Journal articles on the topic 'United States. Army Air Forces. Air Force, 8th'

The article presents the United States and United Kingdom Armed Forces evolvement main trends in the warfare below the threshold of war context. The point at issue is United States Special Operations Forces (US SOF), British Army and United Kingdom Special Forces (UKSF). The focus of the research paper on: the US Theater Special Operations Commands - Special Operations Command Africa, Special Operations Command Europe and others; British Army new units - Ranger Regiment, Army Special Operations Brigade, 11th Security Force Assistance Brigade and others. The organizational and establishment of these units, their warfighting and combat training functions, tactical battle employment the spot is on. The article consciously thinks the Future Soldier British Army reform program and its role in the battle units adapting to the new type of conflicts - hybrid warfare below the threshold of war. The special attention is given to the US Military Operation in Syria (Operation Inherent Resolve) and American-British military assistance to Ukraine Armed Forces. The article is also reviewing the CIA Special Activities Center military role in Ukraine and 22nd Special Air Service regiment (UKSF) Syria combat presence.

Taiwan Air Force attempts to dress the century into the military logistics fleet management information governance challenges and solutions for the problem, I explore the Department of Defense and the Air Force General Command of the face when the United States, China, Taiwan triangular relationship and interaction development, I Taiwan, F100, F104 old multi-session retreat, an opportunity to the international situation easy to help the world's consumption of the United States, IDF130 French Mirage 2000 aircraft with 60 U.S. F16A / B fighters, 150. 1979 to 1996 while the Air Force replacement of old aircraft and the Army a total of 340 aircraft and five companies. Up to five kinds of aircraft types, there are cross-generational, cross-type, cross-border differences, and my task, repair, supplies, etc. have a direct long-term implications. Was the need to actively seek foreign buyers, so the secret meaning to contact the French Mirage 2000 fighter procurement, Taiwan also has four planes incompatible and independent logistics system? At this point the core operation of the Air Force logistics management, and supply sources and the implementation of cross-system benefits, there are still logistical bar code conversion, how to face the army in 1990, the Air Force effective governance, effective logistics to enhance the Air Force repair capability to ensure air superiority over the Taiwan Strait security and integration of armed forces combat capability. We provide this experience for the successful teaching of business management related discussions to enhance the graduate student's thinking and decision-making capacity.

The authors study the military potential of the Japanese Empire and its changes during the Pacific War in order to understand the role of the Pacific Theater of Operations in World War II. In this regard, the authors basing on the losses suffered by Japan on various fronts define the role of the USSR in the defeat of militaristic Japan. They argue that the contribution of the USSR to the victory of the Anti-Hitler coalition in Asia consists mainly in shackling significant forces of the Japanese army in Manchuria and Korea until the end of the summer of 1945, which did not allow the Japanese military to win to a large extent in the southwestern provinces of China, thereby ensuring direct communication with Burma. As for the defeat of the Japanese Air Force, which was the main striking force of Japanese militarism, there was a decisive contribution of the United States, whose Air Force also caused significant damage to Japanese industry by the summer of 1945 with strategic bombing. In this regard, the authors question the need for atomic bombing, which accelerated the surrender of Japan, but did not make it, as the authors prove, inevitable. The authors see the main reason for Japan's defeat in the strategy of its High command, putting the economy in second place. The Japanese admirals exaggerated the capabilities of carrier-based aircraft too much, which became a fatal factor for Japan in the Pacific war. The authors also claim that the actions of the Allied troops in Burma played a significant role in the defeat of Japan.

On 3 May 1945, British—Indian forces landed in Rangoon. The Japanese had pulled out. The city was liberated. On 16 June there was a victory parade, though the final victory over Japan was still distant and most of their conquests were intact. Admiral Mountbatten, Supreme Allied Commander, took the salute while detachments representing the one million men under his command passed by in massed array. Famous regiments from Britain, India and Nepal; the Royal Navy; the Royal Air Force; men from the United States Air Force. It was an impressive sight, though the ceremony took place in pouring rain. Amongst them all was a somewhat ragged band representing the Burma National Army which, having been raised by the Japanese, had fought for three months alongside the British. Watching the parade from the central dais was a young man dressed in the uniform of a Japanese Major-General, though he also wore an arm-band with a conspicuous red star. The outfit was incongruously crowned by a pith sun-helmet—a topi. Probably most foreigners present assumed he was a Chinese officer. He was actually Bogyoke Aung San, commander of the BNA.

The results of the analysis of factors influencing the emergence of dangerous situations in the air (in short, aviation incidents) in the Polish Army show a significant negative impact of the environment on the flight operations performed. The most common cause of an aviation incident in the area of the environment is the collision of the aircraft with birds. The lack of methods for the continuous monitoring and forecasting of the level of risk of collision between aircraft and birds makes a significant gap in a proactive approach to the safety of flights in the Air Force of the Republic of Poland. This paper presents an overview of the most important methods for detection and forecasting of bird flight intensity, which have been used for construction of systems aiming to prevent collisions with birds and which are employed by the air forces of the United States, the Netherlands, Belgium and Israel. An accurate analysis of the models and algorithms used in the selected methods shows contemporary trends in research on the negative impact of the environment on flight safety. These methods show incomplete usefulness in Poland’s conditions, which justifies the need to develop a more appropriate method.

Abstract A high level of flight safety is a priority for all aviation organizations in the world. The negative impact of the natural environment on air operations is one of the most common factors causing the situations exerting a negative influence on flight safety (in short-aviation occurrence) in the Polish Army. The most common reason of the aviation occurrence connected with the environment area is the bird strike. The lack of a method for real-time monitoring and forecasting bird strike risk level is a significant gap in the proactive approach to flight safety within the Polish Air Force. The article presents a review of the methods for monitoring and forecasting the intensity of bird movements, which were used to build advisory systems used by air forces of the United States, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and Israel. The article consists of summary of most important properties of the methods and analysis in terms of their applicability in the Polish conditions. Particular attention was paid to the complicated network of routes of bird species occurring on Polish territory. Finally, after proving the incomplete usefulness of the above-mentioned methods in Polish conditions, the need to develop a more adequate method was justified.

The risk management framework (RMF) applied by the United States combines the concepts of information security and risk management in the product development process. This includes the systematic structure of equipment, parts, other construction systems, facilities, and personnel, as well as the related security of cyberspace. This concept has been a concept that has been systematically applied for the completion of information security from the requirement planning stage to the destruction of the weapon system. The RMF, which should be reflected in the project of power enhancement to ensure the perfect performance of the weapons system that our military will use in the future, is unfamiliar to Republic of Korea Army (ROK). RMF is a step-level field that has not yet been based on detailed research and measures in any ROK military, such as the Army, Navy, and Air Force. However, the USFK, which is stationed in the Republic of Korea during peacetime, and the United States’ wartime reinforcement forces [Flexible Deterrence Option (FDO), Force Module Package (FMP), Time Phased Forces Deployment Data (TPFDD)], which are deployed at the request of the CFC Commander in the event of a crisis situation on the Korean peninsula and under the direction of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are thoroughly prepared for cyber threats by applying the RMF procedure. Therefore, the military should also create and apply the corresponding procedures during combined and joint operations as soon as possible. This study aims to provide a direction for the development of a categorization system, which is the most basic and important step 1 system in the RMF process, and I hope that it will help in the implementation of the Korean Risk Management Framework (KRMF) that should be applied in the future.

Most of us are aware of the medical airlifts that were practiced by the United States Air Force during the Korean and Viet Nam conflicts. Likewise, we read regularly of the air transport of one or more severely burned patients from the scene of an accident to the Burn Center at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas. But what is not generally known is the daily movement of patients who are armed forces members, or their dependents, throughout the world for the purpose of receiving sophisticated medical care, regardless of where they may be stationed.The reasons for this service are two: first, quite obviously, it is humanitarian; second, it is a way for the Air Force to maintain medical readiness for their wartime mission by exercising this system on a daily basis during peacetime. We are talking about a worldwide network whose major and minor branches sweep around the globe.Patients are air transported according to three levels of need: routine, high priority, and urgent. This article will be limited to a general description of the necessary hardware and current practices used for the urgent mission.We use three types of aircraft: the Huey helicopter for short distances; the C-9, a two-engined jet, for medium range; and the C-141, a four-engined jet, for intercontinental transport. The medical modifications to the C-9 include a built-in ramp; a nurses' station similar to that found on a hospital ward, complete with built-in drug and equipment cabinets; multiple sources for oxygen and suction; and ready communication fore and aft. Seats can be quickly removed, leaving space for litters in tiers, infant isolettes and Stryker frames.

The article examines Hungary’s modernization of Armed Forces and expansion of the capabilities of the country’s defence-industrial complex (DIC). Using the neorealistic paradigm, the author analyzes the main directions in which the Hungarian army and the MIC developed during the leadership of the Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. The 10-year development program of the Hungarian Defence Forces – Zrínyi – involves a significant increase in their capabilities by 2026. Official plans to expand and modernize the DIC include the target to make the Hungarian state one of the leaders of the defense industry in the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) by 2030. The main partners in this area are going to be companies not only from the member states of the European Union (Germany, France and the Czech Republic), but also from Turkey and Israel. Reforming the army and increasing the technological level of the DIC are primarily aimed at strengthening the country’s economy and protecting the state borders and Hungarian citizens both in Hungary itself and in Ukraine, in Transcarpathia. At the same time, the Prime Minister V. Orbán is confident that NATO’s actions can only be aimed at self-defense. This is related to the refusal of the Hungarian authorities to supply weapons to Kiev. However, Hungary is not only strengthening mechanized troops (German Lynx infantry fighting vehicles, Turkish Gidrán armored personnel carriers), the country’s Air Force (Swedish Saab JAS 39 Gripen aircraft) and Air Defense (Norwegian–American NASAMS anti-aircraft missile complex), but also, reflecting on the experience of the conflict in Ukraine, returns to the use of artillery, considers the possibility of producing drones and more ammunition on its territory, and also wants to increase the offensive potential of its Armed Forces thanks to modern multiple rocket launchers like HIMARS. Despite the fact that Hungary, according to V. Orbán, is on the side of the ‘peace party’, in the future, as part of NATO in the CEE region, there will be a modernized army with a proper defence-industrial complex, ready for a ‘new generation’ conflict. The Hungarian political opposition in turn advocates for military assistance to Ukraine and curtailing relations with Russia, while being actively encouraged by the United States.

Abstract Introduction Service members (SMs) in the United States (U.S.) Armed Forces have diabetes mellitus at a rate of 2–3%. Despite having a chronic medical condition, they have deployed to environments with limited medical support. Given the scarcity of data describing how they fare in these settings, we conducted a retrospective study analyzing the changes in glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) and body mass index (BMI) before and after deployment. Materials and Methods SMs from the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps with diabetes who deployed overseas were identified through the Military Health System (MHS) Management Analysis and Reporting Tool and the Defense Manpower Data Center. Laboratory and pharmaceutical data were obtained from the MHS Composite Health Care System and the Pharmacy Data Transaction Service, respectively. Paired t-tests were conducted to calculate changes in HbA1c and BMI before and after deployment. Results SMs with diabetes completed 11,325 deployments of greater than 90 days from 2005 to 2017. Of these, 474 (4.2%) SMs had both HbA1c and BMI measurements within 90 days prior to departure and within 90 days of return. Most (84.2%) required diabetes medications: metformin in 67.3%, sulfonylureas in 19.0%, dipeptidyl peptidase-4 inhibitors in 13.9%, and insulin in 5.5%. Most SMs deployed with an HbA1c < 7.0% (67.1%), with a mean predeployment HbA1c of 6.8%. Twenty percent deployed with an HbA1c between 7.0 and 7.9%, 7.2% deployed with an HbA1c between 8.0 and 8.9%, and 5.7% deployed with an HbA1c of 9.0% or higher. In the overall population and within each military service, there was no significant change in HbA1c before and after deployment. However, those with predeployment HbA1c < 7.0% experienced a rise in HbA1c from 6.2 to 6.5% (P < 0.001), whereas those with predeployment HbA1c values ≥7.0% experienced a decline from 8.0 to 7.5% (P < 0.001). Those who deployed between 91 and 135 days had a decline in HbA1c from 7.1 to 6.7% (P = 0.010), but no significant changes were demonstrated in those with longer deployment durations. BMI declined from 29.6 to 29.3 kg/m2 (P < 0.001), with other significant changes seen among those in the Army, Navy, and deployment durations up to 315 days. Conclusions Most SMs had an HbA1c < 7.0%, suggesting that military providers appropriately selected well-managed SMs for deployment. HbA1c did not seem to deteriorate during deployment, but they also did not improve despite a reduction in BMI. Concerning trends included the deployment of some SMs with much higher HbA1c, utilization of medications with adverse safety profiles, and the lack of HbA1c and BMI evaluation proximal to deployment departures and returns. However, for SMs meeting adequate glycemic targets, we demonstrated that HbA1c remained stable, supporting the notion that some SMs may safely deploy with diabetes. Improvement in BMI may compensate for factors promoting hyperglycemia in a deployed setting, such as changes in diet and medication availability. Future research should analyze in a prospective fashion, where a more complete array of diabetes and readiness-related measures to comprehensively evaluate the safety of deploying SMs with diabetes.

В публикации рассматриваются основные события и результаты завершающего этапа битвы за Кавказ в 1943 г. С 10 сентября по 9 октября советские войска провели Новороссийско-Таманскую наступательную операцию, которая завершилась ликвидацией Кубанского плацдарма немцев. У отечественных и зарубежных исследователей сформировались разные взгляды на итоги этого сражения. Поэтому разрешение сложившихся противоречий и определение результатов последних боев на Кубани стало целью исследования. Источниками для него послужили статистические материалы, советские и немецкие оперативные документы, воспоминания и дневники участников боев. Автору удалось проанализировать планы и соотношение сил, рассмотреть ключевые события Новороссийско-Таманской операции, сопоставить потери Красной армии и вермахта, установить результаты советского наступления и эвакуации немецко-румынских войск в Крым. The article is dedicated to the final stage of the battle of the Caucasus during the Great Patriotic War. From 10 September to 9 October 1943, Soviet troops carried out the Novorossiysk-Taman offensive operation. As a result, the liberation of Kuban was completed, and the bridgehead of German-Romanian forces that existed there was eliminated. Russian and foreign researchers have formed different views on the results of this battle. In this regard, the aim of this work was to study the course and results of the battles in the Caucasus in the fall of 1943. The main sources for it were documents from the Central Archives of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, the Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv of Germany, and the National Archives and Records Administration of the United States. Memoirs and diaries of participants in the fighting in the Taman Peninsula were also used. The research employed historical-statistical and comparative-historical methods. Firstly, the plans of the command of the Red Army and the Wehrmacht regarding the Kuban bridgehead in September 1943 were compared. The author showed that the preparation of the Soviet offensive in Kuban coincided with the decision to evacuate the 17th German Army from Taman to the Crimea. Then, the potentials of the North Caucasus Front and the 17th Army were compared: the Soviet troops had a significant advantage in technology, yet their manpower superiority remained insignificant; their defense was perfectly prepared and was called “The Blue Line”. However, the mountainous forested terrain and numerous floodplains became a significant obstacle to the Soviet offensive. Despite all the difficulties, the Red Army achieved great success at the beginning of its offensive liberating Novorossiysk, a major seaport and a strong point of the German defense. The 17th Army’s front was broken through, the German command had to speed up the withdrawal of its troops and reduce the time for evacuation to the Crimea. The Soviet navy and air force failed to disrupt the Axis maritime transportation. As a result, the main forces of the German-Romanian troops left Kuban and retained their potential. Nevertheless, the liberation of the Taman Peninsula was an important success for the Red Army and allowed the 15-month battle of the Caucasus to be completed.

Background: The primary focus of periacetabular osteotomy (PAO) literature has been survivorship until hip arthroplasty. This endpoint overlooks its impact on young, active patients. Hypothesis/Purpose: This study sought to assess the impact of the PAO on the careers of active duty members of the United States Armed Forces. Methods: A retrospective review identified 38 patients who underwent PAO performed by a single surgeon at an academic, military medical center from January 2014 through April 2017. Twenty-one of the patients were active duty United States military service members (16 female, 5 male) and had a minimum 28 months of post-operative follow-up at the time of review. Preoperative and postoperative duty restrictions were noted and referrals to the U.S Army and U.S. Air Force Medical Evaluation Boards (MEB) were queried. Results: The average age at surgery was 25.6 years (range, 19-40y). Preoperatively, sixteen patients (94.1%) were on duty restrictions, one had been referred to the MEB, and records were not available on three patients who separated from the military prior to review. Average follow-up was 3.4 years (range, 2.3 – 5.4y). Among the patients without a preoperative MEB referral, 85.0% remained on active duty (n = 12) or completed their military service commitment (n=5). Of the fourteen patients with temporary duty restrictions preoperatively, 35.7% (n=5) were relieved of their restrictions and returned to full duty and 50% (n=7) were retained on active service with permanent duty restrictions. Such permanent duty restrictions typically consisted of modifications to the aerobic component of the semiannual military fitness testing. Six patients (28.6%) were referred to the MEB including one who was referred prior to PAO. Of these patients, two were deemed fit to retain on active service with permanent duty restrictions, two were medically separated for non-hip conditions, and two were medically separated for a hip condition. The average Veteran Affairs (VA) disability score related to hip pathology in patients referred to MEB was 16% (range 0-40%). Conclusion: This is the first study to look at the PAO in active duty military service members. In patients with symptomatic acetabular dysplasia, PAO may provide an opportunity to relieve preoperative duty restrictions and allow for continued military service. Further study with the inclusion of patient reported outcomes are necessary assess the impact of the procedure in this active patient population.

FOREWORD This special issue of the Industrial and Systems Engineering Review highlights top papers from the 2020 annual General Donald R. Keith memorial capstone conference held at the United States Military Academy in West Point, NY. The conference was certainly a first of its kind virtual conference including asynchronous delivery of paper presentations followed by synchronous question and answer sessions with evaluation panels. Following a careful review of 63 total submissions, eleven were selected for publication in this journal. Unique to this year’s special edition is the mixed selection of seven project team capstone papers, and four honors research papers. Each paper incorporated features of systems or industrial engineering and presented detailed and reflective analysis on the topic. Although there are many elements which cut across the works, three general bodies of knowledge emerged in the papers including: systems engineering and decision analysis, systems design, modeling and simulation, and system dynamics. Systems Engineering and Decision Analysis topics included three unique contributions. Recognized as ‘best paper’ at the 2020 virtual conference, the work of Robinson et al. designed a multi-year predictive cost engineering model enabled through an MS O365 Power BI decision support interface to support U.S. Army Corps of Engineer (USACE) inland waterway national investment strategies. Schloo and Mittal’s work presents research in testing and evaluation of the Engagement Skills Trainer (EST) 2000 towards improving real-world soldier performance. Gerlica et al. employs a robust and scalable K-means clustering methodology to improve decision making in defensive shift schemes for Air Force Baseball outfield personnel. Systems Design works included three unique contributions. Binney et al. worked to design evaluation criteria for military occupational specialties associated with open-source intelligence (OSINT) analysts for the Army’s OSINT Office. Hales et al. interdisciplinary work aided in the design of search and identification systems to be incorporated on autonomous robotics to enable survivability improvements for the Army’s chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and explosives (CBRNE) units. Burke and Connell evaluated and designed a performance measurement-based assessment methodology for U.S. Pacific Command’s Key Leader Engagement process. System modeling and simulation included three unique contributions: Arderi et al. simulated and assessed how the Hyper-Enabled Operator (HEO) project improves situational awareness for U.S. Special Forces using the Infantry Warrior Simulation (IWARS). Blanks et al. employed a VBA module and Xpress software for a scheduling optimization model for enhancement of final exam scheduling at the U.S. Air Force Academy. Kelley and Mittal utilized a Batch Run Analysis and Simulation Studio (BRASS) program to batch multiple iterations of IWARS scenarios to study the integration of autonomous systems alongside military units. Finally, two unique contributions utilizing system dynamics (SD) modeling is presented: Dixon and Krueger developed a Vensim SD model to examine how policy recommendations across Central America could restrict gang activities while positively promoting women’s involvement in society. Cromer et al. utilized systems design approaches and a K-means clustering machine learning techniques to develop SD models in support of the U.S. Africa Command and Defense Threat Reduction Agency to examine the interdependence of threats across the Horn of Africa. Thank you and congratulations to the 2020 undergraduate scholars and all authors who provided meaningful contributions through steadfast intellectual efforts in their fields of study! Well done! LTC James H. Schreiner, PhD, PMP, CPEM Program Director, Systems and Decision Sciences (SDS) Department of Systems Engineering United States Military Academy Mahan Hall, Bldg 752, Room 423 West Point, NY 10996, USA james.schreiner@westpoint.edu

Spiro Munayyer's account begins immediately after the United Nations General Assembly partition resolution of 29 November 1947 and culminates in the cataclysmic four days of Lydda's conquest by the Israeli army (10-14 July 1948) during which 49,000 of Lydda's 50,000 inhabitants ("swollen" with refugees) were forcefully expelled, the author himself being one of those few allowed to remain in his hometown. Although the author was not in a position of political or military responsibility, he was actively involved in Lydda's resistance movement both as the organizer of the telephone network linking up the various sectors of Lydda's front lines and as a volunteer paramedic, in which capacity he accompanied the city's defenders in most of the battles in which they took part. The result is one of the very few detailed eye-witness accounts that exists from the point of view of an ordinary Palestinian layman of one of the most important and tragic episodes of the 1948 war. The conquest of Lydda (and of its neighbor, Ramla, some five kilometers to the south) was the immediate objective of Operation Dani-the major offensive launched by the Israeli army at the order of Ben-Gurion during the so-called "Ten Days" of fighting (8-18 July 1948), between the First Truce (11 June-8 July) and the Second Truce (which started on 18 July and lasted, in theory, until the armistice agreements of 1949). The further objective of Operation Dani was to outflank the Transjordanian Arab Legion positions at Latrun (commanding the defile at Bab al-Wad, where the road from the coast starts climbing toward Jerusalem) in order to penetrate central Palestine and capture Rumallah and Nablus. Lydda and Ramla and the surrounding villages fell within the boundaries of the Arab state according to the UNGA partition resolution. Despite their proximity to Tel Aviv and the fall of many Palestinian towns since April (Tiberias, Haifa, Jaffa, Safad, Acre, and Baysan), they had held out until July even though little help had reached them from the Arab armies entering on 15 May. Their strategic importance was enormous because of their location at the intersection of the country's main north-south and west-east road and rail lines. Palestine's largest British army camp at Sarafand was a few kilometers west of Lydda, its main international airport an equal distance to the north, its central railway junction at Lydda itself. Ras al-Ayn, fifteen kilometers north of Lydda, was the main source of Jerusalem's water supply, while one of the largest British depots was at Bayt Nabala, seven kilometers to its northeast. The Israeli forces assembled for Operation Dani were put under the overall command of Yigal Allon, the Palmach commander. They consisted of the two Palmach brigades (Yiftach and Harel, the latter under the command of Yitzhak Rabin), the Eighth Armored Brigade composed of the Second Tank Battalion and the Ninth Commando Battalion (the former under the command of Yitzhak Sadeh, founder of the Palmach, the latter under that of Moshe Dayan), the Second Battalion Kiryati Brigade, the Third Battalion Alexandroni Brigade, and several units of the Kiryati Garrison Troops (Khayl Matzav). The Eighth Armored Brigade had a high proportion of World War II Jewish veterans volunteering from the United States, Britain, France, and South Africa (under the so-called MAHAL program), while its two battalions also included 700 members of the Irgun Zva'i Le'umi (IZL). The total strength of the Israeli attackers was about 8,000 men. The only regular Arab troops defending Lydda (and Ramla) was a minuscule force of 125 men-the Fifth Infantry Company of the Transjordanian Arab Legion. The defenders of Lydda (and Ramla) were volunteer civilian residents, like the author, under the command of a retired sergeant who had served in the Arab Legion. The reason for the virtual absence of Arab regular troops in the Lydda-Ramla sector was that the Arab armies closest to it (the Egyptian in the south, the Arab Legion in the east, and the Iraqi in the north) were already overstretched. The Egyptian northernmost post was at Isdud, thirty-two kilometers north of Gaza and a like distance southeast of Ramla-Lydda as the crow flies. The Iraqi southernmost post was at Ras al-Ayn, where they were weakest. And although the Arab Legion was in strength some fifteen kilometers due east at Latrun, the decision had been taken not to abandon its positions on the hills between Ras al-Ayn and Latrun for fear of being outflanked and cut off by the superior Israeli forces in the plains where Lydda and Ramla were situated. Indeed, as General Glubb, commander of the Arab Legion, informs us, he had told King Abdallah and the Transjordanian prime minister Tawfiq Abu Huda even before the end of the Mandate on 15 May that the Legion did not have the forces to hold and defend Lydda and Ramla against Israeli attacks despite the fact that these towns were in the area assigned to the Arabs by the UNGA partition resolution. This explains the token force of the Arab Legion-the Fifth Infantry Company. Thus, the fate of Lydda (and Ramla) was sealed the moment Operation Dani was launched. The Israeli forces did not attack Lydda from the west (where Lydda's defenses facing Tel Aviv were strongest), as the garrison commander Sergeant Hamza Subh expected. Instead, they split into two main forces, northern and southern, which were to rendezvous at the Jewish colony of Ben Shemen east of Lydda and then advance on Lydda from there. After capturing Lydda from the east they were to advance on Ramla, attacking it from the north while making feints against it from the west. Operation Dani began on the night of 9-10 July. Simultaneously with the advance of the ground troops, Lydda and Ramla were bombed from the air. In spite of the surprise factor, the defenders in the eastern sector of Lydda put up stout resistance throughout the 10th against vastly superior forces attacking from Ben Shemen in the north and the Arab village of Jimzu to the south. In the afternoon, Dayan rode with his Commando Battalion of jeeps and half-tracks through Lydda in a hit-and-run raid lasting under one hour "shooting up the town and creating confusion and a degree of terror among the population," as the Jewish brothers Jon and David Kimche put it. This discombobulated the defenders, some of whom surrendered. But the following morning (11 July) a small force of three Arab Legion armored cars entered Lydda, their mission being to help in the evacuation of the beleaguered Fifth Infantry Company. Their sudden appearance both panicked the Israeli troops and rallied the defenders who had not surrendered. The Israeli army put down what it subsequently described as the city's "uprising" with utmost brutality, leaving in a matter of hours in the city's streets about 250 civilian dead in an orgy of indiscriminate killing. Resistance continued sporadically during the 12th and 13th of July, its focus being Lydda's police station, which was finally overrun. As of 11 July, the Israeli army began the systematic expulsion of the residents of Lydda and Ramla (the latter having fallen on 12 July) toward the Arab Legion lines in the east. Also expelled were the populations of some twenty-five villages conquered during Operation Dani, making a total of some 80,000 expellees-the largest single instance of deliberate mass expulsion during the 1948 war. Most of the expellees were women, children, and elderly men, most of the able-bodied men having been taken prisoner. Memories of the trek of the Lydda and Ramla refugees is branded in the collective consciousness of the Palestinians. The Palestinian historian Aref al-Aref, who interviewed survivors at the time, estimates that 350 died of thirst and exhaustion in the blazing July sun, when the temperature was one hundred degrees in the shade. The reaction of public opinion in Ramallah and East Jerusalem at the sight of the new arrivals was to turn against the Arab Legion for its failure to help Lydda and Ramla. Arab Legion officers and men were stoned, loudly hissed at and cursed, a not unintended outcome by the person who gave the expulsion order, David Ben-Gurion, and the man who carried it out, Yitzhak Rabin, director of operations for Operation Dani.

After seventy-two days of NATO's air campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia-Montenegro) (FRY), FRYPresident Slobodan Milošević on June 3, 1999 accepted an international peace proposal to end the conflict concerning Kosovo. The proposal was developed in Bonn after lengthy discussions between U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, EU envoy (and Finnish President) Martti Ahtisaari, and Russian envoy Viktor Chernomyrdin, and then presented to President Milosevic by President Ahtisaari and Mr. Chernomyrdin. Although it contained several elements previously unacceptable to the FRY, Mr. Milošević accepted the proposal due to a relentless bombing campaign against FRY tanks, artillery, and ground forces in Kosovo, as well as the destruction of oil refineries, bridges, and power stations elsewhere in Serbia; a resurgence of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) as a ground force; and the decision of Russia to find common ground with NATO prior to a regular meeting in early June of the seven leading industrial countries (Group of Seven or “G-7”) and Russia.

Between 1942 and 1945, over two million servicemen occupied the southern Pacific theatre, the majority of them Americans in service with the Marines, Army, Navy and Air Force. When the United States entered World War II in December 1941, they 'swept in a mighty deluge' doubling, sometimes tripling the populations of the Pacific Islands. Their short but intense period of occupation in the South Pacific had far reaching consequences. Not only did they dramatically alter the economies and environments of the islands, they also brought with them a set of ideas about race and intimacy encapsulated in legal codes, as well as social practices, which were applied to the organization of their own forces, and to the local populations. American racial ideology also informed military regulations governing overseas marriages involving US forces, most notably inhibiting African American men's marital opportunities in the European theatre.

In 2018, East Carolina University’s (ECU) Program in Maritime Studies, in partnership with the Florida Public Archaeology Network (FPAN) and veterans’ nonprofit Task Force Dagger Special Forces Foundation (TFDF), developed and undertook an underwater archaeology veterans program on WWII-related submerged sites in Saipan, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI). This program was called the Joint Recovery Team (JRT) and consisted of retired and medically retired Special Operations Forces (SOF) veterans from across the United States armed forces (i.e., Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force). The project included training 14 veterans in archaeological techniques and an intensive 2-week investigative field project, during which veterans assisted with archaeological target testing, site identification, and recording. A National Park Service (NPS) Maritime Heritage Program grant supported the training and the Department of Defense, Defense Prisoner of War/Missing in Action Accounting Agency (DPAA) financially supported the field project. Project leadership undertook training assessments including a program survey, field observations, unstructured interviews, and reflection journals. This article outlines the development of the public archaeology program, training, fieldwork, and assessments and provides a critical reflection of successes and areas for improvement.

The Leuna chemical plant in Eastern Germany was initially developed during the First World War to produce artificial nitrogen for use in explosives. The world’s first production of synthetic fuel from brown coal commenced at Leuna in 1927. From 1933 the Nazi government began to prepare for war and heavily expanded the Leuna complex to ensure that Germany had sufficient resources of fuel, nitrogen and rubber to support short campaigns. The synthetic fuel production technology developed in Leuna was also transferred to thirteen other sites in Greater Germany. Commencing on 12 May 1944 the USAAF, and later the RAF, undertook a sustained bombing campaign against Leuna and the other synthetic fuel plants. However, due to the critical importance of Leuna to the war effort, the German state devoted significant resources to the defence of the plant, and to its repair and the maintenance of production. The USAAF and RAF attacked Leuna on 21 subsequent occasions until production finally ceased in March 1945. This sustained bombing ultimately overcame the Leuna workforce’s ability to repair the utilities but did not seriously damage the core production equipment. This paper uses German, American and British archival sources to explore in detail the nature and impact of the air campaign against Leuna and to examine and explain the ways in which the Germans sought, with some success, to keep the plant operational. In addressing the bombing campaign from an alternative perspective, primarily from the ground looking up, the paper offers new insight into a topic most commonly viewed from the perspective of the Allied forces.

The Physical qualifcation standards for aviation service used by the united States Army, Navy/Marine Corps, Air Force, and Coast guard developed in parallel, diverging in many instances due to differences ranging from terminology to mission. Presently, standards and requirements for waiver vary widely between the services, in spite of minimal differences in aeromedical concerns for any given medical condition. Standardization or increased concordance between the services would have several advantages leading to more effcient and effective delivery of aviation medical support to the operational forces. This is particularly true in an increasingly joint operational environment. The authors have identifed four major hurdles that must be overcome before the concept of joint aviation physical stan- dards can be explored. These include: a difference in terminology including aviator classifcation, a difference in mission defnitions and requirements, a difference in the processes of policy development, and a difference in the review and application of those policies. These hurdles are explored, and suggestions for their mitigation are presented with open discussion following.

It is time for the truth to be brought out ... . Behind the scenes high-ranking Air Force officers are soberly concerned about the UFOs. But through official secrecy and ridicule, many citizens are led to believe the unknown flying objects are nonsense. -- Rear Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter, Director of Central Intelligence (1947-50), signed statement to Congress, 22 Aug. 1960 As an avid UFO enthusiast, an enduring subject of frustration for me is the complacency and ignorance that tends to characterise public knowledge of the phenomenon itself and its social repercussions. Its hard for people like myself to understand how anyone could not be interested in UFOs, let alone Congressional statements from ex-Directors of the Central Intelligence Agency testifying to an official policy of secrecy and ridicule (in other words, propaganda), which aims to suppress public interest and belief in UFOs. As a student of cultural studies who also happens to be a conspiracy theorist, the idea of the Central Intelligence Agency seeking to manipulate one of the twentieth century's most significant icons -- the UFO -- is a fascinating one, because it allows for the possibility that the ways in which the UFO has come to be understood by the public may involve more than the everyday cultural processes described by cultural studies. A review of the history of the CIA's interest in UFO phenomena actually suggests, quite compellingly I think, that since the 1950s, American culture (and, indirectly and to a lesser degree, the rest of the western world) may have been subjected to a highly sophisticated system of UFO propaganda that originated from the Central Intelligence Agency. This is, of course, a highly contentious claim which would bring many important repercussions should it turn out to be true. There is no point pretending that it doesn't sound like a basic premise of The X-Files -- of course it does. So to extract the idea from its comfortable fictional context and attempt to place it into a real historical one (a completely legitimate endeavour) one must become familiar with the politics of the UFO phenomenon in Cold War America, a field of history which is, to understate the matter, largely ignored by academia. A cursory glance at the thousands of (now declassified) UFO-related documents that once circulated through some of the highest channels of US intelligence reveal that, rather than the nonsense topic it is often considered, the UFO phenomenon has been a matter of great concern for the US government since 1947. To get a sense of just how seriously UFOs were taken by the CIA in the 1950s, consider this declassified 'Secret' memorandum from H. Marshall Chadwell, Assistant Director of Scientific Intelligence, to the Director of Central Intelligence, General Walter Bedell Smith, dated 24 September 1952: a world-wide reporting system has been instituted and major Air Force bases have been ordered to make interceptions of unidentified flying objects ... . Since 1947, ATIC [Air Technical Intelligence Center, a branch of the US Air Force] has received approximately 1500 official reports of sightings ... . During 1952 alone, official reports totalled 250. Of the 1500 reports, Air Force carries 20 percent as unexplained and of those received from January through July 1952 it carries 28 percent as unexplained. (qtd. in Good 390) Fifteen-hundred reports in five years is roughly three-hundred reports per year, which is dangerously close to one per day. Although only twenty percent, or one-fifth of these reports were unexplained, equalling about 60 unexplained sightings per year, this still equalled more than one unexplained sighting per week. But these were just the unexplained, official sightings collected by ATIC, which was by no means a comprehensive database of all sightings occurring in the United States, or the rest of the world, for that matter. Extrapolation of these figures suggested that the UFO problem was probably much more extensive than the preliminary findings were indicating, hence the erection of a world-wide reporting system and the interception of UFOs by major US Air Force bases. The social consequences of the UFO problem quickly became a matter of major importance to the CIA. Chadwell went on to point out that: The public concern with the phenomena, which is reflected both in the United States press and in the pressure of inquiry upon the Air Force, indicates that a fair proportion of our population is mentally conditioned to the acceptance of the incredible. In this fact lies the potential for the touching-off of mass hysteria and panic. (qtd. in Good 393) By "acceptance of the incredible" Chadwell was probably referring to acceptance of the existence of intelligently controlled, disc-shaped craft which are capable of performing aerial manoeuvres far in excess of those possible with contemporary technology. Flying saucers were, and remain, incredible. Yet belief in them had permeated the US government as early as 1947, when a 'Secret' Air Materiel Command report (now declassified) from Lieutenant General Nathan Twining to the Commanding General, Army Air Forces, announced that: It is the opinion that: (a) The phenomenon reported is something real and not visionary and fictitious. There are objects probably approximating the shape of a disc, of such appreciable size as to appear to be as large as man-made aircraft. There is a possibility that some of the incidents may be caused by natural phenomena, such as meteors. (b) The reported operating characteristics such as extreme rates of climb, manoeuvrability (particularly in roll), and action which must be considered evasive when sighted or contacted by friendly aircraft or radar, lend belief to the possibility that some of the objects are controlled either manually, automatically, or remotely. -- (qtd. in Good 313-4) This report was compiled only two months after the term flying saucer had been invented, following pilot Kenneth Arnold's historic sighting of nine saucer-like objects in June 1947. The fact that a phenomenon which should have been ignored as a tabloid fad was being confirmed, extremely quickly, by the Air Materiel Command Headquarters suggested that those people mentally conditioned to accept the impossible were not restricted to the public domain. They also, apparently, held positions of considerable power within the government itself. This rapid acceptance, at the highest levels of America's defense agencies, of the UFO reality must have convinced certain segments of the CIA that a form of hysteria had already begun, so powerful that those whose job it was to not only remain immune from such psychosocial forces, but to manage them, were actually succumbing to it themselves. What the CIA faced, then, was nothing short of a nation on the verge of believing in aliens. Considering this, it should become a little clearer why the CIA might develop an interest in the UFO phenomenon at this point. Whether aliens were here or not did not, ultimately, matter. What did matter was the obvious social phenomenon of UFO belief. Walter Bedell Smith, Director of Central Intelligence, realised this in 1952, and wrote to the Executive Secretary of the National Security Council (in a letter previously classified 'Secret'): It is my view that this situation has possible implications for our national security which transcend the interests of a single service. A broader, coordinated effort should be initiated to develop a firm scientific understanding of the several phenomena which apparently are involved in these reports, and to assure ourselves that the incidents will not hamper our present efforts in the Cold War or confuse our early warning system in case of an attack. I therefore recommend that this Agency and the agencies of the Department of Defense be directed to formulate and carry out a program of intelligence and research activities required to solve the problem of instant positive identification of unidentified flying objects ... . This effort shall be coordinated with the military services and the Research and Development Board of the Department of Defense, with the Psychological Strategy Board and other Governmental agencies as appropriate. (qtd. in Good 400-1) What the Director was asserting, basically, was that the UFO problem was too big for the CIA to solve alone. Any government agencies it was deemed necessary to involve were to be called into action to deal with the UFOs. If this does not qualify UFOs as serious business, it is difficult to imagine what would. In the same year, Chadwell again reported to the CIA Director in a memo which suggests that he and his colleagues were on the brink of believing not only that UFOs were real, but that they represented an extraterrestrial presence: At this time, the reports of incidents convince us that there is something going on that must have immediate attention ... . Sightings of unexplained objects at great altitudes and traveling at high speeds in the vicinity of major US defense installations are of such nature that they are not attributable to natural phenomena or known types of aerial vehicles. (qtd. in Good 403) In 1953, these concerns eventually led to the CIA's most public investigation of the UFO phenomenon, the Robertson Panel. Its members were Dr H. P. Robertson (physics and radar); Dr Lloyd V. Berkner (geophysics); Dr Samuel Goudsmit (atomic structure and statistical problems); and Dr Thornton Page (astronomy and astrophysics). Associate members were Dr J. Allen Hynek (astronomy) and Frederick C. Durant (missiles and rockets). Twelve hours of meetings ensued (not nearly enough time to absorb all of the most compelling UFO data gathered at this point), during which the panel was shown films of UFOs, case histories and sightings prepared by the ATIC, and intelligence reports relating to the Soviet Union's interest in US sightings, as well as numerous charts depicting, for example, frequency and geographic location of sightings (Good 404). The report (not fully declassified until 1975) concluded with a highly skeptical, and highly ambiguous, view of UFO phenomena. Part IV, titled "Comments and Suggestions of the Panel", stated that: Reasonable explanations could be suggested for most sightings ... by deduction and scientific method it could be induced (given additional data) that other cases might be explained in a similar manner. (qtd. in Good 404) However, even if the panel's insistence that UFOs were not of extraterrestrial origin seemed disingenuous, it still noted the subjectivity of the public to mass hysteria and greater vulnerability to possible enemy psychological warfare (qtd. in Good 405). To remedy this, it recommended quite a profound method of propaganda: The debunking aim would result in reduction in public interest in flying saucers which today evokes a strong psychological reaction. This education could be accomplished by mass media such [as] television, motion pictures, and popular articles. Basis of such education would be actual case histories which had been puzzling at first but later explained. As in the case of conjuring tricks, there is much less stimulation if the secret is known. Such a program should tend to reduce the current gullibility of the public and consequently their susceptibility to clever hostile propaganda. The panel noted that the general absence of Russian propaganda based on a subject with so many obvious possibilities for exploitation might indicate a possible Russian official policy ... . It was felt strongly that psychologists familiar with mass psychology should advise on the nature and extent of the program ... . It was believed that business clubs, high schools, colleges, and television stations would all be pleased to cooperate in the showing of documentary type motion pictures if prepared in an interesting manner. The use of true cases showing first the mystery and then the explanation would be forceful ... . The continued emphasis on the reporting of these phenomena does, in these parlous times, result in a threat to the orderly functioning of the protective organs of the body politic ... . [It is recommended that] the national security agencies take immediate steps to strip the Unidentified Flying Objects of the special status they have been given and the aura of mystery they have unfortunately acquired; that the national security agencies institute policies on intelligence, training, and public education designed to prepare the material defenses and the morale of the country to recognise most promptly and to react most effectively to true indications of hostile intent or action. We suggest that these aims may be achieved by an integrated program designed to reassure the public of the total lack of evidence of inimical forces behind the phenomena, to train personnel to recognize and reject false indications quickly and effectively, and to strengthen regular channels for the evaluation of and prompt reaction to true indications of hostile measures. (qtd. in Good 405-6) The general aim of the Robertson Panel's recommendations, then, was to not only stop people believing in UFOs, but to stop people seeing UFOs, which constitutes an extreme manipulation of the public consciousness. It was the intention of the CIA to ensure, as subtly as was possible, that most people interpreted specific visual experiences (i.e. UFO sightings) in terms of a strict CIA-developed criterion. This momentous act basically amounts to an attempt to define, control and enforce a particular construction of reality which specifically excludes UFOs. In an ironic way, the Robertson Panel report advocated a type of modern exorcism, and may have been the very birthplace of the idea that such an obvious icon of wonder and potential as the UFO is, it can never be more than a misidentification or a hoax. We cannot be certain to what extent the recommendations of the Robertson Panel were put into practice, but we can safely assume that its findings were not ignored by the CIA. For example, Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, Chief of the ATIC's Aerial Phenomena Branch, has testified that "[We were] ordered to hide sightings when possible, but if a strong report does get out, we have to publish a fast explanation -- make up something to kill the report in a hurry, and also ridicule the witnesses, especially if we can't find a plausible answer. We even have to discredit our own pilots" (Good 407). Comments like these make one wonder just how extensive the program of debunking and ridicule actually was. What I have suggested here is that during the 1950s, and possibly throughout the four decades since, an objective of the CIA has been to downplay its own interest in the UFO phenomenon to the public whilst engaging in secret, complex investigations of the phenomenon itself and its social repercussions. If this is the case, as the evidence -- the best of which can be found in the government's own files (even though such evidence, as tens of thousands of conspiracy theorists continue to stress, can hardly be taken simply at face value) -- indicates, then the construction of the UFO in western popular culture will have to be revised as a process involving more than just the projection of popular hopes, desires and anxieties onto an abstract, mythical object. It will also need to be seen as involving the clandestine manipulation of this process by immeasurably powerful groups within the culture itself, such as the CIA. And since the CIAs major concerns about UFOs haved traditionally been explicitly related to the Cold War, the renewed prominence of the UFO in western popular culture since the demise of the Soviet Union requires immediate, serious investigation in a political context. For the UFO issue is, and has always been, a political issue. I suggest that until this fascinating chapter of American domestic history is explored more thoroughly, the cultural function of the UFO will remain just as poorly understood as its physical nature. References Good, Timothy. Beyond Top Secret: The Worldwide UFO Security Threat. London: MacMillan, 1996. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Adam Dodd. "Making It Unpopular: The CIA and UFOs in Popular Culture." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.4 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9906/cia.php>. Chicago style: Adam Dodd, "Making It Unpopular: The CIA and UFOs in Popular Culture," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 4 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9906/cia.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Adam Dodd. (1999) Making it unpopular: the CIA and UFOs in popular culture. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(4). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9906/cia.php> ([your date of access]).

IntroductionNew Orleans is one of a number of infamous swamp cities—cities built in swamps, near them or on land “reclaimed” from them, such as London, Paris, Venice, Boston, Chicago, Washington, Petersburg, and Perth. New Orleans seemed to be winning the battle against the swamps until Hurricane Katrina of 2005, or at least participating in an uneasy truce between its unviable location and the forces of the weather to the point that the former was forgotten until the latter intruded as a stark reminder of its history and geography. Around the name “Katrina” a whole series of events and images congregate, including those of photographer Robert Polidori in his monumental book, After the Flood. Katrina, and the exacerbating factors of global warming and drained wetlands, and their impacts, especially on the city of New Orleans (both its infrastructure and residents), point to the cultural construction and production of the disaster. This suite of occurrences is a salutary instance of the difficulties of trying to maintain a hard and fast divide between nature and culture (Hirst and Woolley 23; Giblett, Body 16–17) and the need to think and live them together (Giblett, People and Places). A hurricane is in some sense a natural event, but in the age of global warming it is also a cultural occurrence; a flood produced by a river breaking its banks is a natural event, but a flood caused by breeched levees and drained wetlands is a cultural occurrence; people dying is a natural event, but people dying by drowning in a large and iconic American city created by drainage of wetlands is a cultural disaster of urban planning and relief logistics; and a city set in a swamp is natural and cultural, with the cultural usually antithetical to the natural. “Katrina” is a salutary instance of the cultural and natural operating together in and as “one single catastrophe” of history, as Benjamin (392) put it, and of geography I would add in the will to fill, drain, or reclaim wetlands. Rather than a series of catastrophes proceeding one after the other through history, Benjamin's (392) “Angel of History” sees one single catastrophe of history. This single catastrophe, however, occurs not only in time, in history, but also in space, in a place, in geography. The “Angel of Geography” sees one single catastrophe of geography of wetlands dredged, filled, and reclaimed, cities set in them and cities being re-reclaimed by them in storms and floods. In the case of “Katrina,” the catastrophe of history and geography is tied up with the creation, destruction, and recreation of New Orleans in its swampy location on the Mississippi delta.New OrleansNew Orleans is not only “the nation’s quintessential river city” as Kelman (199) puts it, but also one of a number of infamous swamp cities. In his post-Katrina preface to his study of New Orleans as what he calls “an unnatural metropolis,” Colten notes:While other cities have occupied wetlands, few have the combination of poorly-drained and flood-susceptible territory of New Orleans. Portions of Washington, D.C. occupied wetlands, but there was ample solid ground above the reach of the Potomac [River’s] worst floods. Chicago’s founders platted their city on a wetland site, but the sluggish Chicago River did not drain the massive territory of the Mississippi. (5)“Occupied” is arguably a euphemism for dredging, draining, filling, and reclaiming wetlands. Occupation also conjures up visions of an occupying army, which may be appropriate in the case of New Orleans as the Army Corps of Engineers have spearheaded much of the militarisation by dredging and draining wetlands in New Orleans and elsewhere in the U.S.The location for the city was not propitious. Wilson describes how “the city itself was constructed on an uneven patch of relatively high ground in the midst of a vast swamp” (86). New Orleans for Kelman “is surrounded by a wet world composed of terrain that is not quite land” (22) with the Mississippi River delta on one side and Lake Pontchartrain and the “backswamps” on the other, though the latter were later drained. The Mississippi River for Kelman is “the continent’s most famed and largest watercourse” (199). Perhaps it is also the continent’s most tamed and leveed watercourse. Earlier Kelman related how a prominent local commentator in 1847 “personified the Mississippi as a nurturing mother” because the river “hugged New Orleans to its ‘broad bosom’” (79). Supposedly this mother was the benign, malign, and patriarchal Mother Nature of the leveed river and not the recalcitrant, matrifocal Great Goddess of the swamps that threatened to break the levees and flood the city (see Giblett, Postmodern Wetlands; People and Places, especially Chapter 1). The Mississippi as the mother of all American rivers gave birth to the city of New Orleans at her “mouth,” or more precisely at the other end of her anatomy with the wetland delta as womb. Because of its location at the “mouth” of the Mississippi River, New Orleans for Flint was “historically the most important port in the United States” (230). Yet by the late 1860s the river was seen by New Orleanians, Kelman argues, only as “an alimentary canal, filled with raw waste and decaying animal carcasses” (124). The “mouth” of the river had ceased to be womb and had become anus; the delta had ceased to be womb and had become bowel. The living body of the earth was dying. The river, Kelman concludes, was “not sublime” and had become “an interstate highway” (146). The Angel of Geography sees the single catastrophe of wetlands enacted in the ways in which the earth is figured in a politics of spaces and places. Ascribing the qualities of one place to another to valorise one place and denigrate another and to figure one pejoratively or euphemistically (as in this case) is “placist” (Giblett, Landscapes 8 and 36). Deconstructing and decolonising placism and its use of such figures can lead to a more eco-friendly figuration of spaces and places. New Orleans is one place to do so.What Colten calls “the swampy mire behind New Orleans” was drained in the first 40 years of the twentieth century (46). Colten concludes that, “by the 1930s, drainage and landfilling efforts had successfully reclaimed wetland between the city and the lake, and in the post-war years similar campaigns dewatered marshlands for tract housing eastward and westward from the city” (140–1). For Wilson “much of New Orleans’s history can be seen as a continuing battle with the swamp” (86). New Orleans was a frontline in the modern war against wetlands, the kind of war that Fascists such as Mussolini liked to fight because they were so easy to win (see Giblett, Postmodern Wetlands 115). Many campaigns were fought against wetlands using the modern weapons of monstrous dredgers. The city had struck what Kelman calls “a Faustian bargain with the levees-only policy” (168). In other words, it had sold its soul to the devil of modern industrial technology in exchange for temporary power. New Orleans tried to dominate wetlands with the ironic result that not only “efforts to drain the city dominate early New Orleans history into the present day” as Wilson (86) puts it, but also that these efforts occasionally failed with devastating results. The city became dominated by the waters it had sought to dominate in an irony of history and geography not lost on the student of wetlands. Katrina was the means that reversed the domination of wetlands by the city. Flint argues that “Katrina’s wake-up call made it unconscionable to keep building on fragile coastlines […] and in floodplains” (232–3). And in swamps, I would add. Colten “traces the public’s abandonment of the belief that the city is no place for a swamp” (163). The city is also no place for the artificial swamp of the aftermath of Katrina depicted by Polidori. As the history of New Orleans attests, the swamp is no place for a city in the first place when it is being built, and the city is no place for a swamp in the second place when it is being ravaged by a hurricane and storm surges. City is antithetical and inimical to swamp. They are mutually exclusive. New Orleans for Wilson is “a city on a swamp” (90 my emphasis). In the 1927 flood (Wilson 111), for Kelman “one of the worst flood years in history” (157), and in the 2005 hurricane, the worst flood year so far in its history, New Orleans was transformed into a city of a swamp. The 1927 flood was at the time, and as Kelman puts it, “the worst ‘natural’ disaster in U.S. history” (161), only to be surpassed by the 2005 flood in New Orleans and the 2012 floods in north-eastern U.S. in the wake of Superstorm Sandy in which the drained marshlands of New York and New Jersey returned with a vengeance. In all these cases the swamp outside the city, or before the city, came into the city, became now. The swamp in the past returned in the present; the absent swamp asserted its presence. The historical barriers between city and swamp were removed. KatrinaKatrina for Kelman (xviii) was not a natural disaster. Katrina produced “water […] out of place” (Kelman x). In other words, and in Mary Douglas’s terms for whom dirt is matter out of place (Douglas 2), this water was dirt. It was not merely that the water was dirty in colour or composition but that the water was in the wrong place, in the buildings and streets, and not behind levees, as Polidori graphically illustrates in his photographs. Bodies were also out of place with “corpses floating in dirty water” (Kelman x) (though Polidori does not photograph these, unlike Dean Sewell in Aceh in the aftermath of the Asian tsunami in what I call an Orientalist pornography of death (Giblett, Landscapes 158)). Dead bodies became dirt: visible, smelly, water-logged. Colten argues that “human actions […] make an extreme event into a disaster […]. The extreme event that became a disaster was not just the result of Katrina but the product of three centuries of urbanization in a precarious site” (xix). Yet Katrina was not only the product of three centuries of urbanisation of New Orleans’ precarious and precious watershed, but also the product of three centuries of American urbanisation of the precarious and precious airshed through pollution with greenhouse gases.The watery geographical location of New Orleans, its history of drainage and levee-building, the fossil-fuel dependence of modern industrial capitalist economies, poor relief efforts and the storm combined to produce the perfect disaster of Katrina. Land, water, and air were mixed in an artificial quaking zone of elements not in their normal places, a feral quaking zone of the elements of air, earth and water that had been in the native quaking zone of swamps now ran amok in a watery wasteland (see Giblett, Landscapes especially Chapter 1). Water was on the land and in the air. In the beginning God, when created the heavens and the earth, darkness and chaos moved over the face of the waters, and the earth was without form and void in the geographical location of a native quaking zone. In the ending, when humans are recreating the heavens and the earth, darkness and chaos move over the face of the waters, and the earth is without form and void in the the geographical location and catastrophe of a feral quaking zone. Humans were thrown into this maelstrom where they quaked in fear and survived or died. Humans are now recreating the city of New Orleans in the aftermath of “Katrina.” In the beginning of the history of the city, humans created the city; from the disastrous destruction of some cities, humans are recreating the city.It is difficult to make sense of “Katrina.” Smith relates that, “as well as killing some 1500 people, the bill for the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans […] was US$200 billion, making it the most costly disaster in American history,” more than “9/11” (303; see also Flint 230). A whole series of events and images congregate around the name “Katrina,” including those of photographer Robert Polidori in his book of photographs, After the Flood, with its overtones of divine punishment for human sin as with the biblical flood (Coogan et al. Genesis, Chapters 6–7). The flood returns the earth to the beginning when God created heaven and earth, when “the earth was without form and darkness moved […] upon the face of the waters” (Coogan et al. Genesis Chapter 1, Verse 2)—God's first, and arguably best, work (Giblett, Postmodern Wetlands 142–143; Canadian Wetlands “Preface”). The single catastrophe of history and geography begins here and now in the act of creation on the first day and in dividing land from water as God also did on the second day (Coogan et al. Genesis Chapter 1, Verse 7)—God’s second, and arguably second best, work. New Orleans began in the chaos of land and water. This chaos recurs in later disasters, such as “Katrina,” which merely repeat the creation and catastrophe of the beginning in the eternal recurrence of the same. New Orleans developed by dividing land from water and is periodically flooded by the division ceasing to be returning the city to its, and the, beginning but this time inflected as a human-made “swamp,” a feral quaking zone (Giblett, Landscapes Chapter 1). Catastrophe and creativity are locked together from the beginning. The creation of the world as wetland and the separation of land and water was a catastrophic action on God's part. Its repetition in the draining or filling of wetlands is a catastrophic event for the heavens and earth, and humans, as is the unseparation of land and water in floods. What Muecke calls the rhetoric of “natural disaster” (259, 263) looms large in accounts of “Katrina.” In an escalating scale of hyperbole, “Katrina” for Brinkley was a “natural disaster” (5, 60, 77), “the worst natural disaster in modern U.S. history” (62), “the biggest natural disaster in recent American history” (273), and “the worst natural disaster in modern American history” (331). Yet a hurricane in and by itself is not a disaster. It is a natural event. Perhaps all that could simply be said is that “Katrina was one of the most powerful storms ever recorded in U.S. history” (Brinkley 73). Yet to be recorded in U.S. history “Katrina” had to be more than just a storm. It had also to be more than merely what Muecke calls an “oceanic disaster” (259) out to sea. It had to have made land-fall, and it had to have had human impact. It was not merely an event in the history of weather patterns in the U.S. For Brinkley “the hurricane disaster was followed by the flood disaster, which was followed by human disasters” (249). These three disasters for Brinkley add up to “the overall disaster, the sinking of New Orleans, [which] was a man-made disaster, resulting from poorly designed and managed levees and floodwalls” (426). The result was that for Brinkley “the man-made misery was worse than the storm” (597). The flood and the misery amount to what Brinkley calls “the Great Deluge [which] was a disaster that the country brought on itself” (619). The storm could also be seen as a disaster that the country brought on itself through the use of fossil fuels. The overall disaster comprising the hurricane the flood, the sinking city and its drowning or displaced inhabitants was preceded and made possible by the disasters of dredging wetlands and of global warming. Brinkley cites the work of Kerry Emanuel and concludes that “global warming makes bad hurricanes worse” (74). Draining wetlands also makes bad hurricanes worse as “miles of coastal wetlands could reduce hurricane storm surges by over three or four feet” (Brinkley 10). Miles of coastal wetlands, however, had been destroyed. Brinkley relates that “nearly one million acres of buffering wetlands in southern Louisiana disappeared between 1990 and 2005” (9). They “disappeared” as the result, not of some sort of sleight of hand or mega-conjuring trick, nor of erosion from sea-intrusion (though that contributed), but of deliberate human practice. Brinkley relates how “too many Americans saw these swamps and coastal wetlands as wastelands” (9). Wastelands needed to be redeemed into enclave estates of condos and strip developments. In a historical irony that is not lost on students of wetlands and their history, destroying wetlands can create the wasteland of flooded cities and a single catastrophe of history and geography, such as New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.In searching for a trope to explain these events Brinkley turns to the tried and true figure of the monster, usually feminised, and “Katrina” is no exception. For him, “Hurricane Katrina had been a palpable monster, an alien beast” (Brinkley xiv), “a monstrous hurricane” (72), “a monster hurricane” (115), and “the monster storm” (Brinkley 453 and Flint 230). A monster, according to The Concise Oxford Dictionary (Allen 768), is: (a) “an imaginary creature, usually large and frightening, composed of incongruous elements; or (b) a large or ugly or misshapen animal or thing.” Katrina was not imaginary, though it or she was and has been imagined in a number of ways, including as a monster. “She” was certainly large and frightening. “She” was composed of the elements of air and water. These may be incongruous elements in the normal course of events but not for a hurricane. “She” certainly caused ugliness and misshapenness to those caught in her wake of havoc, but aerial photographs show her to be a perfectly shaped hurricane, albeit with a deep and destructive throat imaginable as an orally sadistic monster. ConclusionNew Orleans, as Kelman writes in his post-Katrina preface, “has a horrible disaster history” (xii) in the sense that it has a history of horrible disasters. It also has a horrible history of the single disaster of its swampy location. Rather than “a chain of events that appears before us,” “the Angel of History” for Benjamin “sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage” (392). Rather than a series of disasters of the founding, drainage, disease, death, floods, hurricanes, etc. that mark the history of New Orleans, the Angel of History sees a single, catastrophic history, not just of New Orleans but preceding and post-dating it. This catastrophic history and geography began in the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, darkness and chaos moved over the face of the waters, the earth was without form and void, and when God divided the land from the water, and is ending in industrial capitalism and its technologies, weather, climate, cities, floods, rivers, and wetlands intertwining and inter-relating together as entities and agents. Rather than a series of acts and sites of creativity and destruction that appear before us, the Angel of Geography sees one single process and place which keeps (re)creating order out of chaos and chaos out of order. This geography and history began at the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, and the wetland, and divided land from water, and continues when and as humans drain(ed) wetlands, create(d) cities, destroy(ed) cites, rebuilt/d cities and rehabilitate(d) wetlands. “Katrina” is a salutary instance of the cultural and natural operating together in the one single catastrophe and creativity of divine and human history and geography.ReferencesAllen, Robert. The Concise Oxford Dictionary. 8th ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990.Benjamin, Walter. “On the Concept of History.” Selected Writings Volume 4: 1938–1940. Eds. Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard UP, 2003. 389–400.Brinkley, Douglas. The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast. New York: William Morrow, 2006.Colten, Craig. An Unnatural Metropolis: Wresting New Orleans from Nature. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 2006.Coogan, Michael, Marc Brettler, Carol Newsom, and Pheme Perkins, eds. The New Oxford Annotated Bible, New Revised Standard Version with the Apocrypha. 4th ed. New York: Oxford UP, 2010.Douglas, Mary. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. London: Routledge, 1966.Flint, Anthony. This Land: The Battle over Sprawl and the Future of America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2006.Giblett, Rod. Postmodern Wetlands: Culture, History, Ecology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1996.———. The Body of Nature and Culture. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.———. Landscapes of Culture and Nature. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.———. People and Places of Nature and Culture. Bristol: Intellect Books, 2011.———. Canadian Wetlands: Place and People. Bristol: Intellect Books, forthcoming 2014.Hirst, Paul, and Penny Woolley. “The Social Formation and Maintenance of Human Attributes.” Social Relations and Human Attributes. London: Tavistock, 1982. 23–31.Kelman, Ari. A River and its City: The Nature of Landscape in New Orleans. Berkeley: U of California P, 2006.Muecke, Stephen. “Hurricane Katrina and the Rhetoric of Natural Disasters.” Fresh Water: New Perspectives on Water in Australia. Eds. Emily Potter, Alison Mackinnon, Stephen McKenzie and Jennifer McKay. Carlton: Melbourne UP, 2005. 259–71.Polidori, Robert. After the Flood. Göttingen: Steidl, 2006.Smith, P.D. City: A Guidebook for the Urban Age. London: Bloomsbury, 2012.Wilson, Anthony. Shadow and Shelter: The Swamp in Southern Culture. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2006.

The general who wins a battle makes many calculations in his temple ere the battle is fought. — Sun TzuWorld War II saw a proliferation of maps. From command posts to the pages of National Geographic to the pages of daily newspapers, they were everywhere (Schulten). The era also saw substantive developments in cartography, especially with respect to the topographical maps that feature in our selected films. This essay offers a preliminary examination of the battle-map as depicted in two films about the Second World War: Franklin J. Shaffner’s biopic Patton (1970) and Jack Smight’s epic Midway (1976). In these films, maps, charts, or tableaux (the three-dimensional models upon which are plotted the movements of battalions, fleets, and so on) emerge as an expression of both martial and cinematic strategy. As a rear-view representation of the relative movements of personnel and materiel in particular battle arenas, the map and its accessories (pins, tape, markers, and so forth) trace the broad military dispositions of Patton’s 2nd Corp (Africa), Seventh Army (Italy) and Third Army (Western Europe) and the relative position of American and Japanese fleets in the Pacific. In both Patton and Midway, the map also emerges as a simple mode of narrative plotting: as the various encounters in the two texts play out, the battle-map more or less contemporaneously traces the progress of forces. It also serves as a foreshadowing device, not just narratively, but cinematically: that which is plotted in advance comes to pass (even if as preliminary movements before catastrophe), but the audience is also cued for the cinematic chaos and disjuncture that almost inevitably ensues in the battle scenes proper.On one hand, then, this essay proposes that at the fundamental level of fabula (seen through either the lens of historical hindsight or through the eyes of the novice who knows nothing of World War II), the annotated map is engaged both strategically and cinematically: as a stage upon which commanders attempt to act out (either in anticipation, or retrospectively) the intricate, but grotesque, ballet of warfare — and as a reflection of the broad, sequential, sweeps of conflict. While, in War and Cinema, Paul Virilio offers the phrase ‘the logistics of perception’ (1), in this this essay we, on the other hand, consider that, for those in command, the battle-map is a representation of the perception of logistics: the big picture of war finds rough indexical representation on a map, but (as Clausewitz tells us) chance, the creative agency of individual commanders, and the fog of battle make it far less probable (than is the case in more specific mappings, such as, say, the wedding rehearsal) that what is planned will play out with any degree of close correspondence (On War 19, 21, 77-81). Such mapping is, of course, further problematised by the processes of abstraction themselves: indexicality is necessarily a reduction; a de-realisation or déterritorialisation. ‘For the military commander,’ writes Virilio, ‘every dimension is unstable and presents itself in isolation from its original context’ (War and Cinema 32). Yet rehearsal (on maps, charts, or tableaux) is a keying activity that seeks to presage particular real world patterns (Goffman 45). As suggested above, far from being a rhizomatic activity, the heavily plotted (as opposed to thematic) business of mapping is always out of joint: either a practice of imperfect anticipation or an equally imperfect (pared back and behind-the-times) rendition of activity in the field. As is argued by Tolstoj in War and Peace, the map then presents to the responder a series of tensions and ironies often lost on the masters of conflict themselves. War, as Tostoj proposes, is a stochastic phenomenon while the map is a relatively static, and naive, attempt to impose order upon it. Tolstoj, then, pillories Phull (in the novel, Pfuhl), the aptly-named Prussian general whose lock-stepped obedience to the science of war (of which the map is part) results in the abject humiliation of 1806:Pfuhl was one of those theoreticians who are so fond of their theory that they lose sight of the object of that theory - its application in practice. (Vol. 2, Part 1, Ch. 10, 53)In both Patton and Midway, then, the map unfolds not only as an epistemological tool (read, ‘battle plan’) or reflection (read, the near contemporaneous plotting of real world affray) of the war narrative, but as a device of foreshadowing and as an allegory of command and its profound limitations. So, in Deleuzian terms, while emerging as an image of both time and perception, for commanders and filmgoers alike, the map is also something of a seduction: a ‘crystal-image’ situated in the interstices between the virtual and the actual (Deleuze 95). To put it another way, in our films the map emerges as an isomorphism: a studied plotting in which inheres a counter-text (Goffman 26). As a simple device of narrative, and in the conventional terms of latitude and longitude, in both Patton and Midway, the map, chart, or tableau facilitate the plotting of the resources of war in relation to relief (including island land masses), roads, railways, settlements, rivers, and seas. On this syntagmatic plane, in Greimasian terms, the map is likewise received as a canonical sign of command: where there are maps, there are, after all, commanders (Culler 13). On the other hand, as suggested above, the battle-map (hereafter, we use the term to signify the conventional paper map, the maritime chart, or tableau) materialises as a sanitised image of the unknown and the grotesque: as apodictic object that reduces complexity and that incidentally banishes horror and affect. Thus, the map evolves, in the viewer’s perception, as an ironic sign of all that may not be commanded. This is because, as an emblem of the rational order, in Patton and Midway the map belies the ubiquity of battle’s friction: that defined by Clausewitz as ‘the only concept which...distinguishes real war from war on paper’ (73). ‘Friction’ writes Clausewitz, ‘makes that which appears easy in War difficult in reality’ (81).Our work here cannot ignore or side-step the work of others in identifying the core cycles, characteristics of the war film genre. Jeanine Basinger, for instance, offers nothing less than an annotated checklist of sixteen key characteristics for the World War II combat film. Beyond this taxonomy, though, Basinger identifies the crucial role this sub-type of film plays in the corpus of war cinema more broadly. The World War II combat film’s ‘position in the evolutionary process is established, as well as its overall relationship to history and reality. It demonstrates how a primary set of concepts solidifies into a story – and how they can be interpreted for a changing ideology’ (78). Stuart Bender builds on Basinger’s taxonomy and discussion of narrative tropes with a substantial quantitative analysis of the very building blocks of battle sequences. This is due to Bender’s contention that ‘when a critic’s focus [is] on the narrative or ideological components of a combat film [this may] lead them to make assumptions about the style which are untenable’ (8). We seek with this research to add to a rich and detailed body of knowledge by redressing a surprising omission therein: a conscious and focussed analysis of the use of battle-maps in war cinema. In Patton and in Midway — as in War and Peace — the map emerges as an emblem of an intergeneric dialogue: as a simple storytelling device and as a paradigmatic engine of understanding. To put it another way, as viewer-responders with a synoptic perspective we perceive what might be considered a ‘double exposure’: in the map we see what is obviously before us (the collision of represented forces), but an Archimedean positioning facilitates the production of far more revelatory textual isotopies along what Roman Jakobson calls the ‘axis of combination’ (Linguistics and Poetics 358). Here, otherwise unconnected signs (in our case various manifestations and configurations of the battle-map) are brought together in relation to particular settings, situations, and figures. Through this palimpsest of perspective, a crucial binary emerges: via the battle-map we see ‘command’ and the sequence of engagement — and, through Greimasian processes of axiological combination (belonging more to syuzhet than fabula), elucidated for us are the wrenching ironies of warfare (Culler 228). Thus, through the profound and bound motif of the map (Tomashevsky 69), are we empowered to pass judgement on the map bearers who, in both films, present as the larger-than-life heroes of old. Figure 1.While we have scope only to deal with the African theatre, Patton opens with a dramatic wide-shot of the American flag: a ‘map’, if you will, of a national history forged in war (Fig. 1). Against this potent sign of American hegemony, as he slowly climbs up to the stage before it, the general appears a diminutive figure -- until, via a series of matched cuts that culminate in extreme close-ups, he manifests as a giant about to play his part in a great American story (Fig. 2).Figure 2.Some nineteen minutes into a film, having surveyed the carnage of Kasserine Pass (in which, in February 1943, the Germans inflicted a humiliating defeat on the Americans) General Omar Bradley is reunited with his old friend and newly-nominated three-star general, George S. Patton Jr.. Against a backdrop of an indistinct topographical map (that nonetheless appears to show the front line) and the American flag that together denote the men’s authority, the two discuss the Kasserine catastrophe. Bradley’s response to Patton’s question ‘What happened at Kasserine?’ clearly illustrates the tension between strategy and real-world engagement. While the battle-plan was solid, the Americans were outgunned, their tanks were outclassed, and (most importantly) their troops were out-disciplined. Patton’s concludes that Rommel can only be beaten if the American soldiers are fearless and fight as a cohesive unit. Now that he is in command of the American 2nd Corp, the tide of American martial fortune is about to turn.The next time Patton appears in relation to the map is around half an hour into the two-and-three-quarter-hour feature. Here, in the American HQ, the map once more appears as a simple, canonical sign of command. Somewhat carelessly, the map of Europe seems to show post-1945 national divisions and so is ostensibly offered as a straightforward prop. In terms of martial specifics, screenplay writer Francis Ford Coppola apparently did not envisage much close scrutiny of the film’s maps. Highlighted, instead, are the tensions between strategy as a general principle and action on the ground. As British General Sir Arthur Coningham waxes lyrical about allied air supremacy, a German bomber drops its payload on the HQ, causing the map of Europe to (emblematically) collapse forward into the room. Following a few passes by the attacking aircraft, the film then cuts to a one second medium shot as a hail of bullets from a Heinkel He 111 strike a North African battle map (Fig. 3). Still prone, Patton remarks: ‘You were discussing air supremacy, Sir Arthur.’ Dramatising a scene that did take place (although Coningham was not present), Schaffner’s intention is to allow Patton to shoot holes in the British strategy (of which he is contemptuous) but a broader objective is the director’s exposé of the more general disjuncture between strategy and action. As the film progresses, and the battle-map’s allegorical significance is increasingly foregrounded, this critique becomes definitively sharper.Figure 3.Immediately following a scene in which an introspective Patton walks through a cemetery in which are interred the remains of those killed at Kasserine, to further the critique of Allied strategy the camera cuts to Berlin’s high command and a high-tech ensemble of tableaux, projected maps, and walls featuring lights, counters, and clocks. Tasked to research the newly appointed Patton, Captain Steiger walks through the bunker HQ with Hitler’s Chief of Staff, General Jodl, to meet with Rommel — who, suffering nasal diphtheria, is away from the African theatre. In a memorable exchange, Steiger reveals that Patton permanently attacks and never retreats. Rommel, who, following his easy victory at Kasserine, is on the verge of total tactical victory, in turn declares that he will ‘attack and annihilate’ Patton — before the poet-warrior does the same to him. As Clausewitz has argued, and as Schaffner is at pains to point out, it seems that, in part, the outcome of warfare has more to do with the individual consciousness of competing warriors than it does with even the most exquisite of battle-plans.Figure 4.So, even this early in the film’s runtime, as viewer-responders we start to reassess various manifestations of the battle-map. To put it as Michelle Langford does in her assessment of Schroeter’s cinema, ‘fragments of the familiar world [in our case, battle-maps] … become radically unfamiliar’ (Allegorical Images 57). Among the revelations is that from the flag (in the context of close battle, all sense of ‘the national’ dissolves), to the wall map, to the most detailed of tableau, the battle-plan is enveloped in the fog of war: thus, the extended deeply-focussed scenes of the Battle of El Guettar take us from strategic overview (Patton’s field glass perspectives over what will soon become a Valley of Death) to what Boris Eichenbaum has called ‘Stendhalian’ scale (The Young Tolstoi 105) in which, (in Patton) through more closely situated perspectives, we almost palpably experience the Germans’ disarray under heavy fire. As the camera pivots between the general and the particular (and between the omniscient and the nescient) the cinematographer highlights the tension between the strategic and the actual. Inasmuch as it works out (and, as Schaffner shows us, it never works out completely as planned) this is the outcome of modern martial strategy: chaos and unimaginable carnage on the ground that no cartographic representation might capture. As Patton observes the destruction unfold in the valley below and before him, he declares: ‘Hell of a waste of fine infantry.’ Figure 5.An important inclusion, then, is that following the protracted El Guettar battle scenes, Schaffner has the (symbolically flag-draped) casket of Patton’s aide, Captain Richard N. “Dick” Jenson, wheeled away on a horse-drawn cart — with the lonely figure of the mourning general marching behind, his ironic interior monologue audible to the audience: ‘I can't see the reason such fine young men get killed. There are so many battles yet to fight.’ Finally, in terms of this brief and partial assessment of the battle-map in Patton, less than an hour in, we may observe that the map is emerging as something far more than a casual prop; as something more than a plotting of battlelines; as something more than an emblem of command. Along a new and unexpected axis of semantic combination, it is now manifesting as a sign of that which cannot be represented nor commanded.Midway presents the lead-up to the eponymous naval battle of 1942. Smight’s work is of interest primarily because the battle itself plays a relatively small role in the film; what is most important is the prolonged strategising that comprises most of the film’s run time. In Midway, battle-tables and fleet markers become key players in the cinematic action, second almost to the commanders themselves. Two key sequences are discussed here: the moment in which Yamamoto outlines his strategy for the attack on Midway (by way of a decoy attack on the Aleutian Islands), and the scene some moments later where Admiral Nimitz and his assembled fleet commanders (Spruance, Blake, and company) survey their own plan to defend the atoll. In Midway, as is represented by the notion of a fleet-in-being, the oceanic battlefield is presented as a speculative plane on which commanders can test ideas. Here, a fleet in a certain position projects a radius of influence that will deter an enemy fleet from attacking: i.e. ‘a fleet which is able and willing to attack an enemy proposing a descent upon territory which that force has it in charge to protect’ (Colomb viii). The fleet-in-being, it is worth noting, is one that never leaves port and, while it is certainly true that the latter half of Midway is concerned with the execution of strategy, the first half is a prolonged cinematic game of chess, with neither player wanting to move lest the other has thought three moves ahead. Virilio opines that the fleet-in-being is ‘a new idea of violence that no longer comes from direct confrontation and bloodshed, but rather from the unequal properties of bodies, evaluation of the number of movements allowed them in a chosen element, permanent verification of their dynamic efficiency’ (Speed and Politics 62). Here, as in Patton, we begin to read the map as a sign of the subjective as well as the objective. This ‘game of chess’ (or, if you prefer, ‘Battleships’) is presented cinematically through the interaction of command teams with their battle-tables and fleet markers. To be sure, this is to show strategy being developed — but it is also to prepare viewers for the defamiliarised representation of the battle itself.The first sequence opens with a close-up of Admiral Yamamoto declaring: ‘This is how I expect the battle to develop.’ The plan to decoy the Americans with an attack on the Aleutians is shown via close-ups of the conveniently-labelled ‘Northern Force’ (Fig. 6). It is then explained that, twenty-four hours later, a second force will break off and strike south, on the Midway atoll. There is a cut from closeups of the pointer on the map to the wider shot of the Japanese commanders around their battle table (Fig. 7). Interestingly, apart from the opening of the film in the Japanese garden, and the later parts of the film in the operations room, the Japanese commanders are only ever shown in this battle-table area. This canonically positions the Japanese as pure strategists, little concerned with the enmeshing of war with political or social considerations. The sequence ends with Commander Yasimasa showing a photograph of Vice Admiral Halsey, who the Japanese mistakenly believe will be leading the carrier fleet. Despite some bickering among the commanders earlier in the film, this sequence shows the absolute confidence of the Japanese strategists in their plan. The shots are suitably languorous — averaging three to four seconds between cuts — and the body language of the commanders shows a calm determination. The battle-map here is presented as an index of perfect command and inevitable victory: each part of the plan is presented with narration suggesting the Japanese expect to encounter little resistance. While Yasimasa and his clique are confident, the other commanders suggest a reconnaissance flight over Pearl Harbor to ascertain the position of the American fleet; the fear of fleet-in-being is shown here firsthand and on the map, where the reconnaissance planes are placed alongside the ship markers. The battle-map is never shown in full: only sections of the naval landscape are presented. We suggest that this is done in order to prepare the audience for the later stages of the film: as in Patton (from time to time) the battle-map here is filmed abstractly, to prime the audience for the abstract montage of the battle itself in the film’s second half.Figure 6.Figure 7.Having established in the intervening running time that Halsey is out of action, his replacement, Rear Admiral Spruance, is introduced to the rest of the command team. As with all the important American command and strategy meetings in the film, this is done in the operations room. A transparent coordinates board is shown in the foreground as Nimitz, Spruance and Rear Admiral Fletcher move through to the battle table. Behind the men, as they lean over the table, is an enormous map of the world (Fig. 8). In this sequence, Nimitz freely admits that while he knows each Japanese battle group’s origin and heading, he is unsure of their target. He asks Spruance for his advice:‘Ray, assuming what you see here isn’t just an elaborate ruse — Washington thinks it is, but assuming they’re wrong — what kind of move do you suggest?’This querying is followed by Spruance glancing to a particular point on the map (Fig. 9), then a cut to a shot of models representing the aircraft carriers Hornet, Enterprise & Yorktown (Fig. 10). This is one of the few model/map shots unaccompanied by dialogue or exposition. In effect, this shot shows Spruance’s thought process before he responds: strategic thought presented via cinematography. Spruance then suggests situating the American carrier group just northeast of Midway, in case the Japanese target is actually the West Coast of the United States. It is, in effect, a hedging of bets. Spruance’s positioning of the carrier group also projects that group’s sphere of influence around Midway atoll and north to essentially cut off Japanese access to the US. The fleet-in-being is presented graphically — on the map — in order to, once again, cue the audience to match the later (edited) images of the battle to these strategic musings.In summary, in Midway, the map is an element of production design that works alongside cinematography, editing, and performance to present the notion of strategic thought to the audience. In addition, and crucially, it functions as an abstraction of strategy that prepares the audience for the cinematic disorientation that will occur through montage as the actual battle rages later in the film. Figure 8.Figure 9.Figure 10.This essay has argued that the battle-map is a simulacrum of the weakest kind: what Baudrillard would call ‘simulacra of simulation, founded on information, the model’ (121). Just as cinema itself offers a distorted view of history (the war film, in particular, tends to hagiography), the battle-map is an over-simplification that fails to capture the physical and psychological realities of conflict. We have also argued that in both Patton and Midway, the map is not a ‘free’ motif (Tomashevsky 69). Rather, it is bound: a central thematic device. In the two films, the battle-map emerges as a crucial isomorphic element. On the one hand, it features as a prop to signify command and to relay otherwise complex strategic plottings. At this syntagmatic level, it functions alongside cinematography, editing, and performance to give audiences a glimpse into how military strategy is formed and tested: a traditional ‘reading’ of the map. But on the flip side of what emerges as a classic structuralist binary, is the map as a device of foreshadowing (especially in Midway) and as a depiction of command’s profound limitations. Here, at a paradigmatic level, along a new axis of combination, a new reading of the map in war cinema is proposed: the battle-map is as much a sign of the subjective as it is the objective.ReferencesBasinger, Jeanine. The World War II Combat Film: Anatomy of a Genre. Middletown, CT: Columbia UP, 1986.Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Ann Arbour: U of Michigan Press, 1994.Bender, Stuart. Film Style and the World War II Combat Genre. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013.Clausewitz, Carl. On War. Vol. 1. London: Kegan Paul, 1908.Colomb, Philip Howard. Naval Warfare: Its Ruling Principles and Practice Historically Treated. 3rd ed. London: W.H. Allen & Co, 1899.Culler, Jonathan. Structuralist Poetics. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975.Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema 2: The Time-Image. London: Continuum, 2005.Eichenbaum, Boris. The Young Tolstoi. Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1972.Goffman, Erving. Frame Analysis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1976.Jakobson, Roman. "Linguistics and Poetics." Style in Language. Ed. T. Sebebeok. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1960. 350—77.Langford, Michelle. Allegorical Images: Tableau, Time and Gesture in the Cinema of Werner Schroeter. Bristol: Intellect, 2006.Midway. Jack Smight. Universal Pictures, 1976. Film.Patton. Franklin J. Schaffner. 20th Century Fox, 1970. Film.Schulten, Susan. World War II Led to a Revolution in Cartography. New Republic 21 May 2014. 16 June 2017 <https://newrepublic.com/article/117835/richard-edes-harrison-reinvented-mapmaking-world-war-2-americans>.Tolstoy, Leo. War and Peace. Vol. 2. London: Folio, 1997.Tomashevsky, Boris. "Thematics." Russian Formalist Criticism: Four Essays. Eds. L. Lemon and M. Reis, Lincoln: U. Nebraska Press, 2012. 61—95.Tzu, Sun. The Art of War. San Diego: Canterbury Classics, 2014.Virilio, Paul. Speed and Politics. Paris: Semiotext(e), 2006.Virilio, Paul. War and Cinema: The Logistics of Perception. London: Verso, 1989.

The story of Barbie is a tapestry woven with threads of cultural significance, societal shifts, and corporate narratives. It’s a tale that encapsulates the evolution of American post-war capitalism, mirroring the changing tides of social norms, aspirations, and identities. Barbie’s journey from Germany to Los Angeles, along the way becoming a global icon, is a testament to the power of Ruth Handler’s vision and Barbie’s marketing. Barbie embodies and reflects the rise of mass consumption and the early days of television advertising, where one doll could become a household name and shape the dreams of children worldwide. The controversies and criticisms surrounding Barbie – from promoting a ‘thin ideal’ to perpetuating gender and racial stereotypes – highlight the complexities of representation in popular culture. Yet, Barbie’s enduring message, “You can be anything”, continues to inspire and empower, even as it evolves to embrace a more inclusive and diverse portrayals of power, beauty, and potential. Barbie’s story is not just about a doll; it’s about the aspirations she represents, the societal changes she’s witnessed, and the ongoing conversation about her impact on gender roles, body image, and consumer culture. It’s a narrative that continues to unfold, as Barbie adapts to the times and remains a symbol of possibility. Barbie: A Popular Culture Icon “It is impossible to conceive of the toy industry as being anything other than dependent on a popular culture which shapes and structures the meanings carried by toys” (Fleming 40). The relationship between toys and popular culture is symbiotic. While popular culture influences the creation of toys, toys also contribute to the spread and longevity of cultural icons and narratives. Today, one of the most influential, popular, and contested toys of the twentieth century is Mattel’s Barbie doll. Her launch at the New York Toy Fair on 9 March 1959 by Mattel co-founder Ruth Handler was a game-changer in the toy industry. Her adult appearance, symbolised by her fashionable swimsuit and ponytail, was a bold move by Mattel. Despite the doubts from the toy industry which thought nobody would want to play with a doll that had breasts (Tamkin) and Mattel’s skepticism of its commercial success (Westenhouser 14), Barbie was a success, selling over 350,000 units in her first year, and she quickly became an iconic figure, paving the way for other male and female adult dolls. For the first time in mid-century America, Barbie meant children could play with a doll that looked like a woman, not a little girl or a baby. In a 1965 interview, Ruth Handler argued that American girls needed a doll with a “teen-age figure and a lot of glorious, imaginative, high-fashion clothes” (cited in Giacomin and Lubinski 3). In a 1993 interview, Handler said it was “important that Barbie allowed play situations that little girls could project themselves into … to imagine, pretend and to fantasize”. Hence Ruth Handler’s Barbie could be an “avatar for girls to project their dreams onto” (Southwell). Barbie hit the market with a “sassy ponytail, heavy eyeliner, a healthy dose of side-eye and a distinctly adult body” (Blackmore). Her arched eyebrows were matched with a coy sideways glance reflecting her sexual origins (Thong). Mattel did not reveal that Ruth Handler’s Barbie was inspired by a German novelty men’s toy, Bild Lilli, which Handler had purchased on a European holiday in 1955. Mattel fought several lawsuits and eventually secured the rights to Bild Lilli in 1964, which required the German maker of the Bild Lilli doll to not make her again. Barbie dolls, both blonde and brunette, changed little until 1967, when Mattel launch the ‘new’ Barbie doll which is the foundation for today’s Stereotypical Barbie. The same size as the original, thanks to Mattel engineer Jack Ryan she could twist and turn at the waist. Her facial features were softened, she had ‘real’ eyelashes’ and took on an ‘outdoor look’. The new 1967 version of Barbie originally retailed for US$3.00. Mattel, assuming consumers may not want to buy a new Barbie when they already had one, offered buyers the new Barbie at US$1.50 if they traded in their old 1950s Barbie. The television advertising campaign for the new Barbie featured Maureen McMormick (who would go on to play Marcia Brady in the TV series The Brady Bunch from 1969 to 1974). The original #1 Barbie today sells for over US$25,000 (Reinhard). The most expensive Barbie sold to date was a Stefano Canturi-designed Barbie that sold in 2010 for US$302,500 at Christies in New York (Clarendon). Barbie has been described as “the most successful doll in history”, “the most popular toy in history”, the “empress of fashion dolls” (Rogers 86), the “most famous doll in the world” (Ferorelli), the biggest-selling fashion doll in history (Green and Gellene), and is one if the world’s “most commercially successful toys” (Fleming 41). Barbie is both “idealistic and materialistic” and characterises an “American fantasy” (Tamkin). More so, she is a popular culture icon and “a unique indicator of women’s history” (Vander Bent). The inclusion of Barbie in America’s twentieth-century Time Capsule “cemented her status as a true American icon” (Ford), as did Andy Warhol when he iconised Barbie in his 1968 painting of her (Moore). During the 1950s and 1960s, Barbie’s name was licenced to over 100 companies; while a strategic move that expanded Barbie’s brand presence, it also provided Mattel with substantial royalty payments for decades. This approach helped solidify Barbie’s status as a cultural icon and enabled her to become a lucrative asset for Mattel (Rogers). Sixty-five years later, Barbie has 99% global brand awareness. In 2021, Mattel shipped more than 86 million Barbies globally, manufacturing 164 Barbies a minute (Tomkins). In 2022, Barbie generated gross sales of US$1.49 billion (Statista 2023). With this fiscal longevity and brand recognition, the success of the Barbie film is not surprising. The 2023 film, directed by Greta Gerwig and starring Australian Margot Robbie as Barbie and Canadian Ryan Gosling as Ken, as of March 2024 has a global box office revenue of US$1.45 billion, making it the 14th most successful movie of all time and the most successful movie directed by a woman (Statista 2024). Contested Barbie Despite her popularity, Barbie has been the subject of controversy. Original Barbie’s proportions have been criticised for promoting an unrealistic body image (Thong). Barbie’s appearance has received numerous critiques for “representing an unrealistic beauty standard through its former limited skin tone and hair combination” (Lopez). The original Barbie’s measurements, if scaled to life-size, would mean Barbie is unusually tall and has a slim figure, with a height of 5 feet 9 inches, a waist of just 18 inches, and hips of approximately 33 inches. Her bust would measure around 32 inches with an under-bust of 22 inches, and her shoulder width would be approximately 28 inches. Original Barbie’s legs, which are proportionally longer than an average human’s, would make up more than half her height (Thong). A 1996 Australian study scaled Barbie and Ken to adult sizes and compared this with the physical proportions of a range of women and men. They found that the likelihood of finding a man of comparable shape to Ken was 1 in 50. Barbie was more problematic. The chance of a woman being the same proportion as Barbie was 1 in 100,000 (Norton et al. 287). In 2011, The Huffington Post’s Galia Slayen built a life-sized Barbie based on Barbie’s body measurements for National Eating Disorder Awareness Week. Slayen concluded that “if Barbie was a real woman, she’d have to walk on all fours due to her proportions”. One report found that if Barbie’s measurements were those of a real woman her “bones would be so frail, it would be impossible for her to walk, and she would only have half a liver” (Golgowski). A 2006 study found that Barbie is a “possible cause” for young girls’ “body dissatisfaction”. In this study, 162 girls from age 5 to 8 were exposed to images of a thin doll (Barbie), a plus-size doll (US doll Emme, size 16), or no doll, and then completed assessments of body image. Girls exposed to Barbie reported “lower body esteem and greater desire for a thinner body shape than girls in the other exposure conditions”. The study concluded that “early exposure to dolls epitomizing an unrealistically thin body ideal may damage girls' body image, which would contribute to an increased risk of disordered eating and weight cycling” (Dittman and Halliwell 283). Another study in 2016 found that “exposure to Barbie” led to “higher thin-ideal internalization”, but found that Barbie had no “impact on body esteem or body dissatisfaction” (Rice et al. 142). In response to such criticism, Mattel slowly introduced a variety of Barbie dolls with more diverse body types, including tall, petite, and curvy models (Tamkin). These changes aim to reflect a broader range of beauty standards and promote a more positive body image. Barbie has always had to accommodate social norms. For this reason, Barbie always must have underpants, and has no nipples. One of the reasons why Ruth Handler’s husband Elliott (also a co-founder of Mattel) was initially against producing the Barbie doll was that she had breasts, reportedly saying mothers would not buy their daughters a doll with breasts (Gerber). Margot Robbie, on playing Barbie, told one news outlet that while Barbie is “sexualized”, she “should never be sexy” (Aguirre). Early prototypes of Barbie made in Japan in the 1950s sexualised her body, leaving her to look like a prostitute. In response, Mattel hired film make-up artist Bud Westmore to redo Barbie’s face and hair with a softer look. Mattel also removed the nipples from the prototypes (Gerber). Barbie’s body and fashion have always seemed to “replicate history and show what was what was happening at the time” (Mowbray), and they also reflect how the female body is continually surveilled. Feminists have had a long history of criticism of Barbie, particularly her projection of the thin ideal. At the 1970 New York Women’s Strike for Equality, feminists shouted “I am not a Barbie doll!” Such debates exemplify the role and impact of toys in shaping and reforming societal norms and expectations. Even the more recent debates regarding the 2023 Barbie film show that Barbie is still a “lightning rod for the messy, knotty contradictions of feminism, sexism, misogyny and body image” (Chappet). Decades of criticism about Barbie, her meaning and influence, have left some to ask “Is Barbie a feminist icon, or a doll which props up the patriarchy?” Of course, she’s both, because “like all real women, Barbie has always been expected to conform to impossible standards” (Chappet). Diversifying Barbie Over the decades Mattel has slowly changed Barbie’s body, including early versions of a black Barbie-like dolls in the 1960s and 1970s such as Francie, Christie, Julia, and Cara. However, it was not until 1980 that Mattel introduced the first black Barbie. African American fashion designer Kitty Black-Perkins, who worked for Mattel from 1971, was the principal designer for black Barbie, saying that “there was a need for the little Black girl to really have something she could play with that looked like her” (cited in Lafond). Black Barbie was marketed as She’s black! She’s beautiful! She’s dynamite! The following year, Asian Barbie was introduced. She was criticised for her nondescript country of origin and dressed in an “outfit that was a mishmash of Chinese, Korean and Japanese ethnic costumes” (Wong). More recently, the Asian Barbies were again criticised for portraying stereotypes, with a recent Asian Barbie dressed as a veterinarian caring for pandas, and Asian violinist Barbie with accompanying violin props, reflecting typical stereotypes of Asians in the US (Wong). In 2016, Mattel introduced a range of Barbie and Ken dolls with seven body types, including more curvy body shapes, 11 skin tones and 28 hairstyles (Siazon). In 2019, other Barbie body types appeared, with smaller busts, less defined waist, and more defined arms. The 2019 range also included Barbies with permanent physical disabilities, one using a wheelchair and one with a prosthetic leg (Siazon). Wheelchair Barbie comes with a wheelchair, and her body has 22 joints for body movement while sitting in the wheelchair. The Prosthetic Barbie comes with a prosthetic leg which can be removed, and was made in collaboration with Jordan Reeve, a 13-year-old disability activist born without a left forearm. In 2020, a No Hair Barbie and a Barbie with the skin condition vitiligo were introduced, and in 2022, Hearing Aid Barbie was also launched. In 2022 other changes were made to Barbie’s and Ken’s bodies, with bodies that became fuller figured and Kens with smaller chests and less masculine body shapes (Dolan). Down Syndrome Barbie was released in 2023, designed in collaboration with the US National Down Syndrome Society to ensure accurate representation. By 2024, Barbie dolls come in 35 skin tones, 97 hairstyles, and nine body types (Mattel 2024). Spanning hundreds of iterations, today the Barbie doll is no longer a homogenous, blond-haired, blue-eyed toy, but rather an evolving social phenomenon, adapting with the times and the markets Mattel expands into. With dolls of numerous ethnicities and body types, Barbie has also embraced inclusivity, catering to the plethora of different consumers across the world (Green and Gellene 1989). Career Barbie While not dismissing Barbie’s problematic place in feminist, gender and racial critiques, Barbie has always been a social influencer. Her early years were marked by a variety of makeovers and modernisations, as have recent changes to Barbie’s body, reflecting the changing social norms of the times. Stereotypical Barbie had her first major makeover in 1961, with her ponytail swapped for a short ‘Bubble Bob’ hairstyle inspired by Jackie Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe, reflecting women’s emerging social independence (Foreman). In the early 1970s, Barbie’s original demure face with averted eyes was replaced by a new one that “depicted confidence and a forward-facing gaze” (Vander Bent). Her “soft look” was a departure from the mature image of the original 1959 Barbie (Lafond). The ‘soft look’ on Malibu Barbie with her newly sculpted face featured an open smile for the first time, as well as sun-tanned, make-up free skin and sun-kissed blonde hair. The disappearance of Barbie’s coy, sideways glance and the introduction of forward-looking eyes was a development “welcomed by feminists” (Ford). Barbie’s early makeovers, along with her fashion and accessories, including her homes, cars, and pets, contributed to shaping her image as a fashionable and independent woman. Barbie’s various careers and roles have been used to promote ideas of female empowerment. From astronaut to presidential candidate, Barbie has broken barriers in traditionally male-dominated fields. However, the effectiveness of these efforts in promoting female empowerment is a topic of debate. The post-war period in America saw a significant shift in the pattern of living, with a move from urban areas to the suburbs. This was facilitated by a robust post-war economy, favourable government policies like the GI Bill, and increasing urbanisation. The GI Bill played a crucial role by providing low-interest home loans to veterans, making home ownership accessible to a large segment of the population. It was a significant transformation of the American lifestyle and shaped the country’s socio-economic landscape. It is in this context that Barbie’s first Dreamhouse was introduced in the early 1960s, with its mid-century modern décor, hi-fi stereo, and slim-line furniture. This was at a time when most American women could not get a mortgage. Barbie got her first car in 1962, a peach-colored Austin-Healey 3000 MKII convertible, followed short afterwards by a Porsche 911. She has also owned a pink Jaguar XJS, a pink Mustang, a red Ferrari, and a Corvette. Barbie’s car choices of luxurious convertibles spoke to Barbie’s social and economic success. In 1998, Barbie became a NASCAR driver and also signed up to race in a Ferrari in the Formula 1. Barbie’s ‘I Can Be Anything’ range from 2008 was designed to draw kids playing with the dolls toward ambitious careers; one of those careers was as a race car driver (Southwell). While Barbie’s first job as a baby-sitter was not as glamourous or well-paying as her most of her other over 250 careers, it does reflect the cultural landscape Barbie was living in in the 1960s. Babysitter Barbie (1963) featured Barbie wearing a long, pink-striped skirt with ‘babysitter’ emblasoned along the hem and thick-framed glasses. She came with a baby in a crib, a telephone, bottles of soda, and a book. The book was called How to Lose Weight and had only two words of advice, ‘Don’t Eat’. Even though there was a backlash to the extreme dieting advice, Mattel included the book in the 1965 Slumber Party Barbie. Barbie wore pink silk pajamas with a matching robe and came prepared for her sleepover with toiletries, a mirror, the controversial diet book, and a set of scales permanently set at 110 pounds (approx. 50kg), which caused further backlash (Ford). Barbie’s early careers were those either acceptable or accessible to women of the era, such as the Fashion Designer Barbie (1960), Flight Attendant Barbie (1961), and Nurse Barbie (1962). However, in 1965 Barbie went into space, two years after cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space, and four years before the American moon landing. Barbie’s career stagnated in the 1970s, and she spends the decade being sports Barbie, perhaps as a response to her unpopularity among vocal second wave feminists and reflecting the economic downturn of the era. America’s shift to the right in the 1980s saw in the introduction of the Yuppie, the young urban professional who lived in the city, had a high-powered career, and was consumption-driven. More women were entering the workforce than ever before. Barbie also entered the workforce, spending less time doing the passive leisure of her earlier self (Ford). It also signals the beginning of neoliberalism in America, and a shift to individualism and the rise of the free market ethos. In 1985, Day-to-Night Barbie was sold as the first CEO Barbie who “could go from running the boardroom in her pink power suit to a fun night out on the town”. For Mattel she “celebrated the workplace evolution of the era and showed girls they could have it all”. But despite Barbie’s early careers, the focus was on her "emphasized femininity”, meaning that while she was now a career woman, her appearance and demeanor did not reflect her job. Astronaut Barbie (1985) is a good example of Barbie’s ‘emphasised femininity’ in how career Barbies were designed and dressed. Astronaut Barbie is clearly reflecting the fashion and culture trends of the 1980s by going into space in a “shiny, hot pink spacesuit”, comes with a second space outfit, a shiny “peplum miniskirt worn over silver leggings and knee-high pink boots” (Bertschi), and her hair is too big to fit into the helmet. A dark-skinned US Astronaut Barbie was released in 1994, which coincided with the start of the Shuttle-Mir Program, a collaboration between the US and Russia which between 1994 and 1998 would see seven American astronauts spend almost 1,000 days living in orbit with Russian cosmonauts on the Mir space station. Throughout the 1990s, Barbie increasingly takes on careers more typically considered to be male careers. But again, her femininity in design, dressing and packaging takes precedence over her career. Police Officer Barbie (1993), for example, has no gun or handcuffs. Instead, she comes with a "glittery evening dress" to wear to the awards dance where she will get the "Best Police Officer Award for her courageous acts in the community”. Police Office Barbie is pictured on the box "lov[ing] to teach safety tips to children". Barbie thus “feminizes, even maternalises, law enforcement” (Rogers 14). In 1992, Teen Talk Barbie was released. She had a voice box programmed to speak four distinct phrases out of a possible 270. She sold for US$25, and Mattel produced 350,000, expecting its popularity. The phrases included ‘I Love Shopping’ and ‘Math class is tough’. The phrase ‘Math class is tough’ was seen by many as reinforcing harmful stereotypes about girls and math. The National Council of American Teachers of Maths objected, as did the American Association of University Women (NYT 1992). In response to criticisms of the gendered representations of Barbie’s careers, Mattel have more recently featured Barbie in science and technology fields including Paleontologist Barbie (1996 and 2012), Computer Engineer Barbie (2010), Robotics Engineer Barbie (2018), Astrophysicist Barbie (2019), Wildlife Conservationist Barbie, Entomologist Barbie (2019), and Polar Marine Biologist Barbie (all in collaboration with National Geographic), Robotics Engineer Barbie (2018), Zoologist Barbie (2021), and Renewable Energy Barbie (2022), which go some way to providing representations that at least encompass the ideal that ‘Girls Can Do Anything’. Barbie over her lifetime has also taken on swimming, track and field, and has been a gymnast. Barbie was an Olympic gold medallist in the 1970s, with Mattel releasing four Barbie Olympians between 1975 and 1976, arguably cashing in on the 1976 Montreal Olympics. Gold Medal Barbie Doll Skier was dressed in a red, white, and blue ski suit completed with her gold medal. Gold Medal Barbie Doll is an Olympic swimmer wearing a red, white, and blue tricot swimsuit, and again wears an Olympic gold medal around her neck. The doll was also produced as a Canadian Olympian wearing a red and white swimsuit. Gold Medal Barbie Skater looks like Barbie Malibu and is dressed in a long-sleeved, pleated dress in red, white, and blue. The outfit included white ice skates and her gold medal. Mattel also made a Gold Medal P.J. Gymnast Doll who vaulted and somersaulted in a leotard of red, white, and blue tricot. She had a warm-up jacket with white sleeves, red cuffs, white slippers, and a gold medal. Mattel, as part of a licencing agreement with the International Olympic Committee, produced a range of toys for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. The collection of five Barbies represented the new sports added to the 2020 Olympics: baseball and softball, sport climbing, karate, skateboarding, and surfing. Each Barbie was dressed in a sport-specific uniform and had a gold medal. Barbie Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 Surfer, for example, was dressed in a pink wetsuit top, with an orange surfboard and a Tokyo 2020 jacket. For the 2022 Winter Olympics and Paralympics, Mattel released a new collection of Barbie dolls featuring among others a para-skiing Barbie who sits on adaptive skis and comes with a championship medal (Douglas). As part of Mattel’s 2023 Barbie Career of the Year doll, the Women in Sports Barbie range shows Barbie in leadership roles in the sports industry, as manager, coach, referee, and sport reporter. General Manager Barbie wears a blue-and-white pinstripe suit accessorised with her staff pass and a smartphone. Coach Barbie has a pink megaphone, playbook, and wears a two-piece pink jacket and athletic shorts. Referee Barbie wears a headset and has a whistle. Sports Reporter Barbie wears a purple, geometric-patterned dress and carries a pink tablet and microphone (Jones). Political Barbie Barbie has run for president in every election year since 1992. The first President Barbie came with an American-themed dress for an inaugural ball and a red suit for her duties in the Oval Office. In 2016, Barbie released an all-female presidential ticket campaign set with a president and vice-president doll. The 2000 President Barbie doll wore a blue pantsuit and featured a short bob cut, red lipstick pearl necklace, and a red gown to change into, “presumably for President Barbie’s inaugural ball” (Lafond). This followed the introduction of UNICEF Ambassador Barbie in 1989. She is packaged as a member of the United States Committee for UNICEF (United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund), which is mandated to provide humanitarian and development aid to children worldwide. Rather problematically, and again with a focus on her femininity rather than the importance of the organisation she represents, she wears a glittery white and blue full length ball gown with star patterning and a red sash. While some proceeds did go to the US Committee for UNICEF, the dressing and packaging featuring an American flag overshadows the career and its philanthropic message. The period signalled the end of the Cold War and was also the year the United States invaded Panama, resulting in a humanitarian disaster when US military forces attacked urban areas in order to overthrow the Noriega administration. Military Barbie Barbie has served in every US military branch (Sicard). Barbie joined the US army in 1989, wearing a female officer’s evening uniform, though with no sense of what she did. While it may be thought Barbie would increase female in interest in a military career, at the time more women were already enlisting that in any other period from the early 1970s to 2012 (Stillwell). Barbie rejoined the army for the 1990-1991 Gulf War, wearing a Desert Combat Uniform and the 101st Airborne "Screaming Eagle" patch, and serving as a medic. Barbie also joined the Air Force in 1990, three years before Jeannie Leavitt became the first female Air Force fighter pilot. Barbie wore a green flight suit and leather jacket, and gold-trimmed flight cap. She was a fighter pilot and in 1994, she joined the USAF aerial demonstration team, The Thunderbirds. Busy in the 1990s, she also enlisted in the US Navy wearing women's Navy whites. Marine Corps Barbie appeared in 1992, wearing service and conduct medals (Stillwell). All of Barbie’s uniforms were approved by the Pentagon (Military Women’s Memorial). The 2000 Paratrooper Barbie Special Edition was released with the packaging declaring “let’s make a support drop with first aid and food boxes”. She was dressed in undefined military attire which includes a helmet, dog tags, parachute, boots, and hairbrush. Barbie’s Influence In 2014, Barbie became a social media influencer with the launch of the @barbiestyle Instagram account, and in 2015, Barbie launched a vlog on YouTube to talk directly to girls about issues they face. The animated series features Barbie discussing a range of topics including depression, bullying, the health benefits of meditation, and how girls have a habit of apologising when they don’t have anything to be sorry about. The Official @Barbie YouTube channel has over eleven million global subscribers and 23 billion minutes of content watched, making Barbie the #1 girls’ brand on YouTube. Barbie apps average more than 7 million monthly active users and the Instagram count boasts over 2 million followers. The 2023 Barbie film really does attest to Barbie’s influence 70 years after her debut. Barbie, as this article has shown, is more than an influencer and more than a doll, if she ever really was only a doll. She is a popular culture icon, regardless of whether we love her or not. Barbie has sometimes been ahead of the game, and sometimes has been problematically represented, but she has always been influential. Her body, race, ability, careers, independence, and political aspirations have spoken different things to those who play with her. She is fiercely defended, strongly criticised, and shirks from neither. She is also liberating, empowering, straight, and queer. As the articles in this issue reflect, Barbie, it seems, really can be anything. Imagining and Interrogating Barbie in Popular Culture The feature article in this issue outlines how Australian Barbie fans in the 1960s expressed their creativity through the designing and making of their own wardrobes for the doll. Through examining articles from the Australian Women’s Weekly, Donna Lee Brien reveals this rich cultural engagement that was partly driven by thrift, and mostly by enjoyment. Eva Boesenberg examines the social and environmental effects of a plastic doll that is positioned as an ecological ambassador. While there is no doubt that climate change is one of our most pressing social issues, Boesenberg questions the motivations behind Barbie’s eco-crusade: is she an apt role-model to teach children the importance of environmental issues, or is this just a case of corporate greenwashing? Emma Caroll Hudson shifts the focus to entertainment, with an exploration of the marketing of the 2023 blockbuster film Barbie. Here she argues that the marketing campaign was highly successful, utilising a multi-faceted approach centred on fan participation. She highlights key components of the campaign to reveal valuable insights into how marketing can foster a cultural phenomenon. Revna Altiok’s article zooms in on the depiction of Ken in the 2023 film, revealing his characterisation to be that of a ‘manic pixie dream boy’ whose lack of identity propels him on a journey to self-discovery. This positioning, argues Altiok, pulls into focus social questions around gender dynamics and how progress can be truly achieved. Rachel Wang turns the spotlight to Asian identity within the Barbie world, revealing how from early iterations a vague ‘Oriental’ Barbie was accompanied by cultural stereotyping. Despite later, more nuanced interpretations of country-specific Asian dolls, problematic features remained embedded. This, Wang argues, positions Asian Barbies as the racial ‘other’. Kaela Joseph, Tanya Cook, and Alena Karkanias’s article examines how the 2023 Barbie film reflects different forms of fandom. Firstly, Joseph interrogates how the Kens’ patriarchal identity is expressed through acts of collective affirmational fandom. Here, individual fans legitimise their positions within the group by mastering and demonstrating their knowledge of popular culture phenomena. Joseph contrasts this with transformational fandom, which is based upon reimagining the source material to create new forms. The transformation of the titular character of the Barbie movie forms the basis of Eli S’s analysis. S examines how the metaphor of ‘unboxing’ the doll provides an avenue through which to understand Barbie’s metamorphosis from constrained doll to aware human as she journeys from the pink plastic Barbie Land to the Real World. Anna Temel turns her critical gaze to how the 2023 film attempts to reposition Barbie’s image away from gender stereotypes to a symbol of feminist empowerment. Director Greta Gerwig, Temel argues, critiques the ‘ideal woman’ and positions Barbie as a vehicle through which contemporary feminism and womanhood can be interrogated. Temel finds that this is not always successfully articulated in the depiction of Barbie in the film. The reading of the Barbie movie’s Barbie Land as an Asexual Utopia is the focus of Anna Maria Broussard’s article. Here Broussard draws the focus to the harmonious community of dolls who live without social expectations of sexuality. Barbie provides a popular culture reflection of the Asexual experience, expressed through Barbie’s rejection of a heteronormative relationship both in Barbie Land and the Real World. Completing this collection is Daisy McManaman’s article interrogating the multiple iterations of the doll’s embodied femininity. Incorporating an ethnographic study of the author’s relationship with the doll, McManaman uncovers that Barbie serves as a site of queer joy and a role model through which to enjoy and explore femininity and gender. These articles have been both intellectually stimulating to edit, and a joy. We hope you enjoy this collection that brings a new academic lens to the popular cultural phenomenon that is Barbie. References Aguirre, Abby. “Barbiemania! Margot Robbie Opens Up about the Movie Everyone’s Waiting For.” Vogue, 24 May 2023. 16 Mar. 2024 <https://www.vogue.com/article/margot-robbie-barbie-summer-cover-2023-interview>. Bertschi, Jenna. “Barbie: An Astronaut for the Ages.” Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, 18 Jul. 2023. 11 Mar. 2024 <https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/barbie-astronaut-ages>. Blackmore, Erin. “Barbie’s Secret Sister Was a German Novelty Doll.” History.com, 14 Jul. 2023. 11 mar. 2024 <https://www.history.com/news/barbie-inspiration-bild-lilli>. 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