1. amazonfeminist:

    The “Night Witches” was the all female Night Bomber Regiment of the Soviet Air Forces that bombed German lines in WWII. They were equipped with the worst, oldest, noisest, crappest planes in the entire world. The engines used to conk out halfaway through missions and they had to climb on the wings mid flight to restart the props. To stop germans from hearing their noisy planes and firing at them, they’d climb up to a certain height, coast down to German positions, drop their bombs, restart their engines in midair, and get out as quickly as possible. Their leader flew over 200 missions and was never captured.






    The worst is atomic war.



    This world in arms is not spending money alone.




    It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.

    It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement.








    Eisenhower on the Opportunity Cost of Defense Spending (via wilwheaton)

    I think the speech is worth quoting in more detail.

    What’s interesting is that Eisenhower cut defense spending to cool down the arms race with the USSR, hoping thereby to build trust so that matters like the Korean crisis could be resolved by diplomacy and negotiation rather than war. But it wasn’t until Reagan massively increased defense spending and overheated the arms race that the Soviet Union collapsed. Of course, there are a ton of other factors (particularly internal) that led to the end of the Soviet regime, but some scholars still believe Reagan’s escalation of the arms race may have sped things up.