Irving L. Branch
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Irving L. Branch
Irving Lewis Branch (1 August 1912 – 3 January 1966) was a United States Air Force general. A graduate of the Norwich University, he served in the China Burma India Theater during World War II. After the war was the chief of staff of Armed Forces Special Weapons Project, deputy commander of the Air Force Special Weapons Center, and the head of the Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion Office. In 1959 he assumed command of the US Air Force Flight Test Center, where he was in charge of the X-15 program and the first test flight of the experimental B-70 Valkyrie supersonic bomber. He died on active service when his T-38 Talon jet crashed into Puget Sound. Early life Irving Lewis "Twig" Branch was born in Keokuk, Iowa, on 1 August 1912, the son of Gordon Irving Branch, a chemical and electrical engineer, and his wife Helen Lewis. He had two sisters, one of whom, Elizabeth H. Branch, became a colonel in the Women's Army Corps. He graduated from Stamford High School in Stamford, Connecticut ...
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F-111
The General Dynamics F-111 Aardvark is a retired supersonic, medium-range, multirole combat aircraft. Production models of the F-111 had roles that included attack (e.g. interdiction), strategic bombing (including nuclear weapons capabilities), reconnaissance and electronic warfare. ''Aardvark'' comes from a South African animal that has a long nose and hugs the terrain. It is an Afrikaans word that translates literally as "earth pig"—hence the aircraft's "Pig" nickname during its Australian service. Developed in the 1960s by General Dynamics under Robert McNamara's TFX Program, the F-111 pioneered variable-sweep wings, afterburning turbofan engines, and automated terrain-following radar for low-level, high-speed flight. Its design influenced later variable-sweep wing aircraft, and some of its advanced features have become commonplace. The F-111 suffered problems during initial development, largely related to the engines. A fighter variant intended for the Unite ...
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Armed Forces Special Weapons Project
The Armed Forces Special Weapons Project (AFSWP) was a United States military agency responsible for those aspects of nuclear weapons remaining under military control after the Manhattan Project was succeeded by the Atomic Energy Commission on 1 January 1947. These responsibilities included the maintenance, storage, surveillance, security and handling of nuclear weapons, as well as supporting nuclear testing. The AFSWP was a joint organization, staffed by the United States Army, United States Navy and United States Air Force; its chief was supported by deputies from the other two services. Major General Leslie R. Groves, the former head of the Manhattan Project, was its first chief. The early nuclear weapons were large, complex, and cumbersome. They were stored as components rather than complete devices and required expert knowledge to assemble. The short life of their lead-acid batteries and modulated neutron initiators, and the heat generated by the fissile cores, preclu ...
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Civil Engineering
Civil engineering is a regulation and licensure in engineering, professional engineering discipline that deals with the design, construction, and maintenance of the physical and naturally built environment, including public works such as roads, bridges, canals, dams, airports, sewage systems, pipelines, structural element, structural components of buildings, and railways. Civil engineering is traditionally broken into a number of sub-disciplines. It is considered the second-oldest engineering discipline after military engineering, and it is defined to distinguish non-military engineering from military engineering. Civil engineering can take place in the public sector from municipal public works departments through to federal government agencies, and in the private sector from locally based firms to Fortune Global 500, ''Fortune'' Global 500 companies. History Civil engineering as a discipline Civil engineering is the application of physical and scientific principles for solv ...
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Bachelor Of Science
A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, B.S., B.Sc., SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree that is awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University of London in 1860. In the United States, the Lawrence Scientific School first conferred the degree in 1851, followed by the University of Michigan in 1855. Nathaniel Shaler, who was Harvard's Dean of Sciences, wrote in a private letter that "the degree of Bachelor of Science came to be introduced into our system through the influence of Louis Agassiz, who had much to do in shaping the plans of this School." Whether Bachelor of Science or Bachelor of Arts degrees are awarded in particular subjects varies between universities. For example, an economics student may graduate as a Bachelor of Arts in one university but as a Bachelor of Science in another, and occasionally, both options are offered. Some universities follo ...
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Northfield, Vermont
Northfield is a New England town, town in Washington County, Vermont, United States. The town lies in a valley within the Green Mountains and has been home to Norwich University since 1866. It contains the Northfield (CDP), Vermont, village of Northfield, where over half of the population lives. The town's total population was 5,918 at the 2020 United States Census, 2020 census. History Northfield was chartered in 1781. The community was named after Northfield, Massachusetts. Northfield, was settled between 1785 and the 1820s by Yankees from Connecticut, Massachusetts, and older Vermont towns. The period saw the development of four distinct villages: South Village, Center Village, Factory Village, and Northfield Falls. South Village, with numerous small businesses, became the first to have a distinct identity. Center Village followed, where the first post office, town clerk’s office, and churches were established, coming to serve as Northfield's social and political center. Fac ...
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Stamford, Connecticut
Stamford () is a city in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States, outside of New York City. It is the sixth-most populous city in New England. Stamford is also the largest city in the Western Connecticut Planning Region, Connecticut, Western Connecticut Planning Region, and Connecticut's second-most populous city, behind Bridgeport, Connecticut, Bridgeport. With a population of 135,470, Stamford passed Hartford, Connecticut, Hartford and New Haven, Connecticut, New Haven in population as of the 2020 United States Census, 2020 census. It is in the Greater Bridgeport, Bridgeport–Stamford–Danbury metropolitan statistical area, which is part of the New York metropolitan area, New York City metropolitan area (specifically, the New York–Newark, NY–NJ–CT–PA Combined Statistical Area). As of 2023, Stamford is home to eight Fortune 500, ''Fortune'' 500 companies and numerous divisions of large corporations. This gives it the largest financial centre, financial district i ...
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Stamford High School (Stamford, Connecticut)
Stamford High School is a high school, founded in 1873, in Stamford, Connecticut. It is one of three public high schools in the Stamford Public Schools district, along with Westhill High School and Academy of Information Technology and Engineering (AITE). History In 1878 the Stamford Town Committee decided to create a high school for the growing community after deciding there was the lack of sufficient secondary education. They created Stamford High School the following year in a single rented room. Students attending SHS starting in 1874 had one teacher who taught reading, spelling, arithmetic, grammar, history, and philosophy. Drawing, Latin, Greek, physical geography, and geometry were added to the curriculum in 1876. In 1881 four young women comprised the first graduating class. By 1886 increasing enrollment forced a move into a new four-room building on the site of the former Franklin Elementary School. Ten years later, in 1896, a new high school building was completed ...
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The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of the longest-running newspapers in the United States, the ''Times'' serves as one of the country's Newspaper of record, newspapers of record. , ''The New York Times'' had 9.13 million total and 8.83 million online subscribers, both by significant margins the List of newspapers in the United States, highest numbers for any newspaper in the United States; the total also included 296,330 print subscribers, making the ''Times'' the second-largest newspaper by print circulation in the United States, following ''The Wall Street Journal'', also based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' is published by the New York Times Company; since 1896, the company has been chaired by the Ochs-Sulzberger family, whose current chairman and the paper's publ ...
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Women's Army Corps
The Women's Army Corps (WAC; ) was the women's branch of the United States Army. It was created as an auxiliary unit, the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC), on 15 May 1942, and converted to an active duty status in the Army of the United States as the WAC on 1 July 1943. Its first director was Colonel Oveta Culp Hobby. The WAC was disbanded on 20 October 1978, and all WAC units were integrated with male units. History The WAAC's organization was designed by numerous Army bureaus coordinated by Lt. Col. Gillman C. Mudgett, the first WAAC Pre-Planner; however, nearly all of his plans were discarded or greatly modified before going into operation because he had expected a corps of only 11,000 women. Without the support of the War Department, Representative Edith Nourse Rogers of Massachusetts introduced a bill on 28 May 1941, providing for a Women's Army Auxiliary Corps. The bill was held up for months by the Bureau of the Budget but was resurrected after the United States ...
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T-38 Talon
The Northrop T-38 Talon is a two-seat, twinjet supersonic jet trainer designed and produced by the American aircraft manufacturer Northrop Corporation. It was the world's first supersonic trainer as well as the most produced. The T-38 can be traced back to 1952 and Northrop's N-102 Fang and ''N-156'' fighter aircraft projects. During the mid-1950s, Northrop officials decided to adapt the N-156 to suit a recently issued general operating requirement by the United States Air Force (USAF) for a supersonic trainer to replace the Lockheed T-33. The bid was successful, in no small part due to its lower lifecycle cost comparisons to competing aircraft, and the company received an initial order to build three prototypes. The first of these, designated ''YT-38'', made its maiden flight on 10 April 1959. The T-38 was introduced to USAF service on 17 March 1961. The USAF is the largest operator of the T-38. Additional operators of the T-38 include NASA and the United States Navy. U.S. N ...
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B-70 Valkyrie
The North American Aviation XB-70 Valkyrie is a retired prototype version of the planned thermonuclear weapon, nuclear-armed, deep-penetration Supersonic aircraft, supersonic strategic bomber for the United States Air Force Strategic Air Command. Designed in the late 1950s by North American Aviation (NAA) to replace the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress, B-52 Stratofortress and B-58 Hustler, the six-engine, Delta wing, delta-winged Valkyrie could cruise for thousands of miles at Mach number, Mach 3+ while flying at . At these speeds, it was expected that the B-70 would be practically immune to interceptor aircraft, the only effective weapon against bomber aircraft at the time. The bomber would spend only a brief time over a particular radar station, flying out of its range before the Ground-controlled interception, controllers could position their fighters in a suitable location for an interception. Its high speed made the aircraft Blip-to-scan ratio, difficult to see on radar displa ...
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X-15
The North American X-15 is a Hypersonic speed, hypersonic rocket-powered aircraft which was operated by the United States Air Force and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as part of the List of X-planes, X-plane series of experimental aircraft. The X-15 set speed and altitude records in the 1960s, crossing the Kármán line, edge of outer space and returning with valuable data used in aircraft and spacecraft design. The X-15's highest speed, , X-15 Flight 188, was achieved on 3October 1967, when William J. Knight flew at Mach number, Mach6.7 at an altitude of , or 19.34miles. This set the Flight airspeed record, official world record for the highest speed ever recorded by a crewed, powered aircraft, which remains unbroken. During the X-15 program, 12pilots flew a combined 199flights. Of these, 8pilots flew a combined 13flights which met the Air Force human spaceflight, spaceflight criterion by exceeding the altitude of , thus qualifying these pilots as bei ...
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