Aviation Engineering on Long Island
1938
Mitchel Field was the starting point for the first nonstop transcontinental bomber flight, made by Army B-18s. Mitchel Field also served as a base from which the first demonstration of long-range aerial reconnaissance was made.
March
13 Seyss-Inquart invited the German Army to occupy Austria and proclaimed union with Germany.
June
28 Shlomo Ben-Yosef was executed by the British mandatory government in Eretz Yisrael. He was the first Jew to be executed in Eretz Yisrael since the time of the Romans.
September
21 Great Hurricane of 1938 hits Long Island and Rhode Island. "The 1938 hurricane was the most-destructive national disaster that had ever struck the U.S. — worse than the San Francisco Earthquake, the Chicago Fire, or any Mississippi flood. Most disasters affect a fairly circumscribed area. But this killer storm sprinted up the Atlantic seaboard, faster than any other storm on record, sideswiped New Jersey, then swept over seven states (New York and New England). It claimed almost 700 lives and cost an estimated 4.7 billion in today's dollars (only 5 percent of the losses were covered by insurance). Coming as it did between the Depression and World War II, it stands as a benchmark in the history of New England. A way of life was lost. As the Associated Press said, "The day of the biggest wind has just passed, and a great part of the most picturesque America, as old as the Pilgrims, has gone beyond recall or replacement." "
"Perhaps the greatest long-term impact on Long Island of the Great Hurricane of 1938 was its creation of the Shinnecock Inlet and the widening of the Moriches Inlet to the west. (The Moriches Inlet was most recently formed by a powerful northeaster in 1931.) "
29 Adolf Hitler, Neville Chamberlain, Edouard Daladier and Benito Mussolini signed the Munich Agreement which transferred the Sudetenland to Germany.
When Eduard Benes, Czechoslovakia's head of state, protested at this decision, Neville Chamberlain told him that Britain would be unwilling to go to war over the issue of the Sudetenland.
October
1 The German Army marched into the Sudetenland. As this area contained nearly all Czechoslovakia's mountain fortifications, she was no longer able to defend herself against further aggression.
From his meetings with Neville Chamberlain, Hitler had discovered that this man would do anything to avoid military conflict. Chamberlain was aware of the appalling destruction that would take place during a modern war. He also feared that a large-scale war in Western Europe would weaken the countries involved to the point where they would be vulnerable to a communist takeover.
November
9 and 10 Crystal Night took place on 9th-10th November. Presented as a spontaneous reaction of the German people to the news that the German diplomat, Ernst vom Rath, had been murdered by Herschel Grynszpan, a young Jewish refugee in Paris, the whole event was in fact organized by the NSDAP.
During Crystal Night over 7,500 Jewish shops were destroyed and 400 synagogues were burnt down. Ninety-one Jews were killed and an estimated 20,000 were sent to concentration camps. Up until this time these camps had been mainly for political prisoners. The only people who were punished for the crimes committed on Crystal Night were members of the Sturm Abteilung (SA) who had raped Jewish women (they had broken the Nuremberg Laws on sexual intercourse between Aryans and Jews).
1939
Niels Bohr, the great Danish atomic physicist, took news to Einstein that the German refugee physicist Lise Meitner had split the uranium atom, with a slight loss of total mass that had been converted into energy. Meitner's experiments, performed in Copenhagen, had been inspired by similar, though less-precise, experiments done months earlier in Berlin by two German chemists, Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann. Bohr speculated that, if a controlled chain-reaction splitting of uranium atoms could be accomplished, a mammoth explosion would result. Einstein was skeptical, but laboratory experiments in the United States showed the feasibility of the idea. With a European war regarded as imminent and fears that Nazi scientists might build such a “bomb” first, Einstein was persuaded by colleagues to write a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt urging “watchfulness and, if necessary, quick action” on the part of the United States in atomic-bomb research. This recommendation marked the beginning of the Manhattan Project.
Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson’s father is arrested, cruelly tortured, and banished to the gulag.
During 1939-1940, Jabotinsky was active in Britain and the United States in the hope of establishing a Jewish army to fight side by side with the Allies against Nazi Germany.
May
In May 1939, three B-17s led by Lt. Curtiss Lemay flew from Mitchel Field 750 miles out to sea and intercepted the Italian ocean liner Rex. This was a striking example of the range, mobility and accuracy of modern aviation at the time.
September
Howard enrolls in a special program at MIT to retrain engineers as Aviation Engineers.
1940
The Jews of Palestine were permitted to enlist in Jewish companies attached to the East Kent Regiment (the “Buffs”). These companies were formed into three infantry battalions of a newly-established “Palestine Regiment.” The battalions were moved to Cyrenaica and Egypt, but there, too, as in Palestine, they continued to be engaged primarily in guard duties. The Jewish soldiers demanded to participate in the fighting and the right to display the Jewish flag.
Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson's father-in-law, who preceded him as rebbe, fled the Nazis and moved Chabad headquarters to Crown Heights, in Brooklyn, in 1940. Shortly after, Chabad began to emphasize reaching out to nonreligious Jews -- a striking difference from other Hasidic groups, which often advise members to isolate themselves from the temptations of the world.
The idea was to patiently and nonjudgmentally lead Jews back to Orthodoxy one small step at a time -- attending a Sabbath service, lighting candles Friday night, listening to a lecture from a Jewish speaker.
Howard moves to Long Island to work as a structural design engineer at Republic Aircraft.
The first section of the Long Island Expressway, a one-mile-long, six-lane viaduct over Long Island City, Queens, opened to traffic in 1940 after one year of construction. The new viaduct, whose opening coincided with that of the twin-tube Queens-Midtown Tunnel at its western terminus, had its eastern terminus at the new Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (I-278). At its highest point, the viaduct rises 106 feet above Dutch Kills.
June
The Soviets annexed Lithuania, including Vilnius. Soviet rule brought mass deportations (1940–41, 1946–50) of ethnic Lithuanians from Vilnius, and many Russians moved into the city.
14 The armies of Nazi Germany conquered Paris.
August
4 On August 4, 1940 while visiting the Betar camp in New York, Jabotinsky suffered a massive heart-attack. In his will he requested that his remains may only be interred in Eretz Israel at the express order of the Hebrew Government of the Jewish State that shall arise.
© 2001-2004 Chabad-Lubavitch Media Center
© 2004 H. David Marshak, All Rights Reserved
