User:Reedmalloy/Sandbox 3

Skippy's list

Gil Elvgren

Gene Stratton-Porter

Player: Baby Come Back

Eddy Grant: Electric Avenue

John Cougar Mellencamp: I Need a Lover

Brad Delp/Boston: Foreplay/Long Time

Manfred Mann: Blinded By the Light

The Hollies: Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress

The Detached Service Law, familiarly known in the Army as the "Manchu Law," was a provision of an Army appropriations act passed by Congress on 24 August 1912 that required a Detached Officers List be kept by the Army to enforce its regulation limiting the amount of time an officer could spend away from the organization in which he was commissioned. Prior to passage of the act, practice was enforced as policy, using a regulation created and enforced by War Department General Order No. 68 (26 May 1911) as a reaction to the institution of a General Staff in 1903, which many philosophically opposed in a standing army. The regulation was also intended to curb favoritism shown in embassy and other "soft living" assignments perceived as "homesteading," and affected many Army agencies and all aviation officers except those permanently assigned to the Signal Corps. The regulation varied in wording from year to year but all variations stressed that at least one-third of an officer's time in service be spent with a "troop unit." Regulations in succeeding years tended to be more complex and legalistic as challenges to the policy grew in the officer ranks, and after 1914, included all officers in the grade of colonel or lower. The regulation required an officer to serve troop duty in his "arm of the service" (branch) for at least two years in any six year period. Leave, illness, and travel time did not count towards the two required years. The Manchu Law was rigorously enforced by the General Staff and was much hated by the field forces. It was suspended during World War I and repealed by the National Defense Act of 1920. The term arose in usage comparing staff officers sent back to their regiments to bureaucrats of the Manchu dynasty ousted by revolution in China at the same time.

US Army officers were often detached from service with their regiments and assigned to staff duties in Wash, DC. These "plush" assignments were especially noticed by Congress after creation of the General Staff in 1903. Promotion-seeking officers were spending many hours politicking on Capitol Hill. To curb "homesteading," War Dept General Order No 68, promulgated 26 May 1911, required an officer's       return to field duty after no more than four years with the General Staff Corps. The next year, Sec 5 of the Army's appropriation bill (passed 24 Aug 1912) reinforced that General Order. Thus ended the Washington tours of many officers.

At the very same time, another group of bureaucrats in China were abruptly removed from their pleasant positions. China's Manchu or       Ch'ing Dynasty had been entrenched in Peking 2-1/2 centuries longer than had the US General Staff in Washington. Thus, the Amerian Law, in the eyes of the exiled US officers, had the same effect as the Chinese Revolution and became known as the Manchu Law. See:

Elting, John R., et al. A Dictionary of Soldier Talk. NY: Scribner's, 1984. p. 194. U24E38.

Garber, Max B. A Modern Military Dictionary. Wash, DC: Garber, 1936. p. 192. U24G37.

"Origin of Manchu." Army & Navy Register (31 Oct 1936): p. 393. Per.

U.S. War Dept. General Order No 68, 26 May 1911, and Bulletin No 15, 18 Sep 1912. GO.

725 nmi 620 mi 85 mi

crash boat takedown

F-105 combat losses

Radar calibration was a highly technical process which involved checking every sector of the operating range of a station using plots of controlled flights. To calibrate a single set sometimes required as much as 10,000 miles of flying. Performance tests charted both inner and outer ranges at which targets could be detected and accuracy tests were used to spot errors in azimuth, range, or target altitude.