14. Secret Military History

1923-0722, UCMJ, John Dillinger Joins the Navy.
Gangster, John Dillinger stole a car judge asks him, “Navy or jail?” Dillinger only lasted 5-months. Goes AWOL, back to be a gangster.
1934-0722, Dillinger is Killed: Anna Sage, a brothel madam friend of Dillinger’s, agreed to cooperate with the FBI in exchange for a $10,000 (164,410-2022.) Sage and Dillinger see a movie. 29-FBI agents wait outside. He leaves the theatre, STOP, he runs, the FBI kills him.

1927-0615, Aviation, Roger, Wilco, Over and Out.
Visual aids like colored paddles, signal flares and hand signs were used for communication at the beginning aviation.
The first aviation radio traffic used Morse code. The Morse code abbreviation for “received message” was the letter, R. Voice radios replaced Morse code, the word, Roger, replaced the letter, R. The letter W, at the end of a message meant: Will comply or Wilco.
In 1927, the International Telegraph Union invented the phonetic alphabet: Able, Baker, Charlie, Dog, Easy, Fox, George, How, Item, Jig, King, Love, Mike, Nan, Oboe, Peter, Queen, Roger, Sugar, Tare, Uncle, Victor, William, X-ray, Yoke, Zebra. The letter R had an official proper name, Roger.
In WW2, all pilots used the word as part of the international ‘aviation language.’
In 1957, the military came up with its own alphabet: Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Golf, Hotel, India, Juliet, Kilo, Lima, Mike, November, Oscar, Papa, Quebec, Romeo, Sierra, Tango, Uniform, Victor, Whiskey, X-Ray, Yankee, Zulu. R became Romeo.
Pilots still use Roger.

1928-0424, Gender, Women Unfit for Canadian Military.
The Supreme Court of Canada declares that though women are indeed legal persons, they are nevertheless ineligible to serve in the Canadian Military. The Court agreed that the term "person" applies equally to humans of both genders, but the British North America Act referred specifically to "fit and qualified persons" necessarily excluding unfit and unqualified people (aka women) from joining the Military.

1930-0615, Adultery, BG Patton Has an Affair.
While stationed in Hawaii with his wife, BG (O7) Patton began an affair with his niece. He survived the scandal to become commander of the Third Army in WWII.

1932-0615, Race, Benjamin O. Davis at West Point.
Benjamin O. Davis Jr. entered West Point in 1932 as its only black cadet and spent the next four years shunned. He roomed alone, and no one befriended him. The future Tuskegee Airman and trailblazing AF general later said he was "an invisible man."
Davis, who died in 2002 at age 89, has a history-soaked resume that includes commanding the all-black 332nd Fighter Group, known as the Red Tails and becoming the first black general of the AF, which he joined in 1947. He retired as a three-star general in 1970 and was awarded a fourth star in 1998 by President Bill Clinton.
West Point graduated its first black cadet at the tail-end of Reconstruction in 1877, though no black cadet had graduated in the 20th century when Davis arrived at the academy along the Hudson River.
Some cadets clearly wanted to keep it that way.
Davis was "silenced," a coordinated shunning usually reserved for cadets who violated the honor code. He roomed by himself, and fellow cadets spoke to him only as needed. Mess hall tables with empty places would be too full for him to sit at.
"I was to be silenced solely because the cadets did not want blacks at West Point. Their only purpose was to freeze me out," Davis wrote in his 1991 autobiography. "What they did not realize was that I was stubborn enough to put up with their treatment to reach the goal I had come to obtain."
Davis wrote that while West Point administrators could maintain the silencing was not official, "they knew precisely how I was being treated."
Davis refused to buckle. He took long, solo runs through the surrounding hills, listened to his radio and wrote cheerful letters home. He graduated 35th in a class of 276.
In the end, his steely tenacity won respect from the very cadets who made his four years so difficult. His yearbook entry notes that he earned "the sincere admiration of his classmates."
Davis, a Washington, D.C., native, went on to a long career in which he persevered in the face of racism, notably with the pioneering Tuskegee Airmen.
"He tried to tell us that it was not going be easy, because we had not been accepted as full citizens of the United States," said Needham Jones, 96, who served under Davis in the 99th Pursuit Squadron in ground support and the motor pool.
"He said, 'Don't you let nobody tell you — don't you never believe — that you are inferior to anybody else,' it meant a hell of a lot to us," Jones said.
1940-0615, Race, the First Black Brigadier GEN.
Between the world wars. The “Harlem Hellfighters.” as they became known, produced the first colored general in the US Army Brigadier GEN (BG) Benjamin 0. Davis. In WW2, the unit fought in the Pacific Theater and was decorated for repulsing Japans attack on Okinawa. The war in Korea marked the last time they fought as an all-black regiment.