Destination's Journey Military Photos

Corsair of the Royal Navy in the hangar of HMS Illustrious in 1944. Due to the use of a very robust armored deck, the volume and height were modest.

The Corsairs were a tight fit, and we can understand how the large fleet CVs 🇬🇧 quickly became obsolete in the postwar period.

On this day in 1966 American carrier aircraft began a major sustained campaign to destroy North Vietnam's fuel supplies, and the effort reveals a deep truth about how modern wars are really fought, far away from the front lines.

It started with planes launching from the carrier USS Hancock, striking petroleum storage facilities at Thanh Hoa. That was just the opening blow. In the days that followed, the campaign widened dramatically, with American aircraft hitting major fuel depots near the port of Haiphong and the capital, Hanoi, some of the most heavily defended targets in the entire country. These were not random raids. They were a deliberate, coordinated attempt to drain the lifeblood out of the North Vietnamese war effort.

The logic behind it was simple, cold, and almost mathematical. Modern militaries run on fuel. Trucks carrying supplies down the Ho Chi Minh Trail need it. Aircraft need it. Mechanized units need it. The thinking went that if you could systematically destroy a nation's oil and fuel infrastructure, you could cripple its ability to move, supply, and fight, without having to defeat every single soldier in the field. Striking at an enemy's fuel and logistics network rather than just his frontline troops had become one of the defining features of twentieth century warfare, from the bombing campaigns of World War Two onward.

But Vietnam also became a powerful lesson in the limits of that strategy. The North Vietnamese proved remarkably resilient and resourceful. They dispersed their fuel into countless small, hidden caches, buried drums, scattered storage, and improvised supply lines that were maddeningly difficult to find and destroy from the air. Bombing concentrated oil tanks is one thing. Hunting down thousands of barrels hidden across an entire countryside is another entirely. Historians still debate how much these strikes actually achieved, and many conclude the impact fell well short of what planners had hoped.

That tension is exactly why this day matters. The campaign that began on June 16, 1966 captures a hard and enduring truth of modern conflict. The war over fuel, supply, and logistics can matter every bit as much as any battle fought face to face, and an enemy who refuses to depend on big, vulnerable targets can be far harder to beat than firepower alone would suggest.

17 июня 1934 года состоялся первый полет крупнейшего в мире пассажирского самолета АНТ-20 "Максим Горький", экипаж М.М. Громова. Этот восьмимоторный самолет был способен перевозить 72 пассажира и являлся самым крупным сухопутным самолётом на тот день. За основу был взят эскизный проект пассажирского варианта ТБ-4 с четырьмя редукторными двигателями М-34Р.

Размах крыльев - 63 м, длина фюзеляжа - 32,5 м, полетный вес - 42 т, восемь моторов суммарной мощностью 7 тыс. л. с., пассажирских мест - 70, максимальная дальность полета - 2000 км, максимальная высота полета - около 6000 м. Первый совесткий самолет с автопилотом. 18 августа 1934 года, самолет стал флагманом агитэскадрильи им. М. Горького.

17 June 1942. Supermarine Spitfire Mk V., Malta.🇲🇹

A 1953 photograph of a Boeing RB-47E Stratojet during a manufacturer test flight shortly after the variant entered production.

Reparations for Iran. Paid by Republicans.

Hurricane Mark I night fighter of 85 Sqn. RAF taxiing by the light of a flare at Debden, Essex, before taking off to intercept night raiders

This is what Mogami's stern looked like in 1943. The monoplanes are Aichi E13A 'Jake' seaplanes, they first flew in 1939 and were a common scout airplane in the IJN for the entire war, with more than 1,400 being produced. Interestingly, some of them remained in service with the French from 1945 to 1947 during the First Indochina War.

The biplanes are Mitsubishi F1M 'Pete' seaplanes. These were the last biplane operated by the IJN, and nearly a thousand were built by 1944 when production stopped. They were versatile aircraft, being used as fighters, bombers, scouts, and towards the end of the war, as kamikaze aircraft.