.C. to 6000 B.C. and Dwarka fits into this scenario perfectly.

Mahabharata   mentions   the   ancient   tradition   as   ‘Shravanadini Nakshatrani’, i.e.,  Shravan Nakshatra was given the first place in the Nakshatra- cycle (Adi-71/34 and Ashvamedh  44/2)  Vishwamitra  started

counting  the Nakshatras from Shravan when he created ‘Prati Srushti’. He was angry with the old customs.  So he started  some  new  customs. Before  Vishvamitra’s  time Nakshatras were counted from the one which was occupied by the sun on the Vernal  Equinox.   Vishvamitra  changed this fashion and used diagonally opposite point i.e.  Autumnal Equinox to list the Nakshtras. He gave first place to Shravan which was at the Autumnal  Equinox  then.   The period of Shravan Nakshatra on autumnal equinox is from 6920 to 7880 years B.C.  This was Vishvamitra’s period at  the  end  of  Treta yuga.  Mahabharat War took place at the end of Dwapar yuga.   Subtracting  the  span  of Dwapar  Yuga  of  2400 years we get 7880 – 2400 = 5480 B.C. as the date of Mahabharat War.

Recently Dr. S.B. Rao, Emeritus Scientist of the National Institute of Oceanography,  Dona  Paula, Goa, 403004, has discovered under the sea, Dwaraka and dated it as between  5000  to  6000  BC.   This  news  has been  published by all  the  leading newspapers on 22nd October 1988.

 Many works of the Vedic and Puranic tradition contain a sufficient number of clues in the form of astronomical observations which can be used to determine the approximate date of Mahabharata and thus establish the historical authenticity of the events described in this great epic. Notable among these works are the Parashar Sanghita, the Bhagvat Puran, Shakalya Sanghita, and the Mahabharat itself. Aryabhatta, one of the greatest mathematicians and astronomers of India in the fifth century AD, examined the astronomical evidence described in the Mahabharata in his great work known as the “Aryabhattiya”. According to the positions of the planets recorded in the Mahabharata, its approximate date was calculated by Aryabhatta to be 3100 BC implying that the great war described in the Mahabharata was fought approximately 5000 years ago, as most Hindus have always believed.

A number of British scholars of the 19th century, especially Friedrich Max Muller, tried to interpret this astronomical evidence to prove that the observations recorded in Hindu scriptures are imaginary. As an amateur astronomer, I propose to examine the astronomical evidence presented in the Bhagvat Puran and Max Muller’s criticism of this evidence in light of the advances made in astronomy in the past fifty years. Max Muller, in the preface to his translation of the Rig Veda, examines the astronomical observations described in the Bhagvat Puran and concludes that these observations are “imaginary”, apparently because they did not agree with the prevalent views of the European, primarily British, Indologists of the nineteenth century about the time of the Mahabharata.

Carl Segan, a renowned astronomer at Cornell University, who hosted the public television series “Cosmos” in 1985, pointed out that Hindus were the only ones who came anywhere close to correctly estimating the real age of the universe. Unlike many cultural traditions which treat science and religion as antithetical to each other, the Hindu tradition encourages the study of physics and metaphysics both for a comparative understanding of the true nature of the cosmic mystery surrounding and pervading the universe.

Everything about the Mahabharat is huge, from its sprawling length, to the enormous breadth of its vision. The longest of all epics is like an encyclopaedia, a world all on its own. At its core is the powerful and moving story of the Pandava and Kaurava cousins who ultimately fight the greatest war of all, Kurukshetra. But that is not all, the Mahabharata is full of mythic stories, vast time spans of history, detailed geography and a massive body of spiritual teachings.

 In the end I would like to invite my readers to a 9.35 minutes video on www.disclose.tv which will precisely show case the antiquity of this great civilization. The link is given below. Copy and paste on the address bar of your browser and press enter.

http://www.disclose.tv/action/viewvideo/1134/Dvaraka_Giant_Underwater_City_found_in_India/

Bibliography:

http://www.tginvents.com/tushar/MahabharatDating2.htm

http://www.hindunet.org/hindu_history/ancient/mahabharat/mahab_sarasvat.html

http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=1a6vMAGTUhI

.Hinduunity.org

http://www.hinduism.co.za/oldest.htm

Michael Cremo, Researcher of Ancient Archaeology

and Author, Forbidden Archaeology

http://www.epicindia.com/magazine/Culture/the-lost-city-of-dwarka

http://www.hindu.com/2007/02/23/stories/2007022301242200.htm

http://www.disclose.tv/action/viewvideo/1134/Dvaraka_Giant_Underwater_City_found_in_India/

                Driving into Millville Airport, currently a general aviation facility in Southern New Jersey, is like entering a World War II time portal: several cinder block buildings and barracks, characteristic of the war, stand eerily silent and vacated, as if the area had once provided the stage for some vast performance, but its players had long since departed.  The runways still routinely field take offs and landings, but mostly of single-engined Cessnas and Pipers.  Yet, the location had been an integral part of World War II and therefore remains historically significant.

                Sparked, like numerous war-necessitated air fields, by the prospectively destructive capability of the advancing airplane design, as evidenced by German and Japanese combat missions in Europe and Asia, it had been one of 900 defense airports ordered by the US government to be strategically located round the country in order to be immediately convertible from civilian to military application and to train counterforces in the event of war.  Unlike the others, however, Millville Army Air Field had been the first one and therefore had been dedicated as “America’s first defense airport” by local, state, and federal officials when it had opened on August 2, 1941 amid a 10,000-strong ceremony.

                Still in a spartanly constructive state, it had only featured a few runways from which civilian aircraft operations had been conducted, but the December 7, 1941 Japanese attack of Pearl Harbor in Hawaii had rapidly ignited its transition to military status, the 56th Fighter Squadron of the 33rd Fighter Group temporarily relocating from Philadelphia Municipal Airport for a three-week period to commence Curtiss P-40 Warhawk training, at a still nascent facility only able to accommodate its crews in tents.

                One of World War II’s most effective fighter-bombers, the aircraft, based upon the P-36, had been intended as a modernized successor which had initially appeared with a 12-cylinder, V, inline, liquid-cooled Allison V-1720 piston engine, but high-altitude operations had quickly dictated the need for the gear-driven, supercharger-equipped V-1710 version.  Although the Army Air Corps had hitherto used its fighters for coastal defense and ground attack missions, it had nevertheless evaluated the aircraft because of its superior performance, the prototype, a converted P-36A airframe redesignated XP-40, first flying on October 14, 1938 with the modified powerplant.

                The low-wing monoplane, powered by the single, 1,160-shp Allison V-1710-19 engine and equipped with two 0.50-inch Colt-Browning M2 guns in its wings, had been flown by a single, canopy cockpit-accommodated pilot and could climb at 3,080 feet-per-minute, attaining 342-mph speeds.  Featuring a 6,787-pound gross weight, it had a 950-mile range.

                The initial contract, for 524 Curitiss P-40 Warhawks, had been made by the US War Department on April 26, 1939, and the Eighth Pursuit Group, based at Langley Field in Virginia, had been the first to transition to the type.

                Production, which had subsequently included progressively higher gross weight variants with upgraded engines and increased armament and protection, had ceased in December of 1944, at which time 13,738 P-40s had been made.

                The type, however, had only provided interim equipment at Millville Army Air Field, which itself had virtually blossomed from the ground: sporting a “mini-city” of permanent, cinder block structures by September of 1942 and a fleet of convoy trucks from Langley the following January, it had featured full-scale mock-ups of trucks, trains, tanks, ships, and bridges south of it for aerial target practice.

                The 58th Fighter Group, the first unit to have been based there, had quickly discovered that the newly-acquired P-40s had been incompatible with northeast winder conditions and the type had been replaced by the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt when the 353rd Fighter Group had relocated to the New Jersey base.  The aircraft was soon to become synonymous with Millville.

                Succeeding the Seversky P-35, it had been the result of Army Air Corps requirements, which had included a 400-mph airspeed, a 25,000-foot service ceiling, at least six .50-caliber machine guns, armor plating protection, self-sealing fuel tanks, and a minimum fuel capacity of 315 gallons.

                Designed round the new 18-cylinder, two-row, 2,000-hp Pratt and Whitney Double Wasp XR-2800-21 radial engine, then the largest, most powerful of its type, it had been intended to offer ultimate, high-altitude performance partly attained by its tail-installed turbo-supercharger, which had considerably increased its power production in rarefied air.

                The XP-47B prototype, for which a contract had been awarded on September 6, 1940, had first taken to the skies the following May and orders for 171 P-47Bs and 602 P-47Cs had been subsequently placed, the latter of which had featured external, range-increasing fuel tanks and a longer fuselage to improve maneuverability.

                The P-47D, numerically the most popular version, had had a 36-foot, 1.75-inch overall length and a 40-foot, 9.75-inch wingspan which had resulted in a 300-square-foot area.  Powered by the 2,000-hp Pratt and Whitney turbo-supercharged R-2800-63 piston engine, whose four-bladed, 12-foot-diameter propeller could only be given sufficient ground clearance with a nine-inch telescoping, retractable main landing gear, the 19,400-pound aircraft, armed with eight .50-caliber, wing-mounted machine guns and 2,500 pounds of bombs, could cruise at 428 mph at 30,000 feet, yet attain 42,000-foot maximum ceilings.  Range had peaked at 1,700 miles.

                The Republic P-47 Thunderbolt, which had dwarfed all other aircraft, had been the world’s largest, heaviest, single-engine, single-seat strategic World War II fighter, offering unequaled dive speeds. 

                First entering service with the USAAF in 1942, the type had been deployed in the European theatre the following April, initially performing high-altitude escort and flight sweep missions in skies whose only other counterpart had been the single-pilot, radial-engined Focke-Wulf Fw-190A.  The aircraft appeared in the Pacific theatre two months later, in June.

                The final version, the P-47N intended for long-range bomber escort sorties, had featured extended wings, an additional 100 gallons of fuel, and a 20,700-pound gross weight (or more than double the weight of the P-40s the type had replaced), and had been deployed in the Pacific late in the war.

                The P-47 Thunderbolt which, with 15,579 built, had attained the highest production total of any previous US fighter, had flown more than 546,000 combat missions and destroyed some 11,874 enemy aircraft, 9,000 locomotives, and 6,000 armored vehicles and tanks between March of 1943 and August of 1945.  The first piston aircraft to exceed 500 mph in airspeed capability, it could outdive any allied or enemy aircraft and is considered the forerunner of today’s multi-role fighter.

                P-47 Thunderbolt pilot training at Millville Army Air Field had entailed two types of units.  Operational Training Units (OTU), the first of these, had been created in accordance with Air Corps standards to prepare qualified pilots for newly-formed combat units or fill vacancies in existing ones.  In 1939, the number of such authorized Air Corps groups had been expanded from 25 to 84, and the 33rd Pursuit Group, the first in the Millville area, had initiated an uninterrupted flow of combat unit-fed pilots to all four branches of service.

                The Replacement Training Unit (RTU), the second of these, provided replacement pilots for those killed, captured, or returned after a 12-week curriculum taught at a Combat Crew Training Station.  The 327th Fighter Group, located in Richmond, had been the first to transition to this status in the fall of 1943 when it had been directed to supply personnel to the 87th Fighter Group, whose 536th and 537th Fighter Squadrons had relocated to Millville the following January, bringing their P-47 Thunderbolt fleet with them.  By April 10, 1944, all units had been amalgamated into the newly-created 135th AAF Base Unit and the advanced portion of the Replacement Training Unit had been taught at Millville, entailing navigation, formation flying, and aircraft recognition.

                With the German and subsequent Japanese surrenders, World War II’s curtains had been effectively closed, obviating the need for Millville Army Air Field and resulting in its temporary closure in October of 1945.  It became permanent the following month.  Nevertheless, more than 10,000 men and women had served in both ground and flight operations capacities here, of which some 1,500 pilots had received advanced fighter training in Curtiss P-40 Warhawk and Republic P-47 Thunderbolt aircraft.  Fourteen had perished during airborne training, along with another five enlisted men. 

II 

                After the facility had been declared excess in 1946, its ownership had reverted to the City of Millville, and 128 of its buildings, attempting to alleviate the area’s housing shortage, had been concerted into 102 apartments.  The 887-acre field, along with some 30 structures and ancillary equipment, had been sublimated to civilian use in June of the following year, at which time its gunnery range had been acquired by the state of New Jersey for hunting and its runways had been periodically used by nearby Naval Air Station Atlantic City Navy pilots for carrier landing practice.

                A $2.5-million federal grant, received in 1974, had enabled the airport to draft a master plan, entailing runway repaving, taxiway construction, and field lighting installation, and a subsequent rezoning, occurring a decade later, had enabled it to create a 100-acre Airport Industrial Park.

                The current, 923-acre Millville Municipal Airport, New Jersey’s second-largest general aviation field, sports an instrument landing system (ILS) and an FAA Flight Service Station (FSS), the City of Millville leasing its administration to the Delaware River and Bay Authority.

                Today, the airport echoes of its World War II role.  Of the 100 buildings occupying the site during the four years between 1941 and 1945, 20 remain and constitute the world’s largest collection of original, war-era structures, and the preservation, of the core acreage, two hangars, and 18 buildings, has been ensured by their inclusion on the New Jersey and National Registry of Historic Places.

The Henry H. Wyble Historic Research Library and Education Center, one of them, is located in one of the base’s original warehouses and sports an extensive, war-related book collection, videos, historic documents, and aircraft models, and serves as a large-screen theater.  The facility, which opened in 2007, features two eight-by-ten foot, “faux,” partially-opened door murals painted by local artists on its façade.

                The Link Trainer Building, hailing from 1942 and requiring two years of restoration, houses one of only five still-operational link trainers.  Designed by Edwin Albert Link at his family’s organ-building business in Binghamton, New York, to provide instrument training to World War II pilots during poor visibility and night conditions, the device, borrowing the organ bellows to simulate climbs, descents, and banks, had accounted for 6,271 sales to the Army and 1,045 to the Navy and is presently available for visitor usage for a small fee.

                A vintage aircraft collection, privately owned by Thomas Duffy and stored in one of the two historic hangars, includes the P-47 Thunderbolt “No Guts, No Glory,” one of only ten still-airworthy aircraft and the very type for which the air base had been created.

                The original Pilot Ready Day Room, constructed in 1943, now houses the Ops-Air Crew Lounge of Big Sky Aviation.

                Nucleus of the historic field, however, is the Millville Army Air Field Museum housed in the original Army Air Force World War II Gunnery School Administration Building used between 1943 and 1945 and restored in 1988.  The museum, founded by Michael T. Stowe to preserve US military aviation history, mostly displays artifacts, equipment, photographs, and engines contributed by air base veterans.

A Pratt and Whitney Double Wasp twin-row radial engine, which had powered the P-47 based here along with several other Army and Navy designs, emphases the sheer power of this mighty engine and is a highlight of the displays.  A ceiling light had measured cloud height, while a directional gyro had served as a pilot navigational training aid.

                The metal, interlocking Mardson Mat, designed by the British, had facilitated take off and landing operations at ill-equipped locations.  According to George Canning, a current Millville Army Air Field Museum affiliate who had enlisted in the Army Air Corps in December of 1941 and had served in the South Pacific, “it’s the best invention of the whole war.  Put it together and you have an instant runway!”

                The Philadelphia Seaplane Base Museum, founded in 1915 by the Robert Mills family and relocated to the current site in 2000, displays aeromarine wings, struts, and pontoons.

                A Nordon bombsight, the mahogany nose of a Curtiss Flying Boat, an aircraft model collection in memory of Robert Wilinski, photographs, a uniform collection, and a typical Army barracks set up complete the internal displays, while two aircraft are featured outside.  The first, an A-4F Skyhawk, had been assigned to Attack Squadron 192 aboard the aircraft carrier USS Orskary in 1968 during its Vietnam War combat tour, while the second is a Short Brothers SD3-30 named “Kwajalein Atoll.”

                The paltry collection, according to museum Administrative Assistant Joyce Lazarcheck, is one of the museum’s deficiencies.  “I would love to have more planes!” she had wished, and eagerly looked forward to the realization of that goal.

                Aside from the exhibits, the museum fields World War II pilot reunions, films, school educational programs, aircraft fly-ins and air shows, and veterans’ events.

                Millville Army Air Field, time portal to World War II and once a significant gunnery pilot training facility on the east coast with a fleet of P-47 Thunderbolts, is a living history experience which transcends the past and tells its story to the visitor in the present.

                Southern New Jersey, surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean and the Delaware River, had been inextricably tied to naval aviation with several air stations during World War II.  The largest, and therefore most important, had been Naval Air Station Wildwood.

                Tracing its origins to President Roosevelt, who had used New Deal funds to construct civilian airports under the Civil Aeronautics Authority (CAA) for military conversion in the event of war, Naval Air Station Wildwood had been sparked by the emerging need for a pilot training base to protect the Atlantic seaboard from German submarines which had targeted US supply ships traveling to Britain.  Nazi Germany, having already captured France in June of 1942, had become an increasing threat.

                In Southern New Jersey, the US Coast Guard transferred its station, which had been originally built as a World War I naval base in 1917, to the Navy, which had then commissioned it Naval Air Station Cape May in September of 1940 and from which observation and scout squadron training had subsequently been conducted.

                But the urgency for additional facilities had heightened the following year when the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, alerting of the need for naval aircraft and proficient dive-bomber pilots.  The Cape May base had been pitifully inadequate for this purpose, prompting a series of surveys in Lower Township for additional land.

                An initial 500 acres, leased for $1.00 from Cape May County for later conversion to civilian use, had resulted in March, 1942 governmental construction bids, and workmen, under the direction of the Army Corps of Engineers, commenced the arduous deforestation process by clearing trees and filling in swamps to prepare land for a fighting squadron training base in Rio Grande.  Although the construction effort had been successful, its purpose had not been: the Army ultimately elected to establish a similar facility some 40 miles north, in Millville, abandoning the project.

                The cleared, 500-acre area, with potential application as an auxiliary field for the inadequately-sized Cape May Naval Air Station, had still been 400 acres short of the Navy’s stipulated 900-acre requirement, and this had only been remedied by the Cape May County Board of Chosen Freeholders’ emergency resolution authorizing an additional $15,000 for land acquisition.  The win-win expenditure had been perceived as providing both the Navy with the needed land for its base and the county with the needed employment to arrest it from its economic fall into Depression’s quicksand, although the need for such a facility had been clearly demonstrated by the concurrent Battle of the Coral Sea in May and the Battle of Midway in June, victories only sustainable with the qualified bases where pilots could be trained.  In fact, the number of such pilots had been estimated as 20,000.  The proposed Rio Grande base, it had been argued, would be crucial to sustaining naval aviation’s imprint in the Pacific.

                Resultantly, the Navy, leasing the land from the county and appropriating $500,000 for the new airfield, commenced construction in October of 1942, subsequently completing one 4,000-foot runway, three 5,000-foot runways, a control tower, hangars, barracks, an operations building, a mess hall, a water supply station, a steam heating plant, a sewage system, and roads, providing employment for 362 local civilians.

The base, adopting its name from the nearest post office, had been commissioned “Naval Air Station Rio Grande” on April 1, 1943, and Lieutenant Commander Morris Ruggles Brownell, Jr. had assumed command of it, but early confusion with the identically-named city in Texas had resulted in its redesignation as “Naval Air Station Wildwood” on June 17, a name hitherto only associated with a southern New Jersey beach resort.  Supplemented by Woodbine Auxiliary Airfield, which had opened two months later, in August, and a facility in Delaware, the new naval air station met the Navy’s capacity needs and enabled it to concentrate dive-bombing pilot training at the new field.  It had also operated in conjunction with Naval Air Stations Cape May and Atlantic City.

                Composite Squadron Thirty (VC-30) of Carrier Air Group 30 (CAG30) had been the first to have been commissioned by the Navy at its new facility in April of 1943 for the USS Monterey, although the squadron’s size had initially necessitated the use of eight Westward huts and tents and hotels in Wildwood for 150 of its pilots until base facility construction had been completed.

                The initially-combined Bombing Squadron Fourteen and Fifteen (VB-14 and VB-15), training under the “Fleet Air Detachment Wildwood Operation Plan for the Defense of the Eastern Sea Frontier” in Douglas SDB Dauntless aircraft, practiced squadron flying, individual bombing practice, diving, navigation, glide bombing, fixed gunnery, free gunnery, instrument night flying, and anti-submarine surface strafing. 

II. Naval Air Station Wildwood Aircraft 

                Instrumental to Naval Air Station Wildwood and the Navy’s combat strategy in the Pacific had been the dive-bomber aircraft, which provided precision attacks of rapidly moving targets at steep descent angles.  Such designs, of the low-wing, metal airframe type usually powered by a single piston engine, had been capable of operating from aircraft carriers with arrester hook provision and had been equipped with dive brakes, such as split flaps, to prohibit excessive, unrecoverable profiles, limit airframe stress, and increase the maneuver’s duration to improve the accuracy, aim, and trajectory of the bomb itself, which had typically been carried on a hinged bomb rack.  After its release, it had to be projected downward, with sufficient clearance from the propeller arc to avoid interference.

                The Douglas SBD Dauntless, the first such dive-bomber to be deployed at the station, had been the Navy’s standard, ship-borne aircraft responsible for several decisive victories in the Pacific.  Based upon the Northrop BT-1, a scout and dive-bomber, it had been given life as the XBT-1 when the Navy had ordered a single prototype.  First flying in this form on August 19, 1935, the aircraft, powered by a 700-hp Pratt and Whitney R-1535-66 Twin Wasp Junior two-row radial engine, had featured a low wing; split flaps; aftward, semi-retractable main wheels stored in underwing fairings; and a fixed tailwheel, but the airframe, considered underpowered, had subsequently been refitted with uprated, 825-hp R-1535-94 engines in December, and the split flaps had been replaced with the holed type to rectify handling characteristics.

                The subsequent XBT-2, significantly modified after Douglas had acquired Northrop, featured a tandemly arranged, forward-facing pilot and rearward-facing, gunner/radio operator; fabric-covered ailerons, elevators, and rudders; two .50-caliber Browning machine guns installed in the nose cowling and synchronized to fire through the propeller arc; an under-fuselage, swinging cradle release-mounted, 1,600-pound bomb; and two underwing, 100-pound bomb pylons.  Powered by a 1,000-hp, nine-cylinder, air-cooled Wright Cyclone R-1820-32 radial engine which drove a three-bladed, adjustable-pitch, spinner-equipped propeller, the aircraft stored fuel in two 90-gallon, wing integral tanks, four wing center section tanks totaling 210 gallons; and a single, 15-gallon auxiliary fuel tank. 

                The design, redesignated SBD-1 under the Douglas model scheme, had entered service with the Marines’ VMB-2 Squadron in 1940 and the Navy had equally operated 57 of the type.

                Despite its extensive improvement program, it had still lacked sufficient range and had been devoid of armor protection, resulting in the SBD-2, which had featured a 100-gallon fuel capacity increase and revised ammunition.  It had entered service with the Navy with the 58th airframe.

                The succeeding SBD-3 had addressed several earlier deficiencies by introducing a still larger fuel capacity, self-sealing fuel tanks, crew and armor protection, a bullet-proof windshield, a Wright Cyclone R-1820-52 engine, and modified cowling.

                The SBD-4 had featured a hydromatic propeller and replaced the previous 12-volt electrical system with a 24-volt one, while the SBD-5, the most numerically produced version, had been built at Douglas’ new Tulsa, Oklahoma, factory.  Featuring a 33-foot overall length and a 41.6-foot wingspan, the 1,200-hp Pratt and Whitney R-1820-66–powered aircraft had a 10,855-pound maximum take off weight and a 255-mph maximum speed.  It had had a 770-mile range.

                The final version, the SBD-6, had featured the most capable powerplant, at a 1,350-hp rating, and the largest fuel capacity.

                The Douglas SBD Dauntless had been instrumental in numerous Pacific theatre victories.  In the Battle of Midway, for example, which had occurred on June 4, 1942, the type had destroyed four Japanese aircraft carriers, sank a heavy cruiser, and severely damaged another, while it sank the Ryugo in the Battle of the Eastern Solomons.  In the Battle of Guadalcanal, which had taken place between November 12 and 15 of that year, it had destroyed nine transports and sank the cruiser Kinugasa, ending its career as a carrier-borne aircraft two years later on June 20, 1944 with victories against the Japanese Mobile Fleet in the Battle of the Philippine Sea.

                During initial Douglas Dauntless training at Naval Air Station Wildwood, however, it had not been so victorious, with mounting casualties of the very pilots who had trained in them because of poor handling characteristic-created accidents, prompting a replacement trainer.

                That replacement appeared in the form of the Curtiss SB2C Helldiver, whose instability, structural weakness, and inferior design had hardly been synonymous with “improvement.”

                Based upon the antiquated biplane design of the 1930s intended for dive-bombing maneuvers, the aircraft had been considerably modernized when the Navy had submitted specifications in 1938 for a carrier-based scout bomber accommodating two crew members and able to internally carry 1,000 pounds of bombs over long ranges.

                The resultant prototype, designated XSBC2C-1, had first taken to the skies on December 18, 1940, but had been structurally weak and had demonstrated poor handling characteristics, sustaining engine failure two months later on February 8 during an approach and crashing.  The US military, intending to target performance deficiencies on production aircraft, had already ordered the type, and an initial series of redesigns, entailing a longer fuselage, a larger tail, increased armor, installation of an autopilot, and self-sealing fuel tanks, had resulted in an airplane which bore little resemblance to its earlier iteration.

The new version, first flying on October 20, 1941, sustained in-flight structural failure during a test flight two months later, on December 21, forcing its pilot to parachute to safety, and during demonstrations of the first six production aircraft, it had been determined that the 40-percent gross weight increase, from the 7,122 pounds of the initial version to the 10,220 pounds of the current one, had been dangerously excessive.

                The aircraft, appearing in its initial SB2C-1 guise, had been an all-metal, mid-wing monoplane powered by a single, 14-cylinder, air-cooled, two-row, Double Wasp, 1,700-hp Wright R-2600-8 piston engine which drove a three-bladed propeller.  The wings, which folded to facilitate aircraft carrier storage, featured inboard, split flaps for dive-bombing profiles and outboard ailerons and their fuel tanks had been self-sealing.  Crew had been accommodated in fore and aft, greenhouse-style canopy cockpits, and the tail-dragging configuration had sported an under-fuselage, stinger-type-arresting hook.  Armament had included four 12.7-mm, wing-installed Browning machine guns, a 1,000-pound bomb bay-stored bomb, and a flexible mount in the rear cockpit.

                All of the 200 SB2C-1s built had been used for pilot training.

                The succeeding SB2C-1C, of which 778 had been produced, had featured additional fuel tankage and had been the first to enter combat, its initial raid targeting the Japanese stronghold of Rabaul on November 11, but the design had been woefully underpowered.

                The singularly-produced SB2C-2 had been intended for amphibian operation with floats, while the SB2C-3, attempting to rectify the basic design’s power deficiency had been equipped with a four-bladed Curtiss Electric propeller run by a 1,900-hp R-2600-20 engine.  Entering service in 1944, the type had enjoyed a considerable production run, of 1,112.

                The SB2C-4, the most extensively produced variant with 2,045 airframes, had featured a 36.8-foot overall length and a 49.9-foot wingspan, whose perforated flaps had minimized dive-induced buffeting.  Powered by the previous version’s R-2600-20 engine, the 16,616-pound fighter, armed with two wing-mounted, 20-mm cannons; two aft cockpit-installed, 7.62-mm machine guns; and fuselage bay and underwing rack-carried, 2,000-pound bombs; could achieve a maximum speed of 295 mph and cover up to 1,165 miles.

                The SB2C-5, the last major variant to have been built, had introduced a fuel capacity increase.  Nine hundred seventy had been produced.

                Navy Squadron VB-17, based on the aircraft carrier Bunker Hill, had been the first to successfully operate the SB2C Helldiver, launching 23 aircraft, divided into six, four-unit divisions, in its first major combat campaign in November of 1943.

                During the subsequent four-month period, the type conducted dive-bombing missions to Tarawaya, Nauru, New Zealand, Truk, and the Marshall Islands, and by June of the following year, Helldiver fleets had been based on the five aircraft carriers of Bunker Hill, Essex, Hornet, Wasp, and Yorktown.  Four months later this number had increased to eight.

                Operating with TBM Avengers, the SB2Cs had succeeded in sinking the super battleship, Musashi, and later claimed 44 air-to-air victories, having achieved more shipping kills than any other aircraft type.

                Although the Helldiver had initially been plagued with an antiquated heritage and numerous design deficiencies, progressively introduced modifications had rendered it an effective dive-bomber which had been instrumental in many Pacific theatre victories.

                As a solution for Naval Air Station Wildwood’s accident rate, however, it had only served to produce the opposite effect: with the introduction of the aircraft to the training program, the number of pilot training fatalities had increased!

                The Combined Bombing Squadron Fifty-Two (VC-52), arriving at the station in September of 1943, commenced gunnery and torpedo training with the base’s third major carrier-based fighter, the Grumman TBF-1 Avenger.

                Sparked by the Navy’s requirements for a powerful torpedo bomber with a 300-mph speed, a 1,000-mile range with a maximum 2,000-pound payload, a 30,000-foot service ceiling, and an internal weapons bay, the aircraft, designated XTBF-1 and designed by Grumman’s Iron Works, had appeared with a rugged fuselage and a Wright 14-cylinder, 1,700-hp, double row radial R-2600-8 engine.  Its wings, whose large area had resulted in simplistic flying characteristics, had folded flat against the airframe in order to reduce required carrier storage space, and its armament had consisted of three .30-caliber machine guns, one of which had been mounted on the nose and fired through the propeller arc, one of which had been located in the belly and fired rearward, and one of which had been installed as a rear gunner turret.  Because of its mid-wing mounting, sufficient internal space had been created to store a 2,000-pound torpedo, four 500-pound bombs, or additional fuel, and the three-person crew had encompassed the pilot, the rear gunner, and the bombardier/belly gunner.

                The first production aircraft, designated TBF-1, had first flown on August 1, 1941, and the insatiable need for this very capable fighter had required additional manufacturing capability in the form of a General Motors production line.  So manufactured, it had been designated TBM-1, and had first appeared in this guise in late-1942.

                The modified TBF-1C, with fuel tank provision in the bomb bay, as well as two wing integral tanks, had increased capacity from 335 to 726 gallons, resulting in a coincident range increase, and the single, .30-caliber machine gun had been replaced by two, .50-caliber, wing-mounted units, as well as an additional one for the turret.  The General Motors-manufactured counterpart had been designated TBM-1C.

                The ultimate, and numerically most produced, variant, the TBM-3, had featured a 40-foot, 11.5-inch overall length and a 54.2-foot wingspan.  Powered by a 1,900-hp Wright R-2600-20 engine, the aircraft, used for reconnaissance, scouting, and torpedo and glide bombing, had been equipped with a forward-facing, dorsal and ventral machine gun, as well as wing hard points for rockets or drop tanks.  With a 17,895-pound gross weight, it could climb at 2,060 feet-per-minute, cruise at a maximum, 276-mph speed, and fly 1,000-mile sorties.  Some 4,657 had been produced.

                Although only six Grumman TBF Avengers had been delivered in time for the June 4, 1942 Battle of Midway, five had been destroyed in two separate missions, while the sixth had succeeded in dropping its torpedo before returning to base with little more than its trim tab to provide longitudinal control.

                Two months later, on August 24, 26 aircraft had been launched from the Saratoga and Enterprise carriers near the Solomon Islands, sinking the light carrier Ryugo on the second of four strikes with a torpedo.

                And yet three months later, in November, the 37,000-ton Hiei, leading Japanese naval forces, had been destroyed after multiple strikes by Avengers in the Battle of Guadalcanal.

                In the North Atlantic, the type, operating from the USS Bogue, had destroyed some 30 submarines and ripped a cavernous hole in the Japanese transport, I-52.  

                One of the most famous Avenger pilots, George H. W. Bush, had been shot down on September 2, 1944 over Chichi Jima after take off from the USS San Jacinto, although he had successfully parachuted to safety.

                Two months later, the aircraft had been instrumental in sinking the Japanese battleship, Musashi, in the Battle of the Subuyan Sea.

                The final testament to the type’s ruggedness and torpedo-launching capability had occurred on April 7, 1945 when a fleet of Avengers had destroyed the battleship Yamato and the cruiser Yahagi during their journey to Okinawa.

                Of the 9,836 Avengers produced, 7,546 had been built by General Motors.

                The fourth major aircraft to be used at Naval Air Station Wildwood, perhaps attempting to rectify the earlier SB2C’s flaws, had offered diametrically opposed efficiency and performance.  Its speed and capability, unduplicated by any present fighter, had enabled it to outrun and outclimb any propeller-driven enemy aircraft.  That aircraft had been the Chance-Vought F4U Corsair.

                Based upon the US Navy Bureau of Aeronautics requirement for a high-performance, carrier-based fighter submitted to the Vought-Sikorsky Division of the United Aircraft Corporation, the proposed design, designated the V-166-A, had projected use of the air-cooled, Pratt and Whitney R-1830 Wasp radial engine because of its service reliability, but speed targets could only be met with the much larger XR-2800-4 Double Wasp.  Hitherto the world’s most powerful piston powerplant, it had developed more than 100 hp per cylinder, of which there had been 18, requiring a 13.4-foot diameter, three-bladed Hamilton Standard Hydromatic propeller.  Although it had required considerable ground clearance because of its size, the very purpose for which a carrier-based fighter had been designed had dictated short, robust landing gear struts to withstand the rapid, often deck-pounding contact and almost instantaneous deceleration required of such an operation.  As a result, these parameters had dictated conflictive design solutions, and engineers had only been able to ensure both sufficient propeller clearance and short enough undercarriage linkage by introducing a gull wing configuration, which had coincidentally improved the aircraft’s aerodynamic characteristics, thereby augmenting higher operational speeds.  It had been the first to feature flushly stored wheels in the retracted mode.

                The Pratt and Whitney engine, whose air inlet had been located in the wing root, closely conformed to the fuselage’s circular shape.

                First flying on May 29, 1940 in prototype form, the aircraft, designated XF4U-1, had been powered by the 1,850-hp R-2800-4 engine and had featured a greenhouse-type cockpit and four .50-caliber Colt-Browning machine guns, two of which had been installed in the nose and two of which had been located in the wings.

                The first production standard version, the F4U-1, had been powered by the 2,000-hp R-2800-8 and had featured exclusively wing-mounted armament.  Taking to the skies on July 31, 1942, it had been the first fighter to exceed 400 mph in level flight.

                Several subsequent versions had been offered.  The F4U-2, for example, had been intended for night missions, while the F4U-3 had been designed for high-altitude operations coupling its 2,000-hp R-2800-16 Double Wasp engine with two Bierman model 1009A turbo-superchargers.  Because of its mechanical difficulties, it had eroded its performance and the variant had been quickly discontinued.

                The F4U-4, a fighter-bomber version, had featured a 33.8-foot overall length and a 41-foot wingspan, which had rendered a 314-square-foot area.  Its 2,100-hp R-2800-18W engine, driving a four-bladed propeller, had been equipped with methanol-water injection, thus producing a five-minute, war-emergency rating of 2,450 hp and resulting in a maximum, 446-mph airspeed.  Its service ceiling had been 41,500 feet.

                The F4U-5, the definitive version, had featured a five-inch longer fuselage; a two-degree, downward-angled engine to increase stability; duralumin outer wing panels and control surfaces to cater to its higher speeds; and a 2,350-hp, dual supercharger-equipped Pratt and Whitney R-2800-32W engine.  The type had a 45,000-foot service ceiling.

                In January of 1945, an additional $500,000 appropriation had enabled Naval Air Station Wildwood to expand and acquire new equipment, including weapons, tactics, link trainers, a 20-mm gunnery school, and a catapult and arresting gear to foster carrier landing practice at its Georgetown Auxiliary Field.  Part of this appropriation had been used to acquire rocket-equipped F4U Corsairs.

                Although the station had originally been designed for 108 officers, 1,200 enlisted men, and 72 aircraft, these numbers had swelled to 443, 2,497, and 154, respectively, and by October of 1944, take offs and landings had peaked at 16,994.  Dive bombing target practice had occurred along the Atlantic and Delaware Bay coasts, while a lighting system at an affiliated field had enabled pilots to perfect night carrier landings.

                When the respective training had been completed, the pilots, now arranges in air groups, had transferred to their assigned aircraft carriers.

III. Naval Air Station Wildwood Aviation Museum 

                When victory had closed the doors on World War II’s theaters in 1945, the Navy had discontinued its training programs at Naval Air Station Wildwood and by December of the following year, it had been deactivated, its 109 buildings having been declared surplus.  Of these, 79 had been offered by the War Assets Administration, which had intermittently acquired the property, for off-site use, while several larger structures had been given to Cape May County, which had resumed operation of the station.  Hanger Number One, which had been designed by architect Albert Kahn and whose construction had commenced as far back as October of 1942, had been one of them.

                Formed by bolted wood Pratt trusses subdivided into ten-foot panels at the roof level, the cavernous, 2,558,000-cubic-foot structure had been 290 feet long, 219 feet wide, and 51 feet high, and had been completed with cross-braced vertical supports at its north and south elevations and a center support, which had once provided the division between its two internal bays.  Its east and west elevations had been created by 12 full-height telescoping doors.  Aside from once housing the air station’s aircraft fleet, it had also featured offices, workrooms, and maintenance facilities.

                The hangar, having been used for several post-war purposes, had headquartered United States Overseas Airlines (USOA) between 1949 and 1964, which had provided a global route system with its own fleet and in-flight crews, and it had also briefly housed a banner-towing aircraft company.

                The subsequently abandoned structure, having fallen into a state of disrepair with rotting wood and cracked windows, had been resurrected by Dr. and Mrs. Joseph E. Salvatore in 1997, who had formed the not-for-profit Naval Air Station Wildwood Foundation to save and preserve it as a memorial to the 42 pilots who had lost their lives during their training here between 1943 and 1945, and had subsequently been listed on the New Jersey and National Register of Historic Places at the National Significance Level.  That hangar now houses the Naval Air Station Wildwood Aviation Museum, which features some 30 aircraft, engines, interactive exhibits provided by the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia, films, a library, and a gift shop.

                Of the aircraft, the Grumman F4F Wildcat, featuring a three-bladed propeller, folding wings, self-sealing fuel tanks, and six machine guns, had served at the station, and had been the first US-designed fighter capable of downing a German aircraft.

                The Consolidated PBY Catalina, a high-wing, twin-engined, hull-shaped airframe for amphibian operations, had been a patrol bomber armed with .50-caliber Browning machine guns, torpedoes, and depth charges, and had performed multi-role missions, including submarine scouting, search and rescue, and escorting.

                The Boeing-Stearman PT-17 Kaydet, built in 1943, had been the most prevalently used World War II primary trainer.  The two-person, single-engine, open cockpit biplane had served as the initial step before pilot transition to heavier, more complex equipment.

                The Vultee BT-13, often the “next step,” had featured tandem controls and instruments, and had also been extensively used.

                The Grumman TBM-3E Avenger, one of the main aircraft based at Naval Air Station Wildwood, is one of only eight designs, like the very hangar which houses it, included on the National Register of Historic Places.

                The T-28C Trojan, which had replaced the AT-6 Texan in Asia and Africa, had provided carrier landing practice, and is equipped with an arresting hook.  It had been used for close air support against enemy ground forces.

                The OE-2 Bird Dog, the military version of the four-seat, twin-bladed, high-wing, tailwheel Cessna 170, had carried white phosphorous target-marking rockets under its wings during the Vietnam War and had also been used as an observation aircraft.

                Several rotary-wing designs are also represented by the museum.  The HH-52A Seaguard amphibious search-and-rescue helicopter, for example, features a hull-like fuselage and outrigger floats and had been stationed on a US Coast Guard ice breaker.

                The AH-1 Cobra, backbone of the US Army’s attack helicopter fleet and a type still in use today, had been equipped with rocket mounts and machine guns.  Formerly part of a Vietnam “Kill Team,” it had trailed a LOACH, which had drawn ground fire.

                The Bell UH-1 Iroquois Huey, the most widely used military helicopter with more than 16,000 having been produced, had been instrumental in numerous missions, such as air assault, command and control, medical evacuation, search-and-rescue, gunship, and transport, particularly during the Vietnam War, although it is still used by the Air Force and the Marines today.

                Jet fighters are also represented.  The Lockheed T-33 Thunderbird, a low-wing, single-engine, dual-seat trainer with a bubble canopy, had progressed from drawing board to airplane in 150 days.  Its F-80C Shooting Star counterpart had served for some 40 years in more than 20 world air forces.  The museum’s example itself had served in the Yugoslavian Air Force.

                The single-engined, delta-winged McDonnell-Douglas A-4 Skyhawk, which had first entered service with the Navy in 1956, could operate from an aircraft carrier, yet deliver nuclear weapons.

                The Grumman F-14 Tomcat features dual engines and vertical tails.  The museum’s F-14A, which had entered service in 1982, had later been upgraded to F-14B standard and had been the first to exceed 7,000 takes offs and landings from the USS John F. Kennedy.

                The Northrop F-5E Tiger II, a lightweight supersonic fighter deployed during the Cold War, had been designed as a response to the Soviet MiG-21.

                Aside from the actual fixed and rotary wing aircraft, the Naval Air Station Wildwood Aviation Museum often hosts fly-ins, veterans’ ceremonies, historical lectures, and school field trips.

                The 1,000-acre Cape May Airport, the museum’s location, is itself of historic value, having evolved from the naval air station.  Sporting two 4,998-foot runways (1-19 and 10-28), six taxiways, and three parking ramps, the general aviation facility annually fields 39,000 movements primarily comprised of corporate, recreational, and charter aircraft, and stands as a testament to the location where fields, once cultivating corn, had later cultivated pilots whose dive-bombing skills had been instrumental in Pacific theatre and ultimate World War II victory.

Be sure to take regular postal addresses for anyone that you want to write to while you are in basic training. You will need enough stamps and envelopes to take with you that will last for nine weeks.

You will need to purchase enough pre-paid phone cards to get you by for nine weeks. It may cost you more to buy them on-base, so purchasing them ahead of time will save you money.

Don’t take your whole wardrobe with you. You will not need it while you are at basic training. Since you will probably lose quite a bit of weight while you are away at basic training, your clothes would probably not fit when you get out anyway. Just take one bag and one or two outfits. You will also need personal necessities.

If you take medication, be sure to take the original prescription bottles with you. Your name must be on the bottle.  It is also a good idea to get documentation from your doctor so that you are able to take it with you to the base.

You will need to take enough of any personal items that you might need for at least a couple of weeks. Take soap, shampoo, razors and deodorant and pack it so that you will not have problems when you go through airport security.

While you are gone, you should have a friend or family member that will pay your bills. If you cannot arrange this, you might want to set up automatic bill pay. You will save money by cancelling your cable or satellite television and newspaper subscriptions, along with closing out any accounts that you won’t use while you are gone.

You will want to give your current employer a two-week notice. Leaving them on good terms will result in a good reference somewhere down the road.

You will need to take a copy of your recruiting contract when you go to the army base. In fact, you should remember to do this throughout your military career.

Others who have been through the basic training process can provide you with some survival advice.

Don’t go out and party the last night that you are at home. When you arrive at basic training, you should be well rested and ready for work. (It is a good bet that you won’t get much rest for a few weeks.)
Finally, be sure to spend some quality time with your family before you leave.

Your recruiter will probably have a checklist for you to follow. It is important to read all of the material that they give to you and be sure to follow any important instructions.  When you arrive at basic training, you will not have an opportunity to remember anything you might have forgotten. Be sure that you have everything that you need to get through the next nine weeks.

By the time you’ve figured out that this is not the optimum opportunity, or that the company you have connected with is les than honorable, someone has already billed your credit card (sometimes twice) and they are nowhere to be found. It’s enough to make even a priest swear for the frustration you’ve endured.

After awhile, you sit back and learn from these lessons. One thing I’ve learned is that life is short. It’s too short to spend crabbing about the money you let slip away. One guy I knew once said, “I can always make more money. But I can’t make more time.” The best you can do is let it go and move on. As they say, sometimes you’re the windshield; sometimes you’re the bug.

Another thing I learned from a good friend was how to make decisions that involved a little risk. Risk is okay if everything goes just like you planned it, but that doesn’t always happen. Think about the last time you took a financial risk. If the risk had paid off, you’d be congratulating yourself on how wise you were and how your business savvy is the thing books are written about. And you’d have the car, the house, the vacations and experience to prove it. All your friends would be asking you for advice (as well as a loan for this, that, or the other) and you’d be feeling pretty good.

What happened? You took a risk, made a decision and you lost a little bit of money. Okay. Go back to paragraph three and as they say, “Cry me a river, build a bridge, and get over it.” Move onward rather than staying in the same place beating yourself up over a small financial misstep. If the worst thing that happened is you lost a little bit of money (or a lot of money), but you’re still above the grass and you didn’t lose any limbs in the process, you’re doing pretty good. One of my mentors essentially told me, “When you’re making a decision one way or another (say, whether to invest or not to invest), figure out the worst possible thing that can happen if you do the one thing. If you can live with that, then the decision to do that one thing is not all that bad a decision.”

Now this may sound easy, and sometimes it is easier to say it than to live it out. I have made major decisions about buying or selling a house, moving from one city to another, whether to take one job or another, and although it seemed like I was clueless at the time, I was able to rest in the knowledge that I could live with the worst possible scenario in the last twelve years.

There is one last thing about risk. Think about sitting on your porch as an old man or old woman thinking, “I could’ve done ___, but I was afraid to take a risk.” This is the final principle I use when I make a decision that has inherent risk. I knew a friend in the Royal Air Force that tried out for the SAS, the Special Air Service. This is the equivalent to our Navy Seals. The training is intense both physically as well as emotionally. He was already established in his career field and I, as a young US Airman in the US Air Force, asked him why he would go through the entire struggle to attain something like that. His response was that he didn’t want to end up on his front porch thinking, “I could have done this, but there was too much risk and I was afraid to try.”

Whenever I am afraid to make a certain decision because of the risk involved, I think of that guy. And I use the principles I already discussed and move forward.

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If you are a single guy and you want your dating life to pick up, then you might as well make the move now. Let’s face it. Staying home and watching re-runs is not something you would talk to your co-workers come Monday morning.

Day by day, week by week, month after month, men want to socialize. They see the girl they want but they are too afraid to even ask her out. This is not the right direction to take off from. You have to learn to approach gorgeous women.

If you feel that you are one of those men who simply go through routine and that each day turn out to be just like the previous one, then you must make your phone ring and start taking that first step to approach gorgeous women. You can begin by asking for that beautiful woman’s number.

If you’ve been to a couple of blind dates gone bad, don’t throw in the towel just yet. There’s no harm in meeting women in various places, bars and clubs beings the most popular. Then again, there are also relationships that begin in libraries and museums. There’s no sure place on where sparks can flair up.

On that note, take the risk to approach gorgeous women and go out on a date with that beautiful woman you’ve been meaning to ask. The worse answer you can get is no. Who knows you might get a yes? IF that happens, then score! You’ll get a proper date.

You can be those men you admire. Men who seem to get the women every time. If you’ve seen the movie “Hitch” starring Will Smith, you will learn that whatever he says there does make sense: “Any man can sweep any woman off her feet.” It’s all about learning to approach gorgeous women and saying the right thing at the right time.

You do not have to be the best looking guy in the dating scene to approach gorgeous women. You don’t even have to be the smartest or the richest either. You can work with what you have and make the most beautiful woman out there melt like putty in your hands.

All this is possible as long as you know how to approach gorgeous women and you know what to do when you’re asking that beautiful and sexy woman you fancy out.

Be confident. Women can smell fear. Get rid of that phobia to approach gorgeous women. Don’t be too conscious. If you start feeling conscious, chances are you’ll fumble around her. Don’t be over-confident either. This is a turn off for some women.

Don’t forget your etiquette. Smart and beautiful women are intimidating enough so it makes sense to show them that you are at your own class. Open doors for them. Hold their chairs as they sit down. Try reaching out for their hands when walking. Put yourself in the danger zone when you’re crossing the street. Those little things matter.

Soon enough, you will notice that you and the woman you fancy are getting closer and closer. Just don’t try too hard, smart and beautiful women can decipher the facade. Basically, just be yourself and you’re good to go.

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Now I know that there are no guarantees in the stock market, but if you follow certain strategies, you can be 90% sure that the stock will appreciate. With this particular agricultural stock, it was almost the perfect stock, and I was 99.9% sure that the stock would produce monumental gains. Sure enough, the stock exploded almost 130% higher in about a year. And this stock was not some risky penny stock trading at less than a dollar a share. This stock was trading at about $70 a share at the time I advised my friends to buy it. So below are the 10 surefire rules I employ to build enormous gains in investment portfolios.

(1)Buy When Fear is Rampant, Sell When Mania is the Greatest

Every investing course should be accompanied by a psychology course as well. The most difficult thing to do in investing is to buy more when fear and panic is rampant and to sell when mania is the highest. Stock markets and asset classes cycle in peaks and troughs. Most people will not buy stocks until after stocks are plastered all over the news and after they have just risen by 30%, 40%, 50% or more, believing that they will rise higher forever. Buying at the troughs when nobody is talking about a stock or during steep corrections provides a low-risk, high-reward setup for your portfolio.

(2)Learn What Your Neighbor is Doing, Watch Investment Shows on MSNBC and Bloomberg on TV, Listen to the Recommendations of Your Financial Consultant – Then Make Sure that You Don’t Have a Single Thing in Common With Their Strategies

If you are one of the thundering sheep herd and perpetually follow the mindless actions of others, you are virtually guaranteed to lose money or forever relegate your portfolio to average to below-average returns. The surest way to build an investment fortune is to buy asset classes and stocks when nobody is discussing them and to sell them when everyone is talking about them. This requires a nose for market timing. Is market timing impossible as all the global investment firms always tell you? Hardly. Learning what asset classes and individual stocks are poised to skyrocket every year just takes a little bit of time, but is really not that difficult. Since time is a commodity that Private Wealth Mangers and Financial Consultants employed by large commercial investment houses lack, they tell you that market timing is impossible merely because they don’t have the time to perform the necessary research.

However, purchasing stocks that are likely close to cyclical bottoms instead of believing that market timing is impossible and indiscriminately buying stocks will easily add another 10% in returns to your portfolio per year. Do you really believe that you can make a fortune by buying any stock that is advertised on a TV program watched by millions of investors worldwide? Ultimately, if you own the same stocks as your neighbor to the right, your neighbor to the left, the talking head on TV, and the talking head at your commercial investment firm, then are doing something the proper things to build an investment fortune.

If you don’t seek out stocks and asset classes at times when nobody is considering them, you will never make serious money in investing. You may make 10% a year or maybe even 15% a year but if you want to enter the world of the big boys and earn 25% or more in annual returns, you have to dig a lot deeper than your investment peers. Just a couple of months ago (June 25, 2007) this email landed in my inbox from a big investment newsletter publisher. “Over the past week, I’ve crisscrossed northwestern Canada looking for the next great investment. I’m up here to find out what everyone’s invested in. And after attending an investment conference in Vancouver last week, I can tell you absolutely that no one is interested in gold…Base and minor metals will continue to be the best place to have your money over the next few years. Gold, as a virtually useless metal that has few industrial uses, appears to have hit its peak and could be running sideways for years like it has many times in the past.”

Then, in August, when the HUI (the major AMEX gold index) took a sharp hit in response to global market corrections, everyone proclaimed that gold was no longer a safe haven and that gold was “done”. Now, just a one-month later, on September 26, 2007, a lot of people are talking about gold’s strong rapid surge. So was the newsletter that ended up in my mailbox that proclaimed gold as dead in June right in June but terribly wrong in September? The answer is neither. The only person that is wrong is you if you blindly listen to talking heads that end up in your inbox or that you watch on TV. The fact is that little-discussed asset classes and stocks are ignored because perhaps 1 out of 1000 investors truly understand them, and even the ones that parade as experts on TV have been more terribly wrong about their calls than right. So it’s up to you to get off your proverbial bum and learn how to invest for yourself. Chasing stocks higher and buying when everyone else is speaking about them is a sure way to lose money. And so is listening to talking heads. Learn a system that teaches you to buy assets when everyone is ignoring them and you’ll outperform everyone else.

(3)Concentrate, Don’t Diversify

If you’ve read the paragraph above, you already realize that Private Wealth Managers and Financial Consultants are in short supply of time as they partake in the race to gather as many assets as possible for their respective firms. Thus, this is the reason they employ the rule of diversification for your portfolio. U.S. Navy SEALs will tell you that during an operation exfil exercise, the easiest way out is rarely the safest way out. The same holds true in investing, yet diversification is by far and away, the easiest investment strategy that anyone could possibly teach to tens of thousands of financial consultants. Certainly, diversification cannot be a complex strategy if tens of thousand consultants from varied backgrounds and industries can all efficiently apply this concept to their clients’ portfolios with very little training. Diversification is the biggest cop-out investment strategy of all time. It screams of incompetence and lack of skill – “I have no idea what asset classes are going to perform well this year so I’m going to invest you in everything under the sun.”

Assume everyday, a NBA coach looked at his active roster of 12 players and said, “I have no idea who are the best players. Because I don’t know, and don’t care to take the time to figure it out, I’m going to ensure that all 12 players share equal time every game.” This coach is unlikely to win many games versus the coach that takes the time in training camp to assess who his best 5 players are and then consequently plays these 5 players the majority of minutes during every game. This is the difference between diversification and concentration. The coach that diversifies may win some games based upon pure luck because maybe he has a couple great players that can make up for the deficiencies of the poor players he puts on the court every night. Still, most nights, the deficiencies of the poor players will drag down the performance of the excellent players.

However, the coach that concentrates and puts his best players on the court every night will be able to field a team every night that has an excellent chance of winning. This is why we concentrate in investing. To give us the best possible chance of winning. Diversification will never achieve this.Study the best investors in the world. The best investors in the world always manage their own money and they concentrate their portfolios in the best asset classes every year. Don’t believe the hype about diversification – diversification stinks, it doesn’t protect your portfolio, and it certainly will never make you wealthy.

(4)Learn Everything You Can About the Relationship Between Politics and Stocks

On September 18, 2007, the U.S. Federal Reserve cut the Federal Funds Rate (the rates banks borrow from each other and the rates the rates banks loan to customers) by 50 basis points. The U.S. stock markets soared that day, followed by strong surges in Asian markets the following morning. The interest rate cut undoubtedly was not just motivated by a desire to manufacture stability and confidence in the U.S. economy, but also motivated by politics. If you don’t understand what I mean by this, then you have homework to do.

Governments and corporations in every major global economy in the world have formed relationships that have since been coined as “corporatocracies”. Politics has a major hand in all of the following: interest rate cuts, interest rate increases, the price of oil, the price of gold, the valuation of the Euro, the valuation of the dollar, the valuation of the Pound Sterling, permits to mine uranium in Australia, defense spending for national security, decisions to go to war, and contracts awarded to corporations. If you don’t understand politics, you cannot possibly understand global macro-economic trends and what asset classes and stocks offer the best low-risk, high-reward opportunities year after year. The lack of understanding of politics is what causes Chief Investment Officers of major commercial investment houses to make poor calls in the direction of commodity prices and the direction of global economies. Understand politics and your investment returns should increase tremendously.

(5)Learn Everything You Can About Gold as an Investment.

Gold, as an investment, is perhaps the most misunderstood and poorest understood asset class in the world. Some people believe that the physical commodity is the only way to invest in this asset, and as such, only put money into the paper gold ETFs. Other people that invest in gold stocks don’t understand the differences in price behavior between the juniors and majors; explorers, developers, and producers; hedged and unhedged companies; and the political risk of operating in different countries. Therefore, they never understand the risk-reward quotient of their gold portfolio, sell out during steep corrections, always lose money, and think that gold investments are speculative and stink. Furthermore, they don’t understand that short-term manipulation of prices of the underlying commodity and stocks can’t change the long-term outlook and performance. However, learn how to buy and sell this asset class properly and you will be rewarded as no other asset class can reward you

Article continued under same title, part II. To read the rest of the article, merely perform a search for “10 Surefire Ways to Make an Investment Fortune, Part II) or visit us at http://www.theundergroundinvestor.com

Unlike other martial arts, students of Thai don’t earn belts for their skills and their progression.  Instead, their skills are tested in the ring.  Since Thai fighting first began, the only things that the fighters themselves are interested in are the championship belts which showcase their dominance in Muay Thai fighting.

The skills that are taught with Muay Thai are far more dominant to other striking based martial arts.  Muay Thai uses very little grappling, but focuses more on crushing kicks, punches, and bone shattering elbows.  Students of Thai fighting can often take an opponent down with just one shot, often times breaking bones and sometimes even killing them with just one lethal kick or elbow.

The reason why Muay Thai didn’t utilize ground grappling or submission holds is because it was developed in ancient battlegrounds where there were always multiple attackers.  These attackers were knowledgeable in sword fighting skills, which made the need for a dependable martial art more or less a necessity.

Muay Thai used swords, spears, sticks, and hard strikes.  In this type of environment, you didn’t want the fight to go to the ground.  The strikes and weapon movements needed be fast, hard, and very precise.  With these types of conditions and the type of environment, Muay Thai needed be a very fast responsive martial art with an excellent weapons system.

Even though grappling and submissions were planned for Muay Thai, the martial art became more of a ring sport before grappling could be implemented.  With Thai originally being a martial art for striking purposes, a lot of martial artists have started using the techniques that have been proven time and time again with time boxing.

Although there are other martial arts that put a lot of emphasis on striking, Muay Thai is quite different.  The first area in which Muay Thai differs is the effective use of both elbows and knees.  The elbows and knees that are used with most Thai techniques are feared all around the world by boxers and other stylists.

Kicking and kneeing is the main objects in Muay Thai.  In order to become efficient with kicking, the shins need to be conditioned – which can be quite painful.  Once the Thai stylist has conditioned the nerves in his shins for impact, the shins can be used just like a club or a baseball bat.  This is something you should really see for yourself in action – as the sound of the impact alone can send chills down your back.

Through years of training and conditioning, Muay Thai fighters can become lethal and deadly weapons.  A properly trained fighter can make deadly impact, meaning that his knees, shins, and elbows are quite possibly deadlier than a gun or other type of weapon.  For this very reason – Muay Thai is one of the deadliest and most feared martial arts in the world.

All in all, Muay Thai is a great martial art for defense and competition.  Thai is one of the best martial arts in the world, proving it time and time again – in both ancient times and anytime it is used today.