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Every year on the first Sunday in June, Canada celebrates Armed Forces Day. At the start of the First World War, the Canadian Armed forces had just 3,500 men, but by the end of the war with conscription announced, they expanded to 400,000. 24,000 of these took part in battles in Europe. The conscription for the Second World War was even larger, with more than a million Canadians serving and of these, 42,000 died in combat. Currently, the Canadian Armed Forces have just over 90,000 personnel.
In the early 1940s, Italian fighter aviation had a serious problem on its hands. Its main fighters, the Fiat G.50 and the Macchi C.200, had good maneuverability but were clearly inferior to the newest aircraft in speed, climb rate, and altitude performance. Some of the issues were alleviated by the modernization to “Serie 2” and using licensed copies of the German DB 601 engine. But those were only temporary measures that still didn’t improve them enough to engage targets at high altitudes — altitudes now occupied by strategic bombers. Besides, the Italian fighters were mostly armed with machine guns, and that was another point for improvement.
On the 15th of September, 1916, exactly 109 years ago, the world witnessed an event that forever changed the image of war. It happened in France, near the Somme River. The British army was assaulting German trenches when it deployed a brand-new weapon: armored, tracked monsters created specifically to breach defensive lines.
The Great French Revolution shook the entire world, and one of the first and most important events of that time was the storming of the Bastille prison-fortress on July 14th, 1789. This date was not celebrated for almost a hundred years until 1880, when July 14th became a National Holiday. For this day, a large military parade on the Champs Elysees was established one hundred years later in 1980.
The Lockheed brothers, early aviation engineers, developed an interest in flight shortly before the First World War. Allan Lockheed believed that airplanes would soon become the fastest and safest mode of transportation in the world. But within a few decades, the world was already bracing for another global conflict — World War II. Automakers shifted gears to making tanks and armored vehicles, while aviation pioneers began competing to build the most capable military aircraft, the new driving force of 20th-century warfare. Among those caught up in this rapid arms race was Lockheed, though by that time the company was no longer run by its founders. The challenging times compelled the company to enter the defense industry.
In the early stages of the Cold War, jet aviation was making extraordinary progress. In only a decade, engineering teams across the world switched from making clumsy jet turbines slapped onto former props to complex, expensive, and very fast planes. Even the sound barrier became surmountable. Still, there were missions that could be completed by simpler, less refined machines. Besides, training the new generation of pilots demanded jets with simplified controls. At the same time, it became clear that some of the requirements for trainers and strike aircraft intersected. The idea to create a single combat trainer aircraft was in the air, so multiple nations tried their hands at making them, resulting in the Swedish Saab 105, the British Strikemaster, the Franco-German Alpha Jet, and many others. The Czechoslovakian L-39 Albatros was one of the most popular combat trainers among the Warsaw Pact countries.