Image Science and Analysis Laboratory, NASA-Johnson Space Center. “The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth.” http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/Videos/CrewEarthObservationsVideos
This video was taken by the crew of Expedition 30 on board the International Space Station. The sequence of shots was taken January 02, 2012 from 10:56:14 to 11:17:54 GMT, on a pass from northeastern China to the Coral Sea, just east of Australia. The pass begins looking back from the ISS, just northwest of Beijing. As the ISS travels southeast, it passes over Beijing and the Bohai Sea and travels toward Korea (right side of video). On the Korean Peninsula, North Korea’s capital city of Pyongyang and South Korea’s capital city of Seoul are brightly lit. As the pass continues, the southern half of Japan is seen along with a couple of islands in the South China Sea. The ISS continues traveling southeast over the Philippine Sea toward Australia.
Compiled from frames ISS030-E-25359 to ISS030-E-25684
70,000 Chinese laborers build an airfield in China.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_B-29_Superfortress
Forward base in China
On 15 June 1944, 68 B-29s took off from bases around Chengdu 47 of which reached and bombed the Imperial Iron and Steel Works at Yahata Japan. This was the first attack on Japanese islands since the Doolittle raid in April 1942. The first B-29 combat losses occurred during this raid, with one B-29 destroyed on the ground by Japanese fighters after an emergency landing in China, one lost to anti-aircraft fire over Yawata, and another, the Stockett’s Rocket (after Capt. Marvin M. Stockett, Aircraft Commander)B-29-1-BW 42-6261, disappeared after takeoff from Chakulia, India, over the Himalayas (12 KIA, 11 crew and one passenger) This raid, which did little damage to the target, with only one bomb striking the target factory complex, nearly exhausted fuel stocks at the Chengdu B-29 bases, resulting in a slow-down of operations until the fuel stockpiles could be replenished. Starting in July, the raids against Japan from Chinese airfields continued at relatively low intensity. Japan was bombed on: 7 July 1944 (14 B-29s), 29 July (70+), 10 August (24), 20 August (61), 8 September (90), 26 September (83), 25 October (59), 12 November (29), 21 November (61), 19 December (36) and for the last time on 6 January 1945 (49).
The tactic of using aircraft to ram American B-29s was first recorded on the 20 August raid on the steel factories at Yawata. Sergeant Shigeo Nobe of the 4th Sentai intentionally flew his Kawasaki Ki-45 into a B-29; debris from the explosion following this attack severely damaged another B-29, which also went down. Lost were Colonel Robert Clinksale’s B-29-10-BW 42-6334 Gertrude C and Captain Ornell Stauffer’s B-29-15-BW 42-6368 Calamity Sue, both from the 486th BG. Several B-29s were destroyed in this way over the ensuing months. Although the term “Kamikaze” is often used to refer to the pilots conducting these attacks, the word was not used by the Japanese military.
B-29s were withdrawn from airfields in China by the end of January 1945. Throughout this prior period, B-29 raids were also launched from China and India against many other targets throughout Southeast Asia. However, the entire B-29 effort was gradually shifted to the new bases in the Marianas Islands in the Central Pacific, with the last B-29 combat mission from India flown on 29 March 1945.
