Barrett Tillman's Rant Page

DUEL OVER DOUAI

2012-01-11T08:33:00.000-08:00

Every writer gets the standard set of questions, including the inevitable, “How long does it take you to write a book?” The answer varies, but a typical nonfiction book of about 100,000 words can require perhaps two years.

But there are exceptions.

Take the WW I novel Duel Over Douai. From inception to publication, oh, fourteen years.

A bit of background:

Two of my friends, colleagues, and unindicted co-conspirators are retired naval aviators, Commanders Robert R. “Boom” Powell and Jack D. Woodul. In 1997 we began exchanging tongue-in-cheek emails about three Great War pilots based upon ourselves. Boom was Leftenant Robert John Brabazon Woodul-Powell; Jack became wild and woolly frontiersman George Armstrong Cody; and my alter ego was Leutnant zur See Friedrich Prinz von Tillmann und Bethwig. The situation was complicated in that “WP” and von T were second cousins who had grown up together. When the book opens in 1917, von Tillmann is nineteen and Woodul-Powell one or two years older. Cody’s age is indeterminate but he’s mature enough to run from the law along the Mexican border. He fetches up in France, joining a Sopwith Camel squadron where he and WP take an immediate dislike to one another. Eventually their animus turns to grudging respect, then friendship.

By and by, we three amigos discovered that we had about 13,000 words of assorted passages and no plan what to do with them. All we knew was that we were having fun. But since Boom and Jack were still gainfully employed flying airliners all over the globe, our email literary society took a back seat. Not until they retired and Jack had built Rancho Del Mundo in the New Mexican fastness were we able to devote more attention to what had become Duel Over Douai.

A word about the title:

We’re big on alliteration, and kicked around other titles such as Passion Over Passchendale and Victory Over Vimy. But DOD just had a ring to it, so we kept it, though Douai only appears gratuitously, and is removed from most of the action up in Flanders.

Moving right along…

Certain Great War conventions had to be observed, including Wine, Women, and Song (well, OK, especially Wine, Women and Song). The protagonists indulge in all the above, but particularly von Tillmann’s encounter with Ursula. In fact, a recent DOD reader asked “So…who’s Ursula?” I could only reply “Well, Ursula is Ursula.” (Those who have seen the 1966 epic The Blue Max certainly recall Her in The Towel Scene.)

The reader’s question reflected the variety of femmes in the novel, including one or more each British, German, and French. In fact, Lynn is named for a longtime friend from London environs. (Other friends’ surnames are employed throughout, with a disclaimer that any resemblance is coincidental yadda-yadda.) Moreover, we asked wives and lady friends to read segments of the text for a feminine perspective, and pretty much heard what we expected. Stephanie, an Air Force brat teaching medieval literature in Britain, replied, “Well done, but this is such a boys’ book…”

In our defense, we tried to inject something other than dogfights, drunken revels, and mayhem in the mix by attempting to place our characters in context of time and place. Much historical fiction simply plops down 20th-21st century characters in a period setting, but DOD seeks to depict young people in a chaotic period, experiencing the violent end of the ordered world they had known all their brief lives. We are told that we succeeded to a large degree.

As for the aviation and military material, we think we scored 10 out of 10. All three of us have extensive experience flying open-cockpit aircraft, and Boom continues logging hours in WW I machines such as Avros and Fokkers. The fact that Jack and Boom both are combat veterans only enhances the effect. But DOD’s authenticity extends beyond technical aspects—in some cases matching the date with the weather. It’s unlikely that any Great War flying tale has achieved a similar standard of authenticity.

The variety of aeroplanes should please almost everyone. We have Camels, Bristol Fighters, Curtiss flying boats, and Hansa-Brandenberg floatplanes, plus Albatros and Fokker fighters.

Without giving away too much of the plot, I’ll note that WP receives the Victoria Cross for a notable Gotha interception over London one night (Gothas are way cool) while von Tillmann earns the Pour le Merite, and Cody earns a rare reputation as an accomplished mankiller fueled by red meat and single-malt scotch.

The challenge and the fun of writing DOD was to portray ourselves as we might have been during World War I. All are thrust into positions of leadership or at least responsibility at tender ages. Tillmann is just twenty when the book ends, probably the only naval aviator in Great War fiction. He struggles with self doubt while his kinsman and the Yank try to deal with British bureaucracy, class consciousness, and the inevitable SOBs in every large organization.

DOD has been very well received. Here’s a couple of reader comments:

“…more than just a book for aviation buffs. It is an extraordinary story of young men at war, locked in merciless combat over the Western Front at a time when pilots did not have parachutes and the penalty for a mistake was death. Duel Over Douai is a must for anyone seeking an exciting book on a little-appreciated era of aviation history, and I eagerly await any sequel these three produce!”

--USAF historian.

“…the authors have such a natural understanding of mechanical stuff that they insert meaningful details into a sentence in a way that it sounds ‘right.’ You can feel it, you can smell it, you can hear it. Also, I've not read anything so devoid of fluff, mistakes, and exaggeration for a long time. Another of those books that you hate to see end.”

–Editor, Flight Journal.

Incidentally, Boom has made a start on Volume II. Watch this space for updates!

DOD is available only as an e-book. You can order it off Amazon.com:

http://www.amazon.com/Duel-Over-Douai-Aviation-ebook/dp/B005CIYT6G

DNA AND THE AMERICAN CHARACTER

2011-12-03T08:22:00.000-08:00

Occasionally I’m going to “shake the stick” and tap the top of my flying helmet, passing control to a literary wingman. The following is from Budd Davisson’s “Air Bum” blog of November 2007. Considering the recent Thanksgiving holiday, it’s entirely suitable for this month’s Rant—in fact, for any month.

Circa 1997, when I got on-line, I found myself pulling cyber G’s with some Europeans over a variety of subjects, but especially the nature of America. (The reason they typed in English instead of German or Russian never occurred to them.) Eventually it was clear that there was no point arguing with some Euros because they were immune to facts and logic. Finally I disengaged with the summary, “Now I know why my ancestors came here in the 1630s—to get away from people like you!”

There’s a quote attributed to frontier scout Kit Carson (neck and neck with Jed Smith as the most man on the North American continent) about the nature of American settlers: “The cowards never started and the weak died on the way.” He could have been speaking of the Pilgrims or several generations that followed.

The point to be made is that we hear American politicians insist that we need to be more like the rest of the world. That is, of course, total batguano, because we did not get to be America by imitating anyone else. Quite the opposite: the founders and pioneers chose to leave behind the world they knew and risk all merely for the opportunity to start anew at risk of everything, often including their lives. So the next time anyone tells you that America needs to resemble the rest of the world, ask yourself one question: why does the rest of the world want to come here?

Over to Budd….

Years ago I ran into an old copy of Science Newsletter mixed in with other out-of-date magazines in a doctor’s lobby. A weekly publication, its purpose in life was to keep us up on what had happened in science that week. In this issue, a feature article described a study that seemingly proved risk takers to have discernibly different DNA making them a slightly different species from the rest of us. That got me thinking about America: weren’t we settled by a bunch of radical risk takers and does that explain something about our national character?

Those first boat loads of people who set off for America had no idea what they were getting into. What they did know was that America was pure wilderness and to get there they’d have to spend two months or so bobbing around in the Atlantic Ocean in a tiny boat. That’s a helluva risk, wouldn’t you say? No one would take that trip who wasn’t a risk taker. So, if you extend that thought, that means the breeding stock upon which much of America is based had a different DNA so we had no choice but to be a nation of risk takers?

Now, let’s take the above just a little further. When we were a string bean country that was clinging to the eastern seaboard, everything on the other side of the Appalachians, especially places like Kentucky, were looked at as if they were on the other side of the moon. In fact, the Indians (who we had yet to recognize as Native Americans) had lots of spook stories about the region around Kentucky. Still, colonists began pushing west, many lining up behind the likes of Daniel Boone, to wend their way through mountain passes and hostile natives to “go where no man had gone before.” It could clearly be said that those who left the security of the East Coast were more willing to take risks than those who they were leaving behind who have already been proven to be risk takers. Does this say something about the differences between peoples in various parts of the country?

The West has an image of daring do and it’s not entirely because of the movies. To this day, The West represents a hostile environment with the only difference between then and now, being that no one is shooting arrows at the residents any more. Even today, parts of The West literally dare man to try to do something with it and so he has. Not that Las Vegas or Phoenix are the pinnacle of anything, but considering where they are located, certainly no one would have attempted a settlement there who was afraid of risk.

Everything about the Old West challenged man and it weeded out those who weren’t strong and ready to match its challenges. Isn’t that the way we still see The West versus The East? One group is a little rough around the edges and more insular, but definitely ready to take on all comers while the other is more sedate, more group-oriented and less likely to have grease under their fingernails. One isn’t better than the other, but I do think this is part of the reason East and West don’t always get along.

So, if you put any faith in the DNA theory of risk, what we apparently have is a nation of born risk takers that range from your everyday risk taker in the East to hair-on-fire risk takers in the west. Yeah, I’d say that’s about right, wouldn’t you?

THE MEANING OF LIFE

2011-11-10T16:30:00.000-08:00

As an historian I seldom delve into metaphysics, but in fiction I’ve had more opportunity. Or, to be more precise, I created the opportunity. Here’s how it came about:

My 1992 novel The Sixth Battle postulated a post-Soviet naval engagement in the Indian Ocean. It pitted a "Russian Federation" alliance with Southern African front-line states in conflict at sea and ashore. The main combatants were a U.S. Navy carrier battle group centered around the imaginary Forrestal class carrier USS Langley and a Russian task force including the carrier Varyag.

War gamers occasionally still contact me about The Sixth Battle, expressing their interest in the war-at-sea scenario, which would be impossible today.

To set the stage: Langley’s Air Wing 18 launched a long-range strike against the Soviet force, resulting in losses on both sides. One of the downed A-6E Intruders was “Killer 530” flown by Lieutenant Commander Peter Huggins and Lieutenant (jg) Justin Olsen. They ejected from their stricken bomber well clear of the target area but remained adrift in their small raft until finally found. The narrative resumes aboard an ammunition supply ship…

USS Mount St. Helens, Indian Ocean, 0148 Zulu

Lieutenant Commander James Rixey was having no luck with the debrief. Even though the most seriously-wounded survivors of Battle Group Charlie had been choppered to the amphibious force, Rixey’s ammunition ship and others in the underway replenishment group were stuffed with rescued crews. All of Rixey’s interviewees had been sailors—until now.

Sitting across from the two waterlogged aviators, the admin officer tried to convince them to open up But he couldn’t blame them for preferring food to conversation. Poor bastards—almost four days afloat in a rift in the middle of the damn Indian Ocean.

Wire-haired “Brillo” Huggins speared another mouthful of medium-rare steak. It was delicious. A corpsman stood by, gauging whether the Intruder crew was in danger of gorging on the unaccustomed feast. Ever since ejecting from Killer 530 after the strike against the Novorossiysk, the pilot and bombardier-navigator had subsisted on meager survival rations.

Rixey decided to try again. “Look, I know you guys are hungry. But your squadron will want to know about you right away. So will your families.”

The B/N, a straight-arrow Mormon ironically dubbed “Sleaze,” looked up. His bathrobe’s cuff almost dangled on his plate. “You mean we’ve already been reported MIA?”

The personnel officer shrugged. “Well, I don’t know for sure, after all the confusion. But it seems that with…”

“Pass the sauce,” Brillo asked. A steward shoved the Heinz to him.

“…the truce at sea, things will get sorted out.” Rixey sounded hopeful.

Sleaze laid down his fork. “Look, Commander, what more we can we tell you? We hit our target, took battle damage on the egress and punched out. Just say that Huggins and Olsen of VA-186 are still afloat.”

Rixey knew when to stop. “Okay, okay.” He rose to leave. “Say, if you don’t mind me asking, what did you guys do for four days in the water?”

Brillo shook more sauce onto his steak. “To tell you the truth, I thought we’d go crazy out there at first. But toward the end we broke the code.” He looked up. “We figured out The Meaning of Life.”

The admin officer gaped at the pilot, uncertain whether Huggins was serious or not. “You solved the mystery of the ages. Right.”

Sleaze pointed at his empty plate. “Hit me again, please,” he told the steward.

“No, it’s true,” Brillo insisted. “Well, actually, Justin here did most of it. We’re gonna publish a new dogma, ‘The Book of Sleaze.’”

The corpsman, the steward, and the officer all waited expectantly. Olsen accepted another mini steak and sighed aloud. “The Meaning of Life,” he intoned, “is infinite. It is precisely what every human soul chooses to make of it.” He plunked a salt shaker onto the molded plastic table top with a sound that rang, high and pure, through the eons.

0156 Zulu

The ship’s sleepy but excited chaplain, tape recorder in hand, paced into the galley, asking for Huggins and Olsen of VA-186.

THE .50 CALIBER MYTH

2011-10-23T09:57:00.000-07:00

According to “experts,” a .50 caliber sniper rifle can destroy an airliner. Therefore, civilian ownership of .50 caliber rifles should be banned.

In 2005 CBS News aired a program addressing the “threat” that privately-owned .50s pose to air travel. The onscreen critic was Tom Diaz of the Violence Policy Center. He told CBS, "I just think that there are certain occasions when we say in our society, this product is such a threat to our health and safety, and in this case, our national security, we will not allow it."

The gun-rights side of the subject was provided by firearms maker Ronnie Barrett (no relation—I’ve asked him). Commenting upon his highly successful M82, he stated, "It's a target rifle…a high-end adult recreational toy. Any rifle in the hands of a terrorist is a deadly weapon." That includes airliners hijacked because passengers are prevented from defending themselves.

Apparently the worst-case realistic scenario floated by .50 banners is airplanes sitting on the ramp or taxiing. In fact, military snipers can use .50s on hard targets such as parked aircraft, radar dishes, or vehicles. Put a couple of 700-grainers through a jet engine, and that airplane is grounded pending repairs. But that’s an inconvenience, not a disaster.

Incidentally, rifle shooters (and some gun banners) know that any hunting-caliber round will easily penetrate the aluminum skin of any commercial and many military aircraft—from way out there. The difference is that gun banners are selective in what they tell you.

So, how about hitting an airliner in flight?

The only way to do so would be a plane taking off or landing. Assuming the .50-caliber terrorist got within range (perhaps between a quarter and half a mile) he would need a no-deflection shot for much chance of a hit. But that means positioning oneself directly behind or ahead of the flight path at a metropolitan airport—and firing in a matter of seconds.

A side aspect probably offers better chances for a shooting position. But from 400 to 500 yards, a full-deflection shot on a jetliner landing or climbing at 130 to 150 knots would require a lead of perhaps 100 to 150 feet or more to hit a desired spot—assuming the shooter was fast and accurate with a 30-pound piece of metal.

If anyone has a way to practice that shot, it would be fascinating to observe. First you’d have to rent a 737 or better—starting at about $120 a minute, never mind the return deposit on the airplane. Then you would need a haji jet pilot to fly it around the pattern until your shooter dials in his lead for a given speed and distance.

And incidentally, bargain-basement discount ammo goes for about $3.50 a pop.

Are you starting to see a pattern?

Assuming a hit, what would be the likely result?

We can tell you with some precision: it would be a half-inch diameter hole in an airplane weighing around 35 tons, not counting fuel, which would depend upon takeoff or landing.

Couldn’t that hit kill somebody?

Yes, conceivably it could. But why bother to shoot one or two airline passengers when you can blow up dozens of people with one bomb? Or thousands if you hijack an airliner full of defenseless passengers.

But could a .50 caliber hit destroy the airplane?

No. And here’s why.

During World War II and into the jet age, the standard U.S. fighter aircraft armament was six Browning M2 .50 calibers. They cycled at 800 rpm or more—at least 13 rounds per second. Times six equals 78 rounds for a one-second trigger squeeze. That’s a lot of hefty projectiles starting at 2,800 foot-seconds.

How effective was that armament? Across the board it typically resulted in 60 percent of enemy aircraft hit in air combat assessed as destroyed, though that figure is optimistic. We won’t address those credited as “probables” because their fate is unknowable, but the large majority certainly survived.

Meanwhile, in the Pacific Theater the combined efforts of Army, Navy, and Marine fliers resulted in nearly 1,000 Japanese aircraft damaged in aerial combat. Almost 800 more were damaged in the China-Burma theater. And remember that Japanese design philosophy minimized armor plate and protected fuel tanks.

In the European and Mediterranean theaters, Army Air Force fighters scored nonlethal hits on some 4,000 Axis fighters and bombers.

Over Korea, U.S. Air Force fighters (mostly F-86 Sabres) also had six .50s, firing at a higher cyclic rate than WW II. They damaged nearly 1,000 Communist aircraft—mostly MiG-15 jets.

The foregoing figures total some 6,700 enemy aircraft hosed by multi-gun batteries firing .50 caliber ammunition: ball, tracer, armor-piercing, and/or incendiary.

So: how much damage can be expected from one, two, or maybe five .50 caliber rounds on an airliner?

You can figure it for yourself. It ranges from insignificant on the high end to nonexistent on the low end.

Meanwhile, instead of banning rifles that pose no serious threat, the opponents of personal firearms should look elsewhere. By far the most serious threat to aircraft is the shoulder-mounted antiaircraft missile generically known as MANPADS (man-portable air defense system). The best known are the American Stinger and Soviet-designed SA-7 and later heat-seeking missiles, effective against jet airplanes and helicopters. A generic MANPADS brochure states that it can hit a 700 mph target above 15,000 feet.

When the NATO operation in Libya approached its height, apparently nobody in Brussels or in Washington considered that the late-unlamented Moamar Qadaffi (however his name was spelled) accumulated tons of them. Press accounts noted that some 20,000 disappeared when the rebels seized the colonel’s armories. Perhaps NATO could have prevented or minimized the theft, perhaps not. In any case, failure to do so represents a gigantic Oops that may return to haunt Western frequent fliers for years to come.

Meanwhile, no civilian casualties are known inflicted by privately-owned .50s, and certainly no airliners have been damaged.

However, if anyone wants to address criminal activity involving .50s, recall that under “Fast and Furious” BATFE not only permitted but encouraged dealers to sell them into Mexico, without an export license. Under federal law that’s a felony violation of the Arms Export Control Act and the International Traffic in Arms regulations. Maximum penalty is ten years and $10,000.

Just thought I’d mention it.

SHAMELESS HYPE

2011-09-25T16:22:00.001-07:00

Dear Readers,

In today's publishing world, authors have to do much of the heavy lifting in promoting their work. Therefore, I'm pleased almost beyond words to pass along the following endorsement of the Great War e-novel I wrote over a 14-year period (!) with two unindicted co-conspirators. The short review was posted by Budd Davisson (Flight Journal's editor) on the Bearhawk homebuilt aircraft builder's forum in August. Reprinted here with his kind permission.

"I finally got around to reading Duel Over Douai, the World War I epic penned by three of our own--Barrett Tillman, Boom Powell, and Jack Woodul--and I really loved it. I would have finished it sooner, but it's digital-only and Marlene doesn't like me taking her iPad into the head that often.

"This is a piece the detail freaks amongst us will love. All three authors are historians, writers, pilots, and shooters with thousands of biplane hours between them, including being very current in Dr.1 Fokkers, amongst other things. They all have such a natural understanding of mechanical stuff that they can insert meaningful details into a sentence in a way that it sounds "right," not contrived. It's like being in a Jim Dietz painting: you can feel it, you can smell it, you can hear it. The words have texture to them.

"The plot is one of those that is hard to describe because with so much being written about The Great War over the past 100 years, nothing can be said about it that hasn't become a cliché’. The surprise of the plot, however, is that everything weaves together so well that it somehow feels fresh. Although the final moment is unexpected, the rest is a journey we've all taken in one way or another but I'll absolutely guarantee that you've never been so sucked into that journey. Or understood it so well.

"The feeling of being totally immersed in a comedy within an adventure within a tragedy, which is what WWI aerial combat was, is palpable. And fun.

"It's available on Amazon.com (isn't everything?) and it's well worth the price. You've not read anything so devoid of fluff, mistakes, and exaggeration for a long time. The world they've created will stick with you for a long time. The mark of a good read. On top of that you'd learn so much about every aspect of WWI in the air that it should be required reading for military historians.

"Pass this on and give a great story some legs."

How to Post Here

2011-08-09T12:56:00.000-07:00

Dear Readers:

Many visitors (sometimes including myself!) have noted that it’s difficult to impossible to post comments here and on other blogs. The following came from a dedicated reader who passes along some helpful information. With thanks to Yahoobuckaroo's blog:

“As the Google Help site suggests, the commenting system within Blogger.com blogs has a number of issues.

“Blogger/Blogspot on how to fix when people can't comment.

“There's a known problem with Blogger/Blogspot blogs that some people experience a lot of trouble posting comments on them. The forums are FULL of complaints, though I haven't heard of an official fix from Google.

“Personally, I don't get any more errors posting on Blogger blogs than I do on Wordpress or any other kind. I suspect part of the problem is with how people's internet browsers are set--and I found a *fix* for that one too, but can't find it at the moment.

“One of the easiest solutions is to have pop-out comments, but it's not a solution in all cases--I gather it just solves the problem most of the time. And I did find one person who complained that in their Firefox browser the popout window is super teensy small and annoying.

“I just found two other solutions, which require the owner of the blog to make a fix. I'm going to post them here for any blog owners who want to play around with them, though I won't be adding any instructions/visuals ‘cause I'm off to bed soon (my exciting new bedtime of 3 AM instead of the horrid bedtime which had crept up on me of 8AM!)

“So without further ado, the two fixes I just Googled up, that seem to work for a lot of people:

"Number 1

"I had the same problem, even though I had the option checked for people to be able to leave comments. I went to my Layout Settings (Or Design--BT), then "Edit HTML," and clicked the "Revert widget templates to default" underneath the text box. That took care of my problem...hope it works for you too!

“I finally figured it out. Changing the settings like -emnj- made it so the posts I do now people can comment on, but I couldn't figure out how to get it to change on the previous ones. So what I did was click on the Edit icon for the post that no one could comment on. Then under the box I wrote in, there is a part that says ‘Post Options.’ It's right above the orange ‘Publish Post’ box. Click ‘Post Options’ and click ‘Allow Comments.’ Presto change-o: people can comment now.

“No. 2

“Is explained on this person's blog, with proper detailed instructions:”

http://glamiva.blogspot.com/2009/10/easiest-comment-box-code.html

Barrett speaking again:

I have made the template change so we'll see how that works. Or not. In the latter case, another option is to try posting as "Anonymous."

Thanks to the dozens of you who return to my Rant Page each month—with heartfelt wishes for better luck hereon!

THE NAVAL NAME GAME

2011-07-12T14:58:00.000-07:00

The U.S. Navy is institutionally incapable of following its own rules. In recent years Secretaries of the Navy have ignored historic conventions regarding appropriate names for different classes of ships, repeatedly catering to political factions.

The situation was recently summarized by a retired chief petty officer. He says, “The Navy has a system for naming submarines. They’re named for cities, states, politicians, and fish.”

That’s an apt description of the “system.”

Naval purists recall the long-gone era of logical ship names: battleships were states; carriers were battles or historic ships; cruisers were cities; destroyers were people; submarines were fish, etc. No more.

The essence is rule of man rather than law, as new ships are named by the Secretary of the Navy—a political appointee. A congressional summary notes, “The Navy states that while ‘it has attempted to be systematic in naming its ships, like all institutions it has been subject to evolutionary change...’”

That’s one way of putting it. But for a reality check, exchange “evolutionary change” with “politics.”

The Navy was not always so political. In the 19th century four living people saw their names on naval vessels. Ten ships were named for living people in the 20th century (six since 1980) and now there are five since 2002.

At Tailhook ‘87 Secretary John Lehman was asked about ship names. He responded that sometimes the Navy has to play the name game to get funding. A retired CPO exclaimed, “SecNav, are you saying that Congress will shell out $3 billion for a carrier named Vinson but not for a carrier named Essex?” Lehman replied, “That’s about it.”

Some names are better received than others. In announcing John Murtha (LPD-26) last year the Secretary over-ruled city names for the San Antonio class. Officially, Murtha was honored as the first Vietnam veteran elected to Congress, and a Navy release cited “his unwavering support for our Sailors and Marines.” It was untrue: in 2005 Murtha drew bitter criticism for declaring Marines in Iraq guilty of murder before the investigation was over. Marines took the ship as a calculated slap at Leathernecks, especially galling from a champion pork merchant.

The most recent controversy involves naming a Lewis and Clark class supply ship for labor activist Cesar Chavez. Reportedly Chavez described his Navy service as the two worst years of his life, but rather than continuing to honor pioneers, SecNav opted for a Democrat Party figure in a totally unrelated field. (Another T-AKE was named for civil rights martyr Medgar Evers.) Other ships in the class recognize naval explorers Richard E. Byrd and Robert E. Peary plus astronauts Alan Shepard and Wally Schirra.

Then there are aircraft carriers.

For decades the most important ships afloat were named for battles or historic ships. However, two carriers have been named for presidents who died in office: Franklin D. Roosevelt (CVB-42) and John F. Kennedy (CV-67). USS Forrestal (CV-59) honored another naval veteran, the first Secretary of Defense.

After Nimtiz (CVN-68) in 1972, every subsequent carrier has been named for presidents and politicians, including Senator John Stennis and Representative Carl Vinson. Both were Navy supporters who, like Nimitz, should have been honored by naming of destroyers or frigates.

Hardcore naval aviators disapproved of USS Harry S Truman (CVN-75) and George W. Bush (CVN-77). Truman slashed naval aviation from 99 carriers to 15 (including CVEs) and tried to disband the Marine Corps, while Bush presided over the Tailhook witch hunt. But partisan politics won.

Interest in christening a new carrier Enterprise—the most storied of all flattops—brought a brief resurgence of optimism among purists. With CVN-65 due for retirement, the lead ship of the CVN-79 class could become “Big E III.” Reportedly Senator John Warner’s name was hung on a Virginia class submarine, and the onetime carrier name America on LHA-6, to free a carrier for a proper name.

However, Republicans insisted on honoring Gerald Ford, who was never elected president, and whose primary naval duty was a ship’s athletic officer. Disappointed, Enterprise (CV-6) veterans of WW II were informed that the next Ford class hull could be Enterprise, and plans were discussed for passing the original silver to “the 80 boat” and even transferring some of the 1938 ship’s portholes from “E65” to a new carrier. That would have been a tremendous acknowledgment of naval tradition.

No such luck.

The Democrats intervened, and the Obama administration favored John F. Kennedy, even though CV-67 was only decommissioned in 2007. As long as “a real carrier name” was ignored, rather than recycling Kennedy the Navy might have considered another WW II naval officer: Richard M. Nixon.

Naval purists will continue their critique. As long as SecNav makes the decision, the process will remain subject to political favoritism. The only way to change it is to enact a law requiring adherence to convention, but guess what? That decision would have to be made by politicians.

The Navy has flubbed an historic opportunity. In the centennial year of naval aviation, no greater tribute could be accorded than respecting history and tradition in naming our latest combatant for the greatest flattop of all.

The CV-6 association states, “Those of us who served in our Navy during WW II and were given the privilege to serve in USS Enterprise, will always remember those 391 shipmates who were killed in action.”

The U.S. Navy should do no less.

THE EXAMPLE OF DON ALEJO

2011-05-21T09:24:00.000-07:00

Courage is where you find it.

Often it’s found in quiet placces where people refuse to give in to debilitating injuries or fatal disease. Sometimes it’s found in dirty, dingy prison cells. In 1945 it was commonly found among kamaikaze pilots, U-boat crews, and Soviet tank riders—all with extraordinarily poor chances of survival. On 9-11 it was found on United Flight 93 over Pennsylvania.

On November 14, 2010, it was found in Mexico in the person of Alejo Garza Tamen.

Seventy-seven years old, Garza Tamen was known as “Don Alejo,” the patron of the family ranch in Tamaulipas State. In Mexico, don is an honorific, a title denoting seniority rather than actual nobility. In Garza’s case, it carried considerable respect as well.

Tamaulipas is in northeastern Mexico, bordering Texas and the Gulf coast. Don Alejo’s hacienda was nine miles outside the state capital, Ciudad Victoria, some 175 miles south-southwest of Brownsville. That geographic fact made the estate attractive to drug cartels moving their products to del norte. It also forced many remote landowners to rely upon themselves rather than the government.

Against a background of prolonged violence and civil war, the Mexican constitution of 1917 ensured individuals the right to possess firearms, but in 1968 widespread unrest led to severe restrictions by state and federal authorities.

Government policy is to conduct ”permanent educational campaigns that induce the reduction of the possession, the carrying and the use of arms of any type.” Simply put, the constitution was invalidated by legislation and regulation, with the defense ministry maintaining a national firearms database.

Generally, the largest permissible sidearm caliber for civilians is .380, though 9mm and even .357 may be exempted, go figger. (Mexican law presumably accounts for the perennial shortage of .380 ammo in Arizona.)

Some exemptions exist for shotguns and rifles (commonly .22s) in rural areas, though licenses still are required. Reportedly compliance with the more onerous regulations is low. Furthermore, in some cases the army has disarmed police in areas sympathetic to antigovernment movements. In that context, the huge majority of Mexican citizens are defenseless in a nation where narcoviolence has escalated massively. Available figures indicate fewer than 100 cartel-related deaths in 2006, rocketing to nearly 10,000 each in the last two years. It’s so dire that mayors of some Mexican border towns spend the night across the river.

The Garza family received no support from the local authorities so Don Alejo was left on his own. Subsequently a Spanish language blog addressing the subject proposed organ transplants, as certain Mexican politicians require a set of cojones. Other comments lamented the country’s gun laws, which make self defense difficult to impossible, though community defense groups have formed in some areas to resist to the extent possible.

Meanwhile, there was no help for Don Alejo.

On Saturday, November 13, drug traffickers drove to the hacienda, announcing that the owners had 24 hours to vacate.

Garza was not intimidated. Reared in an outdoor environment—his family ran a timber and sawmill business--he knew the wild and reportedly he was a founder of the local hunting, shooting, and fishing club. Familiar with firearms and willing to use them in self defense, he set his mental trigger. The patron informed the gang members that he would meet violence in kind. After they departed he told his employees they would not be needed the next day, and suggested they leave. Thereupon, Don Alejo tended to his weapons and planned his defense. What weapons he possessed are unknown, but news accounts emphasize hunting rifles. He positioned guns and ammo at doors and windows around the house for easy access.

Around 4:00 Sunday morning, at least two vehicles approached, entering the wooden fence perimeter about 50 yards from the house and stopping near the hacienda entrance. Reportedly they called upon the patron to leave, firing threatening shots. At that point the fight was on.

It probably didn’t last long, though apparently the attackers fired hundreds of rounds and threw grenades. Don Alejo killed four assailants within a few yards of the entrance, then died in his front room. When the gunmen fled, they left two of their compadres bleeding into the dirt, unconscious but alive.

The investigation was handled by the Mexican marine corps, evidently because local police could not be trusted. Internet videos show the whitewashed house, probably of 1940s construction, with some outbuildings. Footage of the scene showed bullet gouges on the wall, explosive impacts from grenades; windows and shades riddled with 7.62 holes. The front door contained about 70 bullet holes and three or four larger ones.

According to one Mexican news source, Don Alejo perhaps represented “the first instance of a nation's push-back against the monstrous cartels that are challenging the very existence of the Mexican state.” In the U.S., the story appeared on the web site borderlandbeat.com, and immediately filled emails.

Don Alejo was 77 years old, capable, proud, and courageous, but his health is an unknown factor. As a lifelong outdoorsman, he may have remained fit enough to conduct his fight outside the house. By moving and shooting, denying the criminals anything but a fleeting, ghosting target, perhaps he could have survived—even killed more of the cartel thugs. Of course, others may have returned to complete the job another night. We’ll never know.

But what we do know is that Don Alejo made his decision, stood his ground, and fought his own fight. On the night he died, surely he was the most man in all of Mexico. He has inspired millions of his fellow citizens while shaming those Americans who would deny free men the right of self defense.

God bless him.

FAMILIES, PATRIOTS, AND OTHERS

2011-04-26T17:46:00.000-07:00

This April has more history content than most recent months. Every year there’s a nodding acknowledgment to the embattled farmers who confronted the redcoats at Lexington and Concord in ’75 (that’s 1775 for products of Outcome Based Education), and for more recent history buffs, April 18 is the anniversary of the brashly daring Doolittle Raid (1942) and the semi-miraculous navigation and timing attending the interception of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto’s bomber near Bougainville in the Solomon Islands (1943). If you don’t know who Admiral Yamamoto was, clearly you’ve stumbled onto the wrong blog, but you can look him up on Wikipedia.

In Arizona, April 18 is Patriots Day and some of us took time to assemble on the green (however scanty, here in the Sonoran Desert) at the state capitol. Some exercised their Second Amendment rights of open carry, though Arizona recently enacted Constitutional Carry (aka universal concealed carry). It was interesting to see folks with revolvers and semiautos on their belts conversing with policemen. That may be the subject of a future Rant.

Meanwhile….

This April also is the 150th anniversary of the start of The Civil War. Amid all the sturm & drang attending that event, I thought I remembered the, um, irony of “Honest” Abe Lincoln’s first inaugural address, and my aging memory was confirmed when I found the following statement:

“This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember, or overthrow it…”

Those words were spoken on March 4, 1861, five weeks before the Confederate batteries opened fire on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor.

Obviously the 16^th president did not mean what he said, or drastically changed his mind, but that’s peripheral to this month’s Rant.

The point at hand is that today we hear vastly ill informed people—usually blow-dried minions of the mainstream media—claim that the country is divided as never before.

Ahem.

At least we’re not shooting at each other. Not yet. And thereby stands a lesson, evident in my own family.

Both my parents’ ancestors came to these shores within three years of each other, in the 1630s. Therefore, by the time of the Revolution (the first one, typified by those white males wearing wigs and stockings) the Barretts and the Tillmans (Tilghmans) had been here for some 140 years—long enough to become well established. The Barretts apparently were wholly committed to the rebel cause when it seems that only about one-third of the population shared the sentiment.

The clan came early to the rebellion. Captain Richard Fay Barrett, an insurance purveyor, commanded the Concord Artillery and Infantry Company of the Massachusetts Volunteer Militia.

Colonel James Barrett dispatched the militia companies that swapped lead with the Brits at Concord Bridge. His kinsman Deacon Samuel Barrett owned a gun making firm with a laboratory “where every branch of that business is carried on.”

We’ve been ballistically inclined ever since.

Another Barrett relation was Captain John Parker who commanded the minutemen on Lexington Green. Originally repulsed, they reformed and harassed/sniped/assassinated “lobsterbacks” along the route back to Boston. Payback was the order of the day: his cousin Jonas Parker had been bayonetted to death at Lexington.

The Tillman/Tilghmans were another matter. George Washington’s aide de camp through most of the war was Lt. Col. Tench Tilghman, a successful Philadelphia businessman. Washington thought so highly of his aide that Tilghman was selected to take word of Lord Cornwallis’ surrender at Yorktown to the Congress in Philadelphia. Tench died young in 1786—only 42—and the future president wrote a condolence letter to his father. GW had to know that James, then living in Maryland, had been attorney general of Pennsylvania. More than that, Tench’s brother Richard was an officer in the Royal Navy, and Tilghman Island remained a British naval base in the Chesapeake.

Lapse-dissolve, fade in, 80 years after Yorktown.

By 1861 some of the Tillman/Tilghman family had meandered westward, many settling in Ohio. But both branches of the clan (originally settled in Virginia and Maryland) remained in the east and south. Throughout the Civil War, Dad’s kin opted for the Confederacy by 8 to 1. Probably the best known was Brig. Gen. Lloyd Tilghman, a Marylander who barely graduated from West Point in 1836. In 1862 General U.S. Grant captured Fort Henry on the Tennessee River. After a prisoner exchange he resumed his duties until KIA near Vicksburg the next year.

Saddest of so many sad developments is that members of both sides of my family died in Confederate prison camps: a Tillman from Ohio and a Barrett from Maine.

Family division did not end with the War Between the States. Shortly before Pearl Harbor, a concerned mother in North Carolina grew suspicious of a German national’s attentions to her daughter. Being mistrustful of Yankees and other foreigners, my great aunt notified the FBI, which investigated. An exaggerated account of the situation held that a “Nazi spy” married into the family, but in truth he was an exchange student who was interned for the duration.

I mention all the foregoing in an attempt to put a multi-generational face on current events. As divisive and perhaps irrevocably fractious as the present political situation may be, it’s not yet as dire as American families—and the American nation—have endured before.

On the other hand, maybe it’s time to start thinking the unthinkable: balkanizing the USA along cultural-philosophical lines before we start shooting at each other again. The last time it cost more than 600,000 American lives, when the population was merely 130 million—barely 40 percent of today’s figure.

Something for every family to ponder.

ARE WE AT WAR OR WHAT?

2011-03-21T08:41:00.000-07:00

Apparently we're at war with Libya. At least that's how it appears, as on Day One U.S. Navy ships and submarines fired more than 100 Tomahawk cruise missiles at Libyan thug and international terrorist Moamar Qaddafi (however his name is spelled this week). Meanwhile, Marine Corps Harriers launched from the amphibious assault ship USS Kearsarge. That's because we haven't had big-deck carriers in the Mediterranean for a couple of years due to all that "rightsizing" that began under Bill Klinton and the GOP wimps in congress. Meanwhile, the Air Force has put B-2s, F-15s and F-16s overhead. That's in concert with other nations as diverse as France, Britain, Spain, and Qatar, with Paris providing msot of the leadership and muscle. (British participation is noteworthy considering the odiously shamelful episode when one of the 1988 Lockerbie bombers was returned to a 2009 hero's welcome in Tripoli in exchange for oil concessions.)

One thing is missing. Well, OK, several things are missing, but one really big thing: A MISSION STATEMENT. I.E., what is our goal in Libya beyond bombing the air defences?

Thus far the only statements that remotely answer that essential question have come from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and some spokespersons who allude to "protectingLibyan civilians." Well, if that's the goal, then We The People are entitled to ask, "Protecting civilians to what end, and for how long? And what other nations' civilians are we presumably bound to protect?" Since Barack Hussein Obama has stated that no American ground forces will be committed to Libyan soil, are we to conduct an air campaign indefinitely?

America has a long history of trouble with Libya, dating from the Barbary pirates of the early 1800s. In 1981 and 1986 the Navy clashed with Qaddafi when carrier based fighters downed four Libyan jets during exercizes along the notorious "Line of Death." In 1986 Navy and Air Force planes struck Libyan targets in retaliation for a terrorist bombing that killed Americans in Germany.

The current air offensive began with approval of the Arab League and a United Nations resolution supporting use of force against the Libyan government. However, barely had the Tomahawks left their launch cells than the head of the League began backpedaling, saying that the allied measures were excessive. A typical diplomtic double standard expressed in doublespeak: please help us solve the problem but don't solive it too violently.

If any multinational endeavor is doomed to fail, it's this one.

The operation is called Odyssey Dawn, which at least avoids the grandiose and often self-serving names of U.S. missions such as Iraqi Freedom or Enduring Freedom. The generic title of the Libyan op undoubtedly reflects the colalborative nature of the endeavor, especially since the Europeans have the lead.

Perhaps it's understandable that politicians like Obama and Clinton decided to remain nonspecific about America's objective in Libya. But that does not excuse the deafening silence from the military professionals responsible for executing the "plan." If there is a plan. Every one of the service chiefs attended war college at some point, presumably learning about the military-political-industrial complex, and presumably reading some geopolitical theory. The Prussian genral Karl von Clausewitz wrote the bible on military theory about 180 years ago, and On War has been required reading ever since. Clausewitz 101 begins at the beginning, which is a fine place to begin. Among his nine rules of war, the first is "Define the mission." Thus far the joint chiefs have flunked the course, and apparently they require remedial education.

Some essential topics are going unexamined in the media. How will a cobbled-together coalition of naval and air forces from multiple nations operate together with little or no prior training? How well do they communicate? What are the rules of engagement, and are they standardized? (Reportedly the French are free to whack Qaddafi while Americans are not.) And perhaps more importantly, what happens if the Libyans or anyone else comes out to play? Is a generic air/submarine defense adequate to the challenge? We don't know.

At home there's very little discussion about the legitimacy of the U.S. operation. The War Powers Act requires the president to notify congress within 48 hours of beginning military operations, with a 60-day grace period before further consultation. If Obama bothered to comply with the law, it seems a well kept secret, and the lack of a clear mission satement in Libya permits only two conclusions: either the administration and the military establishment are incompetent, or they fear that stating a specific goal could prove inconvenient or embarrassing. Therefore, the U.S. Government has decided to provide no yardstick because that would afford an objective measure of the extent of America's failure in the Libyan adventure.

THE MIDDLE KINGDOM VS THE LAND OF OZ

2011-02-17T12:13:00.001-08:00

I like Australians. They’re a fun-loving race; staunch allies as ready for a fight as for a bash at the pub. A friend who flew in North Africa said the best of the British Commonwealth forces were Aussies and South Africans. Not much on spit and polish, but then how much polish do you need in Tunisia?

Recently I realized that Aussies (who call themselves Ozzies, from “Ozstralia”) afford a rare perspective on China. With continued growth of China’s population, economy, and global influence, the view from the Land of Oz is worth a peek at the ancient Middle Kingdom.

My interest in the China-Australia connection was piqued by a reference to the RAAF’s interest in acquiring America’s latest stealth aircraft, the Lockheed-Martin F-35 Lightning II. It’s a separate issue, but that bird is far-far over budget and behind schedule, and the program may not deserve to survive on its merits. Its political-financial considerations seem likely to overwhelm the practical concerns.

Anyway…

I wondered why Australia would want a stealth fighter, even assuming it’s affordable. After all, considering the immense disparity in their militaries (there are only 80,000 Ozzies in uniform, including reserves) if it comes to a fight, China wins in a walk. The question is: why would China want Australia, and what would Beijing do with The Land of Oz?

(A brief aside, but the cinematic opportunity looms large: “Hey, babe, imagine Crocodile Dundee Meets Red Dawn.”)

Let’s consider some statistics.

Though Australia covers 2.9 million square miles, barely 6 percent is arable. The interior is largely uninhabitable which is why almost half the population lives in five metro areas with one-third of the total in Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane. A near identical portion of the 22.5 million Ozzies lives in the southeastern state of New South Wales. Perth is the only large city on the west coast, 1,700 miles from Melbourne.

China is one-quarter larger than Australia but possesses nearly three times as much arable land. There just isn’t much to be gained by conquering Australia, apart from the disastrous consequences to Beijing’s relations with its major trading partners.

However, if Canberra truly worries about deterring Beijing, there are one or two options. The first is to invite American military bases, especially on the west and north coasts. (There’s precedent: the Japanese threatened landings near Darwin in 1942.) While Uncle Sugar’s thinly-stretched forces probably couldn’t manage more than a trip-wire presence, that might be enough. Another prospect is nuke subs for the Oz Nivey, but that involves various related problems: Australia (with 23 percent of the world’s known uranium) has no nuclear industry, and the U.S. does not export that kind of naval technology.

One of my Oz mates offers an illuminating perspective on Chinese-Australia politics: the labour movement's socialists and communists loathe each other. Many of the latter resemble Communists more than some Chinese officials. Says Peter, “They absolutely will not criticize Beijing. If you ask them about human rights violations, the Dalai Lama or Tibet, they immediately change the subject.” However, they’re a decided minority. The broader Labour base includes working-class blokes who are approximately patriotic and don’t mind paying high taxes for entitlements, especially when they get their ration of beer. (OTOH, the Liberal Party is mostly conservative go figger.)

So where does Oz politics leave us regarding China?

If you look beyond Beijing, the actual concern is China's support of nations and alliances on the periphery, as close as the Solomons, which ultimately could affect Aussie security or trade routes.

To quote an Australian military correspondent, “We are spending heaps to keep the neighbors friendly, and the Chinese are spending more to acquire footholds all around the ocean area. They are building a big navy and recently challenged the U.S. Navy to keep out of ‘their coastal seas’, which the USN declined to do and sent a carrier group through.” Therefore, any direct military threat to Oz—extremely unlikely-- will come from the littorals, not by hordes of Chinese amphibious troops.

As with the much overhyped Chinese military “threat” to the U.S., Beijing is not going to invade a major trading partner. Australia ranks seventh among China’s foreign purchasers, just ahead of Russia forepetesake. War with Oz would be self-defeating. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_trading_partners_of_the_People's_Republic_of_China)

Meanwhile, Beijing has considerable internal problems to address before embarking on the road to conquest. China’s unemployment rate has remained steady at around 4 percent for over a decade. That’s the good news. The bad news: The Middle Kingdom now must find some 30 million new jobs per year to maintain that figure. That’s essential for the goal of growing the middle class, which is necessary to bolster the internal economy without relying so heavily on foreign markets. (And if that sounds decidedly non-communist, you’re right. Nobody said that politics has to make sense.)

China's internal situation is a complex subject owing to economic and demographic concerns. I already cited the need to generate some 30 million new jobs each year. That figure keeps popping up. It’s also the number of young single men who are unlikely to marry, owing to the single-child policy. (http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/opinion/chinas-30-million-bachelors/story-e6frerdf-1111116459631)

As my mate Peter put it, "That’s a lot of spare infantry." If Beijing wants to deplete that surplus, a war with Oz is decidedly not the way to accomplish it. Strapping on Russia makes far more Draconian sense.

So what should we be worried about from The Middle Kingdom? It’s not military adventurism nor even an invasion of Taiwan. (Apart from disastrous political/economic repercussions, people who have been there note that the ChiNats have had 60 years to prepare, and they train hard. Odds are it would fail.)

Consider China’s history. Immune from foreign invasion since 1945, the source of conflict is internal, as per the Cultural Revolution. An Ozzie friend who studies the subject says, “If I had to bet next month’s beer money on a war involving China, it would be civil war.”

A growing population hungry for a better life, coupled with the societal tensions of millions of frustrated young males, could prove a toxic binary. Civil war in China
has to be one of the great bone-chillers of the XXI Century.

THE COST OF DOING BUSINESS

2011-01-12T15:24:00.000-08:00

This month’s Rant is excerpted from my Flight Journal article in December 2009. Somebody put it on email (minus attribution) so I’m posting most of the main text.

Imagine that you are commander of a great air force. It has risen to global prominence, dominating all rivals. Its unprecedented success has come at a price, however. Your chief of staff lays a memo on your desk. "Last month's casualties, sir."

You pick up the first sheet. “Hmmm; 331 men killed, and 308 aircraft destroyed. That’s 11 people and 10 planes per day.”

“Uh, yessir. It’s still the ballpark average.” I’d like to see an improvement in bomber losses, those really add up.

“Were working on it, General. But it’s sad to think that 10 young men alive today will be dead tomorrow.

“You know that’s the price of doing business. Now, what about the overseas and combat losses?”

That’s right. From December 1941 to August 1945 the U. S. Army Air Forces lost 14,903 pilots, aircrew and assorted personnel plus 13,873 airplanes --- inside the continental United States. They were the result of 52,651 aircraft accidents (6,039 involving fatalities) in 45 months.

Think about those numbers. They average 1,170 aircraft accidents per month---nearly 40 a day. (Less than one accident in four resulted in totaled aircraft, however.) Those colossal losses cost the Axis powers nothing; not one 7.7 mm bullet.

It gets worse,

Almost 1,000 Army planes disappeared en route from the U. S. to foreign climes. But an eye watering 43,581 aircraft were lost overseas including 22,948 on combat missions (18,418 against the Western Axis) and 20,633 attributed to non-combat causes overseas.

Some spectacular losses were recorded in the air campaign against Germany. The best known was the 8th Air Force’s double strike against Regensburg and Schewinfurt in August 1943 when 60 B-17s were shot down among 376. That 16 percent loss rate meant nearly 600 empty bunks in England. In fact, during much of 1942-1943 it was statistically impossible for bomber crews to complete a 25-mission tour in Europe.

Pacific Theatre losses were far less (4,530 in combat) owing to smaller forces committed. The worst B-29 mission, against Tokyo on May 25, 1945, cost 26 Superfortress, 5.6 percent of the 464 dispatched from the Marianas.

On average, 6,600 American servicemen died per month during WWII, about 220 a day. At war’s end, over 40,000 airmen were killed in combat theatres and another 18,000 wounded. Some 12,000 missing men were declared dead, included a number “liberated” by the Soviets but never returned. More than 41,000 were captured, half of the 5,400 held by the Japanese died in captivity, compared with one-tenth in German hands. Total combat casualties were pegged at 121,867. But U.S. manpower made up the deficit. The AAF’s peak strength was reached in 1944 with 2,372,000 personnel, nearly twice the previous year.

If the losses were huge---and they were----so were production totals. From 1941 through 1945, American industry delivered more than 276,000 military aircraft. That number was enough not only for U.S. Army, Navy, and Marine Corps but for allies as diverse as Britain, Australia, China and Russia. In fact, from 1943 onward, America produced more planes than Britain and Russia put combined. And more than both Germany and Japan 1941-45.

Uncle Sam sent many of his sons to war with absolute minimum of training. Some fighter pilots entered combat in 1942 with less than one hour in their assigned aircraft.

The 357th Fighter Group went to England in late 1943 after training on P-39s. The group never saw a Mustang until shortly before its first combat mission. A high-time P-51pilot had 30 hours in type. Many had fewer than five hours. Some had one hour.

A future Thunderbolt ace said, “I was sent to England to die.” He was not alone. Some fighter pilots took off on their first combat mission with one previous flight in type. With arrival of new aircraft, many combat units transitioned in combat. The attitude was, “They all have a stick and throttle. Go fly `em.” When the 4th Fighter Group converted from P-47s to P-51s in February 1944, there was no time to stand down for an orderly transition. The group commander, Col. Donald Blakeslee, said, “You can learn to fly `51’s on the way to the target.

Meanwhile, many bomber crews were still learning their trade: of Jimmy Doolittle’s 15 pilots on the April 1942 Tokyo raid, only five had won their wings before 1941. All but one of the 16 copilots were less than a year out of flight school.

In WWII flying safety took a back seat to combat. The AAF’s worst accident rate was recorded by the A-36 Invader version of the P-51: a staggering 274 per 100,000 flying hours. Next worst were the P-39 at 245 and the P-40 at 188; and the P-38 at 139. All were Allison powered.

Bomber wrecks were fewer but more expensive. The B-17 and B-24 averaged 30 and 35 accidents per 100,000 flight hours, respectively----a horrific figure considering that from 1980 to 2000 the Air Force’s major mishap rate was less than 2.

The B-29 was even worse at 40; the world’s most sophisticated, most capable and most expensive bomber was too urgently needed to stand down for mere safety reasons. The original cadre of the 58th Bomb Wing was to have 400 hours of multi-engine time, but there was not enough experienced pilots to meet the criterion. Only ten percent had overseas experience.

Perhaps the greatest unsung success story of AAF training was navigators. The Army graduated some 50,000 during the war, and many had never flown out of sight of land before leaving for a war zone. Yet the huge majority found their way across oceans and continents without getting lost or running out of fuel---a stirring tribute to the AAF’s educational establishments.

As the training pipeline filled up, cockpit experience improved. By early 1944 the average AAF fighter pilot entering combat had logged at least 450 hours, usually including 250 hours in training. At the same time, many captains and first lieutenants claimed over 600 hours.

At its height in mid-1944, the Army Air Forces had 2.6 million people and nearly 80,000 aircraft of all types. Today the U. S. Air Force employs 327,000 active personnel (plus 170,000 civilians) with 5,500+ manned and perhaps 200 unmanned aircraft. The 2009 figures represent about 12 percent of the manpower and 7 percent of the airplanes of the WWII peak.

Whether there will ever be another war is doubtful, as fighters and bombers have given way to helicopters and remotely controlled drones over Afghanistan and Iraq. But within living memory, men left the earth in 1,000-plane formations and fought major battles five miles high, leaving a legacy that remains timeless.

THE WRIGHT BROTHERS, POTATO DAY AND SQUARE DANCING

2010-12-27T14:01:00.000-08:00

The 17th of this month was the 107th anniversary of the Wright Brothers’ first powered flights at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Wright Brothers Day (official since 1963) is separate from National Aviation Day, established in 1939 on Orville Wright’s 68th birthday. Both events are variously ignored or the subject of pro-forma proclamations from the duty politician occupying 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. (Incidentally, August 19 also is National Potato Day. Honest.)

National days of observance proliferate like weeds after a rain shower. Frankly, many of them alternate between absurd and irrelevant, usually the result of some pol seeking favor with a particular constituency or special interest group. During the Reagan administration a search for The National Dance included such esoteric candidates as the hula and the polka.

Now, I hasten to note that I have absolutely nothing against the polka. In fact, the stout Wagnerian wife of a Luftwaffe fighter ace swept the hangar floor with me (and other pilots) at Abbotsford, B.C. one evening to the accompaniment of accordions and other Lawrence Welk instrumentation. But while they may polka frequently in Milwaukee, did you ever dance the hula in the contiguous 48? Me neither.

Finally in 1982 The Gipper declared the square dance as The National Folk Dance, which at least has some claim to being uniquely American. (Besides, in the 6th or 7th grade, it was about the only way boys could hold hands with girls, however briefly, without garnering sneers or suspicion.) However, Ronnie’s effort was only for a two-year period, and a couple more states still need to sign on before it becomes official. (Wisconsin and Hawaii remain notably absent from the process.)

So what does The National Folk Dance have to do with the Wrights? Glad you asked. You see, we are burdened with Vice President Joe Biden. (Stay with me—this is headed somewhere, honest.)

In October, bloviating at a Democrat Party fund raiser, biden declared, “Every single great idea that has marked the 21st century, 20th century, and 19th century has required government vision and incentive.”

Forget the airplane for a moment. Let’s consider independence from Britain, the assembly line, the light bulb, the automobile, the telephone, television, machineguns, banana splits, Cherry Coke, personal computers, and…oh hell. You get the idea. There’s a bunch of excellent reasons he’s called “Slow Joe”.

For a more reasoned/reasonable assessment, consider this statement from 2000: "The Wright Brothers created the single greatest cultural force since the invention of writing. The airplane became the first World Wide Web, bringing people, languages, ideas, and values together."

That statement came from Bill Gates who—contrary to what Slow Joe may believe—had far more to do with inventing the internet than Algore. Or for that matter, more than about 60 percent of Delaware voters can absorb.

But I digress.

Please consider the accomplishment of the Wrights, two self employed bicycle mechanics who, lacking a high school diploma between them, solved the riddle of the ages: human flight. And they did it in about four years.

Neither of Bishop Wright’s boys were dullards. Wilbur, in fact, planned to attend Yale before a hockey accident derailed his plans for higher education. But considering how things turned out, undoubtedly that puck in the face was a Good Thing.

In those early 20th century days, somehow the Republic struggled along with six cabinet posts (State, Treasury, Justice, Agriculture, Interior, and newly established Commerce) plus the Army and Navy departments. Notably absent were Labor, H&HS, HUD, Transportation (!), Energy, Education, Veterans and Homeland Security. It goes without saying that more than a century ago the Wrights and, for that matter, Henry Ford, got along just fine without federal watchdogs at Transportation or Education. But I’ll say it anyway. Orville and Wilbur, considerably predating outcome-based education, could read, write, and cipher without federal guidelines, and undoubtedly most of their classmates could immediately identify the USA on a world map. Reportedly two-thirds of the current crop cannot.

Perhaps the most impressive aspect of the Wrights’ achievement was not merely producing a workable flying machine, but the way they went about it. They started with the advantages of intense curiosity and native intelligence, sufficient not only to question the conventional scientific wisdom of their time, but to find it wanting. That was an enormous intellectual achievement, for it forced them to confront their idol—the late-great Otto Lilienthal—and their mentors, engineer Octave Chanute and Professor Samuel Pierpont Langley of the Smithsonian Institution.

From there, the Wrights began a patient, methodical approach that involved invention and innovation. Lacking a wind tunnel, they built one. Lacking sample airfoils, they made and tested 200. Lacking a lightweight engine for their aeroplane, they had one built to their specs. Furthermore, they were the first to recognize that a propeller also is an airfoil, and their design was nearly 90 percent as efficient as props on current lightplanes.

Note to Slow Joe Biden: Orville and Wilbur invested entirely their own funds—around $20,000 ($450,000 today)—and succeeded where Professor Samuel Pierpont Langley of the Smithsonian Institution failed spectacularly after 16 years of effort. Moreover, Langley received $63,000 in U.S. Government funds ($1.65 million today)—about 85 percent of his total support.

In fairness, the brothers did derive some benefit from their tax money. They received important data from the Weather Bureau, and the hardies at the lifeguard station also proved helpful.

The Wrights are not faultless. Their bitter patent disputes, notably with Glenn Curtiss, retarded aviation progress until the First World War. In that period America’s gigantic lead in aviation diminished and soon disappeared with Europe dominant after 1908.

Wilbur, four years junior to Orville, died in 1912 at age 45. Orville passed away in 1948, age 76. Now, considering what they represent—the American genius for innovation and their effect upon shrinking the world—isn’t it time they get more recognition than a single day that’s often ignored? Surely air travel is worth more than National Potato Day—and a damnsight more than Slow Joe Biden can appreciate.

VETERANS DAY

2010-11-19T17:26:00.000-08:00

(Excerpted from my speech delivered to the Arizona Wing of the Commemorative Air Force in Mesa earlier this month.)

This month is Veterans Day, honoring all our military personnel, past and present. Currently some 24 million living Americans have worn the nation’s uniform. But only one of those surviving served in WW I, known at the time as The Great War.

Did you know that WW I officially ended last month? The current German government made the final $94 million payment required under the Versailles Treaty, 91 years and another world war (and a half-century cold war) after 1919. The Nazi government had renounced the treaty in 1933, and payments didn’t resume until after WW II.

A bit of background on the holiday.

On the first anniversary of the Great War armistice President Woodrow Wilson (of whom more later) issued a proclamation observing the occasion. Congress made Armistice Day a national holiday in 1938, and it became Veterans Day in 1954.

About 4.7 million Americans served in the Great War, of whom roughly one quarter went to Europe. Some 116,500 Yanks died in the war, including 53,500 killed in action while 3,350 were listed missing. Another 204,000 were wounded. It was the first war in which enemy action caused more casualties than disease. Only 20 years before, 385 Americans were KIA fighting Spain while more than 2,000 died of other causes.

Several hundred WWI servicemen still remain MIA, but a handful are found occasionally. Last year some French researchers turned up the remains of an American who was identified by the marksmanship badge on his uniform. He was a Marine NCO, 29 year old 1st Sergeant George Humphrey, killed in September 1918. He was buried in Arlington Cemetery this summer.

For so important an event, the Great War has received precious little attention. There has never been a national memorial to Americans who served and died in WW I, and obviously there never will be. In 1931 the District of Columbia erected a handsome memorial to those residents who died in the war, but it’s fallen into disrepair. There’s a fine museum in Missouri which receives little public notice.

Not many people today ever knew WW I combat veterans. We were fortunate to know some Great War airmen when the Champlin Fighter Museum existed from 1981 to 2003. Three of our favorites were aces but completely different kinds of people. Two of them were really sweet old gentlemen. Bob Todd had been shot down and captured flying a Camel with the 148th Aero Squadron while Ray Brooks of the 22nd made ace in a SPAD. On the other hand, Ken Porter of the 147th was a crusty old balloon buster who served in the same pursuit group as Frank Luke. Ken once was asked about the knights of the air nonsense, and I’ll always remember his reply. “Son, if you ever found yourself in a fair fight, it meant you fouled up.” Only he didn’t say “fouled.”

I knew of a couple of Great War aces who didn’t get along. We liked to think that it involved a dispute over cards or mademoiselles but we never learned why. Apparently it was a postwar feud because they flew in different organizations in different areas.

A local WW I pilot was Gordon Collinson of Scottsdale, who flew SE-5s in No. 41 Squadron RAF. I once asked him about early dive bombing and he said that his squadron dived diagonally across a road or bridge because that increased chances of a hit. Any Thud pilots in the audience? That’s exactly the way it was done in North Vietnam, unless LBJ’s rules of engagement required our guys to get shot at more effectively by the enemy.

Everybody knows about Frank Luke—or thinks they do. The definitive account of his brief career and famous last mission was published in 2008 by a colleague of mine, Stephen Skinner. The Stand is an intriguing story, especially once the political background is understood. Luke was of course a maverick, but he was by far the most successful balloon burner in the U.S. air service. Because it was essential to destroy the German balloon line for the St. Mihiel offensive in September 1918, he was given wide latitude by his group commander, a fact resented by his strict squadron CO. It’s said that had Frank returned from his last flight he would have been court martialed but more likely he would’ve been transferred from the 27th to the 94th Aero Squadron where CO Eddie Rickenbacker was more supportive.

Actually, there was another Arizona ace, SPAD pilot Ralph O’Neill from Nogales. He died in 1980.

In 1918 the U.S. population had just topped 100 million. Arizona, 48th and last of the continental states, had about 300,000 people. Arizona figured in America’s eventual entry into the war, however remotely. In 1917 the German foreign minister wrote the Mexican government suggesting an alliance: an invasion of the U.S. southwest with a settlement involving return of Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas to Mexico proper. It was an absurd idea: Mexico remained in a state of chaos after the revolution.

Today, the conventional wisdom holds that Germany started the war. But the record shows room for latitude. The event was precipitated when a Bosnian Serb nationalist assassinated the archduke of Austria-Hungary in July 1914. The Serbs made all manner of conciliatory offers but Vienna was determined to have war and refused to settle. Russia began mobilizing in support of the Serbs, which brought in Germany as an Austrian ally. Look at the telegrams between the Kaiser and the Czar—they were both Queen Victoria’s grandchildren, and the Czar and King George of Britain looked more like twin brothers than cousins. The exchange went, “Dear Nicky” and “Dear Willie.” Had Russia stood down, Germany would lack reason to go to war, but could not permit Russia’s huge manpower to mobilize first. Consequently, Britain and France jumped in and the rest, as they say, is history.

Eighty years later a coauthor of mine, noting events in Bosnia, said, “How can you expect peace in an area where they built a monument to the guy who started the First World War?”

It was an entirely unnecessary war that killed perhaps 16 million people, and aggravated the influenza pandemic in 1918-19. Wilson had been re-elected in 1916 on the basis “He kept us out of the war” but then committed America to the conflict the next year at least partly because of heavy U.S. investments in France and Britain. Winston Churchill later said that absent America’s entry, there likely would have been a cease fire in 1917 because the French army mutinied and the Brits couldn’t maintain an offensive by themselves. Therefore, America’s entry probably cost many more lives than would have been lost after the middle of 1917.

Whatever the geopolitics, I want to take this opportunity to acknowledge the origin of Veterans Day, and urge you to remember the doughboys, airmen and sailors who served during “the war to end all wars.”

SOLDIER OF FORTUNE

2010-10-29T15:50:00.000-07:00

I’ve written about 550 articles for more than 60 publications worldwide, but one magazine stands out. Let me tell you about it.

One morning in 1984 firearms guru Jeff Cooper called, suggesting that I talk to Bob Brown of Soldier of Fortune about the Bren Ten pistol that Jeff was promoting. Since I had contributed to SOF and participated in its shooting matches, I ventured that I’d like to hear more.

Next thing I knew, that Yosemite Sam voice was in my ear. “Tillman? Brown. I guess you heard from Cooper. Are you interested?”

The details were, um, intriguing. I would go to El Salvador with an SOF team to initiate the Bren Ten to combat, then return (!) to write an article about it. As Bob later admitted, "Cooper and I had three criteria: we needed a good enough shooter, we needed a good enough writer--and we needed somebody dumb enough to do it. So we said, LET'S CALL TILLMAN!"

Much as I appreciated Jeff and Bob’s confidence (I was less certain of their rationale!), it never happened. The Bren was plagued with 10mm ammo and magazine problems which were only solved after the El Sal option lapsed.

Nonetheless, that nascent episode represented Soldier of Fortune in microcosm: a hands-on approach to innovative, front-line journalism.

SOF popped its first literary cap in July 1975 with a format that set the trend for the next three decades. Robert K. Brown is a former Special Forces captain and Vietnam vet with a master’s in political science and jump wings from half a dozen nations. He’s also a natural entrepreneur who saw a niche and moved to fill the void.

The magazine began on little more than a shoestring and a hunch. Living in Boulder, Brown perceived an unfilled market and presold 4,000 subscriptions which paid for the printing of the first issue. Billed as “The Journal of Professional Adventurers,” SOF caught on almost immediately.

SOF recruited a network of free lance correspondents who provided on-the-ground coverage of conflicts from Rhodesia to El Salvador to Afghanistan to Burma and many intermediate stops. Consequently, military intelligence operatives began subscribing (or taking home copies in plain brown wrappers) because Bob’s boys in the bush covered events that the mainstream media overlooked.

Bob Brown believes in participatory journalism—the kind that Geraldo can only dream about. SOF provided the U.S. Government with its first AK-74, obtained in Afghanistan, and fetched home with 5,000 rounds of 5.45mm ammo to boot.

A few SOFers like to portray themselves as knuckle-dragging mercs, but that’s for show. Some are deceptively accomplished: one owns a law degree from Harvard; another used more C4 explosive than anyone outside the U.S. government. The byword is professionalism. For instance, a 1983 report describing the work of a 12-man SOF team in El Salvador covers 47 pages including weapons maintenance, ambush doctrine, and field medicine. But one of the salient recommendations was geopolitical: “It is suggested that the Government of El Salvador would gain more support in North America if more publicity were given to the fact that in a nation of 5 million people, one province has had 90,000 individuals who have fled communist areas. Aid given to these and other displaced persons by the government should also be publicized.”

The ultimate authority on RKB is, of course, RKB himself. He never expressed it better than in a 1986 editiorial: “For the last decade, I’ve been humping a rifle and a camera around the world’s combat zones. I’ve hunted terrorists with the Rhodesian African Rifles and fired up a Russian fort in Afghanistan with the mujahadeen. I’ve searched for POWs in Southeast Asia and survived a Sandinista rocket barrage alongside Nicaraguan contras. Between firefights, takeovers and insurgencies, I manage to put out a magazine.’

With a wealth of military experience, SOF staffers essentially became the bow wave of today’s “private military contractors” but frequently worked for expenses--or less. Often as not, Bob’s teams were up front, alongside the host-country nationals, rifles in Condition One and grenade pins straightened. Training “local indigenous personnel” was a big part of what Brown did in Special Forces, and he pursued that goal with relentless determination.

Some SOF correspondents appeared fearless, and some paid the ultimate price. In the first 25 years, four who braved the most dangerous missions died in the line of duty, whether as free-lance journalists or free-lance mercs: George Bacon, III, in Angola; Michael Echanis in Nicaragua; Lance Motley in Thailand; and Colonel Robert MacKenzie in Sierra Leone.

Certainly the magazine has drawn its share of controversy. It has consistently outraged the left by publishing Rhodesian Army recruiting posters, to offering a $25,000 in gold to a defector from Cuban intelligence, to a $1,000,000 reward for the defection of a Nicaraguan MI-24. All the while training the Contras and Salvadorian Army.

In the 1980s SOF was sued for running ads from individuals linked to criminal activities. Most of the suits were dismissed and one was settled out of court, leading to a suspension of work-for-hire advertising.

Behind the front-line reportage and splashy news coverage, SOF did something more: it supported Vietnam veterans as no other publications ever have. That may seem natural since Brown and so many staffers are former Nam vets, but the thread is deeply woven into the magazine’s fabric. The 25th anniversary issue said in part, “Overnight, SOF offered Vietnam vets the recognition they deserved, a home in a sense, a meeting place for like souls. Like a banner, it acknowledged their sacrifices and continues to do so, loudly and loyally.”

The sense of camaraderie was evident in the first SOF convention I attended in the 1980s. Seated beside me was a former Green Beret officer who confided, “Being with these guys is the best I’ve felt about myself since Vietnam.”

In 1985 the magazine’s 10th anniversary drew congratulatory messages from a wide spectrum: Fleet Marine Force Atlantic, the USAF media office, Vietnam Veterans Coalition, U.S. senators, Charlton Heston, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, among others.

Now, 25 years later, SOF and RKB are still going strong, headed for a fourth decade of reporting from the world’s hot spots, with a style and all its own. Bob Brown sums up his philosophy with the motto: “Slay dragons, do noble deeds and never, never, never, give up.”
http://www.sofmag.com/

GO AHEAD AND LIE

2010-09-23T09:55:00.000-07:00

Question: Does freedom of expression include a “right” to lie?

Answer: Yes, it does.

In 2007 Congress passed the Stolen Valor Act, making it unlawful to falsely state he has been awarded a military decoration. The law was enacted after decades of phony “war heroes” claim to hold everything up to and including the Medal of Honor. The act prevents falsely claiming verbally or in writing to have received “any of the service medals or badges awarded to members (of the armed forces) the ribbon, button, or rosette of any such badge, decoration, or medal, or any colorable imitation of such item.”

Yet earlier this year a Colorado judge deemed the Stolen Valor Act to be unconstitutional on the basis of “free speech.”

The jurist is District Judge Robert Blackburn, who declared the law “troubling” and somehow contrary to “well established First Amendment doctrine.” You have to go a long way around the block to arrive at the destination the judge desires, because his ruling cites higher court decisions regarding public depiction of pornography and animal cruelty.

Previously the federal government had filed dozens of cases against individuals who misrepresented their military records. The offenders include veterans as well as people who have never served in the armed forces. So how does anyone justify a blatant misrepresentation made public by appearance, speech, or writing?

Presumably the “Go ahead and lie” concept relates to the old (old) stricture against shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theater. Consequently, pettifogging lawyers for the wannabe heroes have adopted a “no harm, no foul” argument, asserting that absent any harm, there should be no offense. By extension, that line of “reasoning” holds that people should be free to lie without accountability.

The “Go ahead and lie” crowd ignores an intrinsic contradiction. The U.S. Government produces and awards military medals to service members deemed worthy of the decorations. (The fact that everything from the Medal of Honor on down has been awarded according to vastly different criteria is a separate issue.) Since We The People create and present military medals, it’s entirely appropriate and logical that We the People can and should state under what conditions those items may be worn or otherwise claimed. Limiting their display or claim to individuals who have actually earned them represents no form of discrimination against imposters, nowaynohow. Anybody with two gray cells to rub together understands that concept.

Military imposters are everywhere. It’s almost epidemic proportions, leading to web sites containing the names of fakers. And thereby lies another inherent contradiction: most phonies want to be known under their own names, otherwise what’s the point? So at least part of the problem is due to naïve/gullible/stupid people who accept fakes at their word rather than spending two minutes on Google. After all, this is The Information Age.

Yet liars and fakers persist. One of the most successful was the publisher of Arizona’s largest newspaper. For years he passed himself off as an Air Force pilot, complete with mess dress uniform and miniature medals. Finally in the 1980s he was exposed by one of his own reporters.
A Californian got away with absurd claims to naval aviation heroism for years before he died. His Powerpoint presentation showed “him” with “his squadron.” The photo was immediately recognizable: it was lifted from a book by a colleague of mine. The “lanky gentleman” of email fame was a total fraud: his name appeared in no documents covering the ships or squadrons he claimed. Yet he deceived school teachers and his local paper, which ignored irrevocable evidence of his lying and refused to correct a fawning obituary.

In Florida during the 1990s an individual passed himself off as “Colonel John C. Meyer,” high-scoring fighter ace and recipient of three Distinguished Service Crosses. A model shop run by babes in the Everglades presented him replicas of “his” airplanes and showed his picture on a web site. The teeny-weeny problem was, four-star General John C. Meyer had died in 1975. When the modelers were confronted with the facts—they didn’t believe me at first.

Other fakes persist despite being easily disproved. I’ve met a Jewish gal who claimed she flew F-4 Phantoms in the Israeli Air Force but didn’t know that delta-winged aircraft bleed energy in turns. I’ve met an overweight (read: semi-obese) “sniper” who claimed he’d been in combat three years previously.

So where do we stand with the Colorado case?

Prosecutors said they would appeal Blackburn’s ruling, and undoubtedly it will take years to shake out, if at all. Defenders of the truth default to the emotional level: permitting imposters to get away with their claims denigrates the service and sacrifice of genuine military personnel. That’s undoubtedly true, but it should not obscure the black-white ethical concerns.

Meanwhile, Blackburn’s “Go ahead and lie” decision represents the continued erosion of traditional/historic values in this nation. Another generation will grow up amid greater confusion about right and wrong, increasingly confused as to when it’s alright to lie and when it’s not. So here’s a quick reference for the ethically challenged:

(1) Lying is wrong.
(2) Liars should be held accountable.
Next subject.

CALLSIGNS

2010-08-23T15:36:00.000-07:00

In military aviation, a callsign is the hook upon which radio communication is suspended. There are all kinds of callsigns: for units, bases, ships, control centers—and Sierra Hotel aviators. The latter draws by far the most attention, as per the 1986 movie Top Gun with “Maverick”, “Goose,” “Viper,” and “Iceman”. The film was a live-action cartoon but it did popularize naval aviation—and the callsign culture.

Recently callsigns made the news when a naval officer objected to the suggestions made by his Norfolk squadronmates. Some highly un-PC monikers were thrown about, questioning the individual’s masculinity. Former Navy Secretary John Lehman, a naval flight officer, seemed skeptical, claiming he had never heard any uncomplimentary callsigns in his forty years of experience.

Ahem.

In truth, “callsign” has become a synonym for “nickname.” The ensign in Norfolk is an administrative officer and therefore not eligible for a genuine callsign, which is intended for in-flight transmissions.

Obviously callsigns didn’t exist before airborne radios. Squadrons and bases had code words-cum-callsigns from the 1930s but the practice of a specific pilot adopting a callsign apparently originated in the Italian Air Force in World War II. A piloto rose to squadron command and thereby adopted his academy nickname: Gato. Seems that as a cadet he had accepted a dare to skin and eat a cat.

In the U.S. Navy individual callsigns apparently emerged circa the early 60s. Veterans (read: survivors) of those days recall that division leaders began using their nicknames to identify their four-plane flights, thus “Punchy” was accompanied by Punchy Two, Three, and Four. However, squadrons retained their formal callsigns, followed by each airplane’s side number. “Old Salt 301” belonged to the skipper of Attack Squadron 163, but each squadron in the air wing had a dedicated “CAG bird” with the wing commander’s name painted thereon. Known as “double nuts”, it would be “Old Salt 300” or, for the lower-numbered squadrons, perhaps Charger 100 and Hunter 200.

Many callsigns are inevitable. All Rhodes are “Dusty,” every Lane is “Shady,” and any Gibson is “Hoot.” The skipper and executive officer are "CO" and "XO" while the ordnance warrant officer always is “Gunner.” But most names are far more esoteric. A quick scan of the The Hook magazine over the years produces some notable monikers: Barf, Cuddles, Dirt, Gonzo, Loaf, Manhole, Rattler, Speedface, and Talent. The reasons behind each make diverting speculation.

Probably the most astute comment ever made on the subject was penned by the late aviation photographer George Hall who said, “If pilots were allowed to pick their own callsigns there would be as many ‘Killers’ at Ramstein as there are McDougals in Edinburgh.”

Truth.

Fact is, many callsigns are the result of a screwup or embarrassment. An aviator called “Hook” likely failed to lower his tailhook prior to a carrier landing attempt. And I used to know an E-2C controller called “Big Toe” because squadronmates thought his, um, appendage resembled a pedal digit. One friend, an Eagle driver, confides that he was dubbed "Skippy"--something to do with a blonde, a jar of peanut butter, and mucho tequila. Other names are so blatant that it’s mildly astonishing that they ever got painted on airplanes. “Master” Bates leaps to mind.

A kickass Cruasader pilot (and future MiG killer) chose a self-deprecating callsign. He said, “The other guys wanted to be Warrior or Gladiator but I could beat them one on one so I wanted to humiliate them with the most disgusting name I could think of. That’s how I became ‘Rat.’”

Some official callsigns just don’t make the cut. Two Navy wing commanders from 1965 were “Earlobe” for CAG-7 and “Smoke Tree” for CAG-16. The recipients declined such mundane monikers: Harry Gerhard opted for “Cobra” while James Bond Stockdale used “Zero Zero Seven.”

In the Air Force, callsigns frequently are rotated among units, either as some wings are disbanded or to confuse potential enemies. For instance, “Killer” has been assigned to units flying A-10s, F-15s, and F-16s at three separate bases. “King” is even more eclectic, being used by USAF and USN fighters, surveillance planes, helos, and transports. “Magic” has been used by allied forces from the Netherlands to Japan.

Then there’s “Tiger.” A-10s, B-1s, C-130s, KC-135s, E-2s, F-15s, F-16s, H-53s, and P-3s. But even that is exceeded by no fewer than 20 “Vipers,” only half of which refer to F-16s. If you’re curious, check this impressive site:

http://www.monitoringtimes.com/MilitaryCallsignList-APR09.pdf

Some unit callsigns are more involved than it may seem. For instance, Air Force transports usually have five-letter callsigns such as “Heavy” or “Amway.”

One of the most enduring callsigns is “Horseback,” the radio handle of Colonel Don Blakeslee commanding the fabled Fourth Fighter Group in England in 1944. Just the ticket for a unit flying Mustangs!

However, other callsigns become politically unacceptable. Consider Navy helicopter squadron HS-2, known throughout the Tonkin Gulf as “Chink.” A friend of mine piloted Chink 69 to a spectacular rescue in Haiphong Harbor in 1967, receiving a well deserved Silver Star in the process. But today that’s verboten—probably considered as offensive as “Gook.” Sometimes we’re permitted to slay the enemy but perish forbid we should ever insult him!

Some other favorites: Bison (325th FW), Bronco (A-10s and F-16s among others); Busy Bee (VA-146), City Desk (VF-154), Feedbag (VF-191), Ghost Rider (VA-164), Rampage (VAQ-138) and Showtime (VF-96).

Readers are invited to submit their favorite callsigns in the comments section. If you have trouble signing on (as many do) just drop me an egram and I’ll insert it later.

“Shooter” sends.

WHAT IS IT WITH THE NAVY?

2010-07-21T18:25:00.000-07:00

For many years now, the United States Navy has been an organization in search of a mission. Despite the absence of a blue-water threat in the world, the Navy remains structured to fight a Cold War that ended 20 years ago. Even in its reduced size (about 285 ships and submarines) America’s navy still matches or exceeds the combined strength of the Russian and Chinese fleets. Thus, for the foreseeable future we do not need more of the same.

So what do we need?

Well, since Vietnam (37 years ago), nearly all the Navy’s fighting has been done by aviators and SEALs. With rare exceptions they operate well above the high tide mark—frequently hundreds of miles above it. So If we’re going to add anything to the fleet, it should probably be minesweepers, because poorly-funded navies do well with those low-cost “weapons that wait.” In order to meet that threat—and the potential for hostile submarines—we can do with fewer superfluous gadgets like ballistic missile subs and stealth airplanes.

Speaking of which...

Naval aviation has nailed the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter to the institutional mast, staking carrier air’s future on an extremely expensive, overly sophisticated machine that refuses to meet design criteria or budget limits.

There’s also problems with ships and manning. Through most of the 1990s, about 3.5 percent of ships failed inspection. From 2005 onward, the figure approached 14 percent. Consequently, fewer of our current vessels are available to deploy, which reduces prospects for building toward the Navy’s goal of 312 or so. The problem has persisted for years, apparently with little prospect of improvement. In other words, the cause is systemic.

Then there’s women in submarines. Die-hard seamen are vehemently opposed to putting females aboard subs, a topic floated (excuse the phrase) during the 1990s tenure of Frank Kelso as CNO. A “bubblehead” himself, he was all in favor of putting women in combat aircraft but was far less enthused about having them in his part of the navy—the noncombatant part. The last time American submariners torpedoed an enemy ship was 1945, so perhaps the women in subs thing is overblown. As long as subs remain passive vessels (deterrence and surveillance) any untoward “gender-related” events presumably will be minimized.

There are also serious problems with the Navy's culture, not least of which is the annual Midway Night. Each June the service commemorates the 1942 battle that ended Japan’s strategic offensive in WW II. And each year the chief of naval operations makes a suitable oration—or not. In 2009 the CNO delivered a speech about the battle without once mentioning Japan. Honest. This year he did marginally better, uttering The J Word once while citing Midway and a dozen other Pacific battles.

Political correctness is alive and well in Uncle Sam’s Navy.

Then there’s the Marine Corps, which sailors call Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children, among less printable endearments. Currently a move is underway in Congress to rename the naval bureaucracy the Department of the Navy and Marine Corps. Even some former Marines (reputedly there are no ex-Marines) are unenthused about the idea. As a retired leatherneck general once said, “Of course the Marines are party of the Navy—the best part!”

Hower, many Marines (read: every single one I know of) were outraged when the politicians decided to name a ship after former/ex marine and pork-producing congressman for life John Murtha, who declared Marines in Iraq guilty of murder before the facts were in. But hey, such is politics. That kind of stink can stick to any surface, including Marine Green. A correspondent wrote, “As a Former Naval Person, naming anything above a self-propelled garbage scow for the late Rep. Murtha is an abomination.”

More consequential is the Marines’ obsolete fixation on making opposed amphibious landings—something neither they nor apparently anyone else has done since the middle of the last century.
Here’s what detectives call a Clue:

Are you old enough to remember Inchon and Wonsan in 1950? Me neither. But when you have a bunch of expensive widgets that you haven’t used in 60 years, you probably don’t need new ones, let alone the old widgets on hand. Yet the Marines and their lobbyists keep pushing for a new generation of amphibious assault craft.

Finally, there’s the ridiculous trend toward admiral inflation.

The May issue of Naval Institute Proceedings contains the annual roster of Navy flag officers, with some 330 listed in more than 16 pages. That represents a 53% increase over the 2006 figure of 215, or a 13 percent Annual Admiral Inflation Index (AAII) pro-rated over a four-year period! Now, Congress approves flag officer billets based on actual, perceived, or manufactured needs from year to year. Friends remaining on active duty note that increased requirements for joint command billets account for much of the AAII, but cannot possibly explain (let alone justify) one appalling fact: With a nominal 285 ships and submarines, we now have approximately 1.15 admirals per vessel. Anybody care to guess the response from the shades of Bull Halsey, Ernie King, or Arleigh Burke? It sounds more like a Gilbert and Sullivan opera than a self-respecting military service.

I have a suggestion: Starting with the next fiscal year, each star wearer will receive a form to be filled out and returned to the Superfluous Admiral Reduction Board (SARB). The form will read: "I should be retained on active duty for one more year because..." (Fill in the blank in 25 words or less. Bonus points for brevity.) The SARB shall be composed of three chief petty officers, three junior officers (one each O-2, 3, and 4), and three civilian taxpayers, all chosen at random. Each admiral's answer will be rated pass-fail, with a two-thirds majority necessary for retention. Cost of the process will be more than offset by immediate retirement of the superfluous star wearers--an astonishing example of a program actually turning a profit.

The Navy might even assign one of those extraneous admirals to check this space for additional solutions. Certainly the price is right.

ARIZONA

2010-05-19T14:27:00.000-07:00

Arizona has been in the news lately, most of it critical and some of it vicious. Seems a lot of people, including those with no right to be here, have declared the 48th state to be racist, fear mongering, xenophobic, and probably fattening.

But there’s more.

Recent legislation has ended the requirement for adults to gain a permit for discreet carry in most places, and authorized such carry where liquor is served--as long as the patron does not imbibe. Both proposals drew entirely predictable bleating: blood in the streets and on the bar room floor. It is ever thus with firearms legislation, despite decades of evidence to the contrary. In fact, history demonstrates that CCW either diminishes violent crime or has no effect—the latter from the National Academy of Sciences in 2004.

Here’s a bit of Arizona lore.

In 1910, two years before statehood, Arizona Territory was represented at the national rifle matches in Ohio. However, the team had no flag for the event, and there wasn’t much time to produce one. So, aboard the eastbound train, the captain of the rifle team consulted with Carl Hayden, who became the state’s senior senator. Mrs. Hayden plied needle and thread to produce Colonel C.W. Harris’ design, and the first time the red, yellow, blue and gold emblem took the breeze was oe’r the snapple-crack of musketry.

Arizona has been gun country ever since—probably with more national and world-class shooters per capita than anyplace on earth.

Now, on to immigration.

Senate Bill 1070 passed with a 70 percent approval rating among all Arizonans, of whom about one-third are of Hispanic ancestry. Since the politically-inspired hysteria began, 1070’s statewide approval dropped to 52 percent (based on tourism fallout) before climbing again. Meanwhile, liberals immediately demanded a boycott of Arizona, to the extent that some brain-dead critics swore off Arizona Iced Tea—a product of New York. Those benighted souls didn’t stop to think (!) that Hispanics would suffer disproportionately from a boycott. Not to mention that LA gets ¼ of its electricity from Arizona…

The boycott is based on two factors: lies and ignorance. Contrary to what you’ll hear, SB 1070 neither permits nor encourages cops to confront any swarthy individual and demand “Your paperss, pleeze.” And oh BTW: if you travel in Mexico you are required to have your paperss on you at all times. In Guatemala gendarmes with submachine guns ask just that of gringos and others. Additionally, the manufactured Papers Crisis is totally disingenuous: I had to show ID the last three times I checked into hotels in New York and New Jersey.

Here’s the bill. Read it yourself and you’ll be way ahead of those who oppose it, including the Attorney General of the United States.

http://immigrationclearinghouse.org/text-of-arizona-senate-bill-1070/

There’s a symbiotic relationship between immigration lies and immigration ignorance: the ignorant base their attitudes on the lies they’ve heard. A Californian called a Phoenix talk show saying she knew that 1070 permitted police inquisitors to demand papers BECAUSE SHE HEARD A LAWYER SAY SO ON TV.

The president of the United States said pretty much the same thing—be careful taking your kids out for ice cream, remember?

Plain fact is: those who oppose 1070 side with lawbreakers, many of whom commit ultra-violent crimes here. It’s called Illegal Immigration because coming here illegally is, well, illegal.

Now as for the polls: In 2008 John McCain barely won Arizona with 53% of the vote while Obama got 45%. Even using the lowest 52% approval of SB 1070 (a figure widely exceeded nationwide), a goodly slice of Obama voters reject his opposition to enforcing the laws he is sworn to uphold. That means all the laws: you don’t get to pick and choose.

It’s not about race or profiling: it’s about sovereignty. Among those who understand that concept is a retired Arizona Department of Public Safety officer who wrote the Republic: “Once a police officer has taken his oath of office, he swears to uphold the laws of the State of Arizona and to protect the Constitution of the United States of America. He has no choice and can't decide which laws he wants to enforce and which ones he won't.”

Speaking of the Constitution, Article VI, Section 4 says that the federal government is supposed to protect states from invasion. It's a national security issue. When the Mexican Government approves and the U.S. Government ignores the northward movement of 2,500 or more illegals per day, that is an invasion.

With millions of illegals not only permitted but encouraged to invade, what are the long-term results? One is an institutionalized culture of scofflaws: with favored groups permitted to decide which laws they will follow, you can fill in the blanks as to the effects downstream. You could make a case for American citizens being permitted to ignore specific laws when aliens are allowed to do so for decades. It’s called Equal Protection Clause. If you don’t have your copy of the Owner’s Manual at hand, look here: http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment14 .
There’s also the immutable rule of economics. Illegals impose enormous financial costs upon Arizona and other states: health care, education, “entitlements,” and law enforcement. When the nation faces unprecedented government-imposed debt, the argument for supporting people with no right to be here falls even farther astern.

Since the reasons against illegal immigration are so clear, we’re left wondering why so many Democrats oppose enforcement. The reason is obvious: illegals already vote (illegally) and may have decided some elections. In 1997 “B-1 Bob” Dornan stated that he lost his California congressional seat for that very reason. But if people need to show legitimate ID to vote—as they do to cash a check—some Democrat seats become shaky.

And those seats look shakier. A USA Today/Gallup poll shows that 90 percent of Americans consider controlling our borders “extremely or very important” and another 21 % “moderately important.” A CBS poll shows 51% believe the Arizona law is “about right” while 9% say it doesn’t go far enough: 60% in all.

http://www.pollingreport.com/immigration.htm

Are those majorities “racist”?

Depends on how much objectivity you retain, doesn’t it?

DON'T BLAME THE DEMOCRATS

2010-04-18T15:16:00.000-07:00

Well, it finally happened: Obamacare and the further socialization of America were passed on March 21—a Sunday, when many Americans still believe no work should be done, least of all in Congress.

The disastrous outcome of a multi-trillion dollar medical program is inevitable. There are not enough doctors, nurses, hospitals, labs, or clinics to accommodate another 30 million government-mandated patients, and there’s no money to pay for it. The “progressives” in congress purchased, bullied, and forced their agenda upon a population that devoutly does not want the program. Never mind: the tone was set by the chairman of the House rules committee—a disbarred judge who said on camera “There aren’t any rules because we make them up.”

How’s that Change You Can Believe In working for you?

That question, incidentally, is not aimed at “progressives”. It’s aimed at those who are most responsible for the miserable present and disastrous economic future that our progeny will inherit.

I’d speaking of you Republicans.

I know what I’m talking about because I used to be one of you. For four generations my family was GOP: state senators, mayors, precinct committee members. True believers and worker bees.

No more: not since the early 90s. The reasons are many and varied, starting with the moral cowardice and lies of the Bush 41 (“Read my lips”) administration, followed by the limp campaign of Bob Dole. Martin Luther King, Jr. had a Dream. Bob Dole had a Pulse.

What some GOPers considered a narrow reprieve in 2000 only set the stage for the fiscal irresponsibility of Bush 43 and his acolytes in congress who spent like, well, like Democrats. The same GOPers who invaded Iraq without a Plan B. Dubya declared “Mission accomplished” upon deposing Saddam’s regime but still was mired in Iraq when he left office nearly six years later.
That was predictable, folks.

Fast-forward to 2009 when pundit Dick Morris asserted that conservatism was not going to be saved by “the knuckleheads and morons who run the Republican Party.” He didn’t specify the time servers, hacks, and wimps comprising the GOP “leadership” because he didn’t have to. Instead, Morris announced that he was starting a fund raising campaign on his own to target the Democrats most needful of retirement in the next election.

So don’t blame the Democrats. They’re simply being what they are—socialist ideologues with no more than passing acquaintance with American values. But We The People spoke on November 4, 2008, and now we’re stuck.

One of the most overlooked stories of the GOP primaries that year was the Arizona primary. McCain—the party’s handpicked carpetbagger who likely became Senator For Life—failed to win a majority in his “home” state. (Actually he doesn’t have a home state, being born in the Panama Canal Zone.) That should have told the country club set that maybe the professional POW wasn’t the one to tackle the Democrat varsity. But it didn’t. Instead, we were treated to what many Arizonans and others expected: a weak, wimpish campaign that not even Sarah Palin—the only outsider in the race—could offset.

How wimpish was it? Well, since you ask, I’ll tell you. In Lakeville, Minnesota, on October 10, the GOP candidate said, “My friends (he’s forever addressing people as My Friends), you have nothing to fear from an Obama administration.”

McCain, who hasn’t felt the need to answer constituent mail in years (come to think of it, in decades) is running ads emphasizing his “character.” Of course, they don’t mention his reputation in the Navy, and maybe they have a point. After all, personal ethics became irrelevant the day Bill Clinton was re-elected. But neither do McCain’s ads allude to the fact that he was the only GOPer in the Keating Five financial scandal.

But let’s not dwell on McCain, who parlayed 5 ½ years in Hanoi into at least 28 years in DC. He’s largely irrelevant, as is his party, which has been reduced to sideline status. He’s a symptom, not the disease.

It’s more instructive to ask how we came to the present disaster. As noted above, we cannot blame the Democrats, who promised “fundamentally to change America.” They meant what they said and they said what they meant. Get used to it.

Instead, look closer to home, Republicans. Look in the mirror.

If you were among the rheumy-eyed GOPers who supported a known weak candidate and vapid campaigner, a so-called “maverick” who was forever reaching across the aisle to his “friends” (that word again) on The Other Side, you’re to blame.

You gave us John McCain, who was never going to beat the tough-as-nails, victory-at-any-cost Chicago machine.

That was bad enough. But you Republicans have taken a major step toward destroying the future of America, and whatever inspiration it drew from the inspiring past.

It’s likely that the GOP will reclaim the House and maybe even the Senate this year. But that only has the potential to slow the Demo Express, not necessarily to reverse it. After all, the Republicans squandered most of their historic opportunity after the 1994 Contract With America and wound up setting the stage for the current debacle—and then allowed the Demos and the state-run media to rewrite history about the mortgage crisis.

There’s only one reason for optimism. The country-club Republicans had their run, and consistently bungled it. With nobody else named George Bush to put on the ticket, and with Bob Dole still selling Viagra, the field is open. I predict that Sara Palin is not going to be a candidate—she has too much baggage and too little to offer besides a spunky persona. But you won’t save the Republic with spunk. If it’s to be saved at all, it’ll be done with someone burning a fire in the belly; someone beyond the recycled cast of Usual Suspects.

So whatever happens this year and in 2012, just remember one thing: you shouldn’t blame the Democrats.

THE MYTH OF DETERRENCE

2010-03-24T18:45:00.000-07:00

Deterrence is much over-rated. In fact, it seldom works at all.

However, much of America’s current military strategy still emphasizes deterrence. For instance, the Navy mission statement specifically includes “deterring aggression” while the Army’s “posture statement” cites deterrence.

The Air Force seems more focused: its mission statement mentions flying, fighting, and winning.

It goes without saying that every war and “conflict” in the long, sanguinary history of the human race was the result of failed deterrence.

The Roman general Vegetius said “Let him who desires peace prepare for war.” His oft-quoted statement may be interpreted two ways. It may be seen as advocating deterrence, but it can also be taken otherwise: a nation prepared to fight a war can more easily shorten the feud. Nevertheless, despite possessing the world’s greatest army, Rome was tackled by a succession of enemies including Carthage, the Celts, Epirus, Teutons, and Visigoths.

Let’s fast-forward and take a quick look at deterrence in the XX century.

Britain’s Royal Navy was the greatest afloat, both in size and capability. Yet that naval dominance failed to prevent Germany from starting both world wars within 25 years of each other. Even after the example of the Great War, with a naval blockade that choked the Kaiser into submission, Adolf Hitler went to bat a second time, knowing that his own naval construction plan would not peak until 1948.

Sometimes efforts at deterrence don’t merely flop: they boomerang. As in Unintended Consequences. No better example exists than President Franklin Roosevelt’s 1940 decision to move the Pacific Fleet from California to Hawaii in an effort to stay Tokyo’s aggression. Instead, all he achieved was to place his fleet within striking range of the Imperial Navy, as America learned to its cost one Sunday morning. Some conspiracy theorists have concluded that’s just what FDR had in mind, since he was not otherwise going to get an isolationist America motivated to join the fight.

Despite the enormous reduction in all branches of the U.S. military after WW II, America still possessed the strongest navy and air force on earth. Neither fact impressed Kim Il Sung, who started the Korean War and ended in a tie. The absurd conduct of the Vietnam War requires no elaboration.

In 1982 Britain’s military capability far exceeded Argentina’s, but the ruling junta was unimpressed. Presumably safe 8,000 miles from England, the Argies seized the British-owned Falklands/Malvinas, and expected the fait accompli to stick. It didn’t, of course: Britain dispatched a task force to the South Atlantic and, in one of the unlikeliest wars of the century, drubbed the macho men in Buenos Aires.

There’s a sexual aspect to deterrence. The Latinate machismo of the Argentine generals led them to underestimated Margaret Thatcher. But the Bush Leaguers also fumbled badly (read: avoidably) in 1990 by sending a female ambassador to Iraq, dealing with a Muslim despot who had knifed his way to the top.

Technological superiority also is over-rated. Continuing PR for the enormously expensive F-22 Raptor stealth fighter contends that its awesome capabilities will deter aggression (from whom it is far from certain, but let’s not digress.) That’s a baseless assertion on its face. Not even the world’s finest fighter aircraft ever prevented a war, nor could it. Otherwise Hitler would have been awed by the Supermarine Spitfire; Kim by the F-86 Sabre; Ho Chi Minh by a double dose of F-4 Phantom and F-8 Crusader; and Saddam by the F-15 Eagle. We all know how well those worked out.

So…when has deterrence succeeded? The default response is the 50-year Cold War in which the West and Soviet bloc both possessed the power to incinerate each other with thermonuclear bombs, and therefore consented to wars on the periphery. The Soviets were far more astute in their handling of peripheral conflicts, allowing fellow travelers to do most of the fighting and dying while America bled in Korean snows and Asian jungles.

Since it’s almost impossible to prove a negative, we continue to speculate upon other successful examples of deterrence, which necessarily remain unknown. But logically we may conclude this: any wars averted by respect for the potential enemy were far smaller than the world wars, and likely smaller than middling exercises such as Desert Storm.

The lesson should be obvious: deterrence only works against enemies with the same mindset as one’s self. After all, the Soviets were merely evil; not crazy. That’s why the Bushido-drunk warlords in Tokyo strapped on a nation with an economy nearly six times their own, twice the population, and the inventor of the airplane, submarine, machinegun, and mass production. And a bunch of other stuff.

North Korea and North Vietnam were well aware of America’s vast military superiority but reckoned they could beat us because they did not fear us. Saddam Hussein knew all about the U.S. military—he had received covert assistance during his eight-year war with Iraq. But he attacked Kuwait, which provided much of our oil because he did not respect us.

Now we’re entering the tenth year of a cultural/religious war with enemies who do not fear death, let alone the United States Government. There’s no reason they should. The mullahs in Tehran look at America and they see the simpering face of Jimmy Carter.

In the open-ended war against “terrorism” (read: radical Islam), there are still thousands or millions of American who Just Don’t Get It. This month’s peace rally in Washington, D.C. included twenty-something twits (and older twits) who obligingly bleated for the cameras: “We just need to get along with everybody.”

Well, Sweet Cheeks, here’s a flash for you. It takes two To Get Along, but it only one to fight.

America needs to learn the old-old lesson: a pound of respect can buy a ton of deterrence.

2010-02-12T15:54:00.000-08:00

WHIRLWIND

It’s curious how the Pacific half of the Second World War turned on various winds, both literal and figurative.

“East wind, rain” was the coded message for the attack on Pearl Harbor to proceed, but not even the divine wind of the kamikazes could reverse the literal firestorm that descended upon Japan in 1945. Additionally, nature’s cyclonic winds figured in the Western Pacific, most notably with “Halsey’s Hurricane” which ravaged the Third Fleet in December 1944.

But a biblical reference struck me as particularly significant. Hosea 8:7 says, “They have sown the wind and they shall reap the whirlwind.” Certainly that statement applied to Imperial Japan, which received immensely more violence than it perpetrated. Therefore, I took Whirlwind as the title of my current book, the first one-volume study of all allied air operations over the Japanese home islands. It’s due next month from Simon & Schuster.

Aside from the fact that it hadn’t been done before, I wanted to address the multi-faceted operations of the U.S. Army Air Forces, the Navy and Marine Corps, plus the British Royal Navy. The complexity of the subject was daunting, but I had been interviewing veterans since the 1970s and had a stack of references from previous projects. Nearly half of the men who contributed their recollections are now deceased, which was all the more reason to gather additional material while still possible. About 2,000 American WW II veterans die every day, and I was acutely aware that Whirlwind would be among the last volumes written with significant contributions from those who lived the story.

Today it’s hard for some people to grasp the magnitude of the capacity for destruction in the era before nuclear weapons. Yet on the night of March 9-10 1945—five months before Hiroshima--325 B-29s burned down one-sixth of Tokyo and killed at least 85,000 people. Major General Curtis LeMay’s bombers flew—literally—in the face of airpower orthodoxy by dropping incendiaries instead of explosives over an enemy capital, at low level, at night. Here’s a description of the results, excerpted from Whirlwind:

“As the sky over the city became superheated, huge amounts of air were sucked upward through multi-story buildings in the ‘stack effect,’ draining the cool air from ground level to feed the insatiable stack. As more and more ground-level air was drawn into the conflagration from farther afield, the storm naturally spread of its own predatory accord.

“A fully-developed firestorm is a horrifically mesmerizing sight. It seems a living, malicious creature that feeds upon itself, generating ever higher winds that whirl cyclonically, breeding updrafts that suck the oxygen out of the atmosphere even while the flames consume the fuel—buildings—that feed the monster’s ravenous appetite. Most firestorm victims do not burn to death. Rather, as carbon monoxide quickly reaches lethal levels, people suffocate from lack of oxygen and excessive smoke inhalation.

“In Tokyo that night some citizens felt that hell had slipped its nether bounds and raised itself through the earth’s crust to feed on the surface. People fled panic-stricken from searing heat amid the demonic roar of flames, the crash of collapsing buildings, and the milling congestion of terrified human beings. Some survivors found themselves suddenly naked, the clothes burned off their bodies, leaving the skin largely intact.

“In those frightful hours humans watched things happen that probably had never been seen on earth. The superheated ambient air boiled the water out of ponds and canals while rains of liquid glass flew, propelled by cyclonic winds. Temperatures reached 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit, melting the frames of emergency vehicles and causing some people to erupt in spontaneous combustion.”

Excepting the two atom bombs, the fiery destruction of Japan’s urban-industrial areas is the best known aspect of the multi-service air campaign. (For a look at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, see my August 2009 entry, “The Nuke Season.”) But there was far more. After the daring innovation of the Doolittle raid in April 1942, metropolitan Japan was immune to air attack until November 1944—a precious two and a half years squandered by Tokyo’s warlords. Meanwhile, U.S. Army and Navy fliers began the long-range “Empire Express” missions from the Aleutians to the Kurile Islands in 1943.

Three months after China-based B-29s began flying, U.S. Navy carrier aviators launched against Tokyo and environs in February 1945. They returned frequently, not only attacking factories and airfields, but shipping. Ironically, their repeated strikes against immobile Imperial Navy warships produced far less benefit than two days’ attacks on lowly coal ferries, without which Japanese industry was further starved. Then in the last four weeks of hostilities, British carriers joined Task Force 38, completing the allies’ dominance of Japanese airspace.

Meanwhile, some B-29s diverted from strategic bombing to drop mines in coastal waterways—a tremendously successful campaign that enhanced the submarine war by choking off more vital imports.

In March 1945 the B-29s gained fighter escort as 7th Air Force P-51s began long-range missions from newly-captured Iwo Jima. Flying single-engine aircraft on 1,500-mile round trips, almost entirely over water, marked a new dimension in military aviation. Some fighter pilots were then on their second or third combat tours. Said one ace, “I fought the Germans for patriotism and the Japanese for fun. Next time I’m fighting for money.”

Nor was that all. With the conquest of Okinawa that summer, Army, Navy, and Marine Corps squadrons routinely attacked targets on Kyushu and Honshu. From nearly every direction, Japan was beset by an unstoppable destructive machine, from the sea and the sky—America’s patented way of war.

Yet Tokyo’s doom-focused war cabinet refused to yield. In fact, some hardliners insisted the killing would continue into 1948. So finally, the specter of a radioactive cloud cast its ghastly shadow over a national ash heap, and Japan’s living god finally exercised his imperial option, ending the dying. Thus, the ravenous beast called the Second World War-- which had scoured three continents and claimed more than 50 million lives--succumbed to the ultimate violence, and at length the monster was slain.

Imperial Japan, which had sown the wind, truly reaped the whirlwind.

2010-01-20T14:03:00.000-08:00

Heroism 101: What It Is, What It Isn’t

The demise of Tiger Woods as a “sports hero” recalls the similar dismay attending O.J. Simpson’s tumble from grace in 1994. While there’s worlds of difference between a serial philanderer and an accused murderer, both address the American public’s growing inability to distinguish between heroism and celebrity.

For starters, there’s no such thing as a sports hero, and there never was. After 61 years on Planet Earth and a couple of dozen Tailhook reunions, I know a hero when I see one. But first let’s define out terms.

The American Heritage Dictionary: “A man noted for feats of courageous nobility of purpose, esp. one who has risked or sacrificed his life.”

Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary: “Any man admired for his courage, nobility or exploits, especially in war.”

Genuine heroism involves sublime accomplishment at risk of one’s life. Unless the penalty for failure in an endeavor involves death, dismemberment or torture, we should call it something else, because it is not heroism.

Having known a dozen or so Medal of Honor recipients, I realize that there are degrees of heroism. The individual who finds satisfaction in risk taking, or even enjoys it, surely may be a hero. But he is less heroic than someone who conquers his fear and, with a feeling of dread, accomplishes the same feat. A few personal examples:

Two friends of mine—Bob and Steve—drove their 140-knot helicopters into the teeth of North Vietnam’s air defense network to rescue downed aviators in Haiphong Harbor.

Another friend—Jim—not only survived seven years of torturous extortion as a POW in Hanoi, but emerged with his self-respect intact.

I won’t even attempt to mention the fighter pilots, especially of the 1942 era. They repeatedly engaged in aerial combat, handicapped by inferior equipment or lopsided odds, or both.
However, heroism is not limited to the profession of arms. Consider John, an eastern Oregon deputy sheriff who twice entered a burning house, alone, to retrieve the occupant who had collapsed from smoke inhalation.

The point is this: Every one of those men is a genuine hero. Had they failed in their efforts, they would have died or suffered other extreme consequences. That, by definition, is what makes them heroes.

And while we’re at it, let’s consider the more passive kind of heroism inherent in tailhook aviation. I refer to naval flight officers who willingly put their one and only lives in the hands of often younger, less mature pilots—not once or twice but hundreds of times. And I will remind sportscasters of the teenagers who comprise those on the flight deck, “the gang on the roof.” In one of the most lethal working environments on earth, the aircraft handlers, fixers and “shooters” whose average age runs around 20 accept death or maiming as the penalty for one second’s inattention.

But none of those fliers or flight deck personnel regard themselves as heroic. They consider the enormous risks of their calling as merely routine. That attitude in itself is heroic.

Among my naval aviation friends, four carry lasting reminders of the risk inherent to their calling. One lost his right arm, another lost an eye, one is permanently crippled and the fourth cannot use his right hand. (The F-8 Crusader, though one of the finest fighters ever, was terribly unforgiving.) Yet none of them has ever uttered one syllable of self pity. Contrast that with the professional victims of our society who make careers out of their misfortune.

To label any athlete as “heroic” is to dilute the meaning of the term and to insult the genuine heroes. O.J. was certainly a fabulous running back; I saw him play Oregon State in 1967 when the Beavers defeated USC. Later, he enhanced his reputation with more gridiron “heroics.” But he was extremely well paid and cared for. The cost of failure was trivial; it merely meant his team didn’t make the playoffs that year.

By contrast, in Navy Air the cost of failure is permanent, irrevocable. The “routine” of seabased aviation is laced with risk in a manner completely unknown to surface and submarine operations. From startup to shutdown the potential for disaster is unremitting for some or all of those involved—all the time. Ships tend to float perpetually. Aircraft will not fly indefinitely.

At some point, somebody is bound to ask, “But what about moral courage?” Well, what about it?

Let’s briefly consider the relative scale. In the nine-year outrage the world now knows as “Tailhook” we witnessed the near-total collapse of moral courage in the nation’s civilian and uniformed leadership, from the White House downward. Men who had regularly demonstrated physical courage in the course of their naval careers were unable to meet the same standard when faced with political adversity. It was far-far easier to scapegoat a civilian-run organization that never had authority over military personnel than to hold the suits and stars accountable.

Therefore, it may be true that moral courage is rarer than the physical variety. But what does that say about the mettle of individuals and institutions? What is it that turns operational heroes into Beltway sheep? And more to the point, what does the current crop of ordinary heroes make of their superiors who today burn incense at the altar of political correctness rather than be accused of “racial profiling” toward terrorists?

However you answer that question, I think that everyone in the business will make one plea: From now on, can we please have some perspective in our definition of heroes?

2009-12-19T15:39:00.000-08:00

SOMEWHERE BETWEEN 12-7 AND 9-11

This month marks the 68th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Hawaii (12-7-41) and America’s official entry into WW II. (The U.S. was conducting covert, illegal operations in the North Atlantic and Asia but that’s beside the point for now.) There’s nothing noteworthy about the number 68, but since we’re losing about 2,000 WW II veterans a day, perhaps it’s time for some comparisons.

The Pearl Harbor attack killed 2,402 Americans including 57 civilians. The 9-11-01 attacks claimed 2,973 victims (nearly all civilians), plus 19 perpetrators. Other than the fact that both events were surprise aerial attacks upon U.S. territory, there appears little in common. Perhaps the most cogent assessment is that whereas the Japanese had their own airplanes (350-some carrier aircraft), al Qaeda had none and therefore appropriated ours.

If there’s a major similarity, both incidents involved significant failures of intelligence. And what was known was not well disseminated to the operators who needed it. There is almost zero reason to doubt that it could happen again.

I’ve asked a comparison from people who were alive during both events, and the results are surprising. Two friends who flew against the Japanese said they know where they were on December 7, but they do not recall their reactions. They’re atypical; most people know exactly what they were doing when they heard and what they felt, though not everybody believed it. (Aboard the carrier Enterprise that morning, a chief petty officer waved a $100 bill—serious money back then—seeking anyone who thought the reports were true. There were no takers.)

You’ll get conflicting opinions as to which attack caused greater surprise, but the majority seems to side with 9-11.

On its face, 9-11 should not have surprised anyone as much as Pearl. The years before 1941 involved rising tension as the Roosevelt administration sought to influence (or to extort via embargos, depending upon one’s perspective) Tokyo’s aggressive behavior in China. However, there had been no overt Japanese actions against America other than the accidental bombing of a gunboat in China in 1937, so there was little reason for John Q. Public to anticipate what happened in Hawaii.

Contrarily, there was a long-long record of conflict with Muslim factions dating to the Republic’s dawning. (The Barbary pirates and all that.) More recent clashes with Iran, Iraq, and other Islamic entities provided ample reason for concern. Hijacking airliners was so common that passengers were warned not to resist: do what you’re told and (probably) everything will work out.

So: if there was a two-century record of conflict with Islam, why did 9-11 cause greater surprise? Probably because of the audacity involved: hijack not one but four U.S. airliners and fly three of them into targets in New York City and Washington, D.C. rather than a territory 2,300 miles offshore. (In late 1941 few Americans had ever heard of Pearl Harbor.)

Additionally, nearly every living American actually saw 9-11 unfold. I may have been among the last to know because that morning Dad and I were putting the ranch fire truck to bed for the winter. But those who missed the initial reports saw the World Trade Center impacts again and again and again and…well, you remember. Pearl Harbor was experienced via radio and newspapers, and only later via newsreels.

However, if you switch the question and ask which event provoked greater anger, my nonscientific survey shows Pearl, hands down. It’s hard to describe the visceral rage that the sneak attack on Oahu prompted in The Greatest Generation, even allowing for the fact that the “sneaky” part was unintended (Japanese diplomats couldn’t decode the war order from Tokyo for timely delivery in Washington.) The fact that the attack came amid “peace negotiations” only turned up the gas under that white-hot flame. Admiral Yamamoto almost certainly never said anything about awakening a sleeping giant, but the sentiment surely pertained.

The post-attack responses also offer vivid contrasts. Franklin Roosevelt and California Attorney General Earl Warren—icons of liberal Democrats—tossed 120,00 people of Japanese descent into detention camps, about 2/3 being U.S. citizens. They stayed behind wire for the duration. The “exclusion zone” included most western states, but in Hawaii, with 150,000 people of Japanese ancestry, fewer than 2,000 were detained. Go figure.

If you fast-forward to the Tehran hostage crisis of 1979-80, past 9-11 to today, there’s very little similarity. That’s because the virulent virus of political correctness has had five decades to take hold. While American diplomatic and military personnel were held by Iranian zealots for 15 months, U.S. celebrities were shouting “Re-straint! Re-straint!” (I remember TV thespian Howard Hesseman, among others.) But it isn’t just Hollywood libs. After the Fort Hood massacre (see my previous post) the Army chief of staff said his main concern was avoiding backlash against Muslims rather than allowing soldiers to defend themselves.

The foregoing is not to ignore people on the opposite fringe. In my city of Mesa, Arizona, an imbecile took “revenge” for 9-11 by murdering the first person he saw wearing a turban. The victim was a Sikh, not a Muslim. When police cornered the murderer he emerged with hands up, declaring, “Don’t shoot—I’m an American patriot!” That patriot is doing life without parole.

Meanwhile, in a severe reversal of the WW II sentiment, the U.S. Government has gone so far hard-a-port that it prohibits measures against possible Muslim terrorists lest it result in racial profiling. Never mind that Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, and most other faiths (including atheists) do not send their followers on suicide bombing missions.

Does the foregoing mean that we should suspect every Muslim, as some Americans did so many Asians after 12-7? No, of course not. After all, we need Muslims to help conduct the war on terror, which already has lasted twice as long as WW II, with no end in sight.

Somewhere there’s a middle ground between unjustly imprisoning people who resemble the attackers—and prohibiting logical precautions toward likely individuals on the other.

But Somewhere exists other than in the United States of America.

Such is the lesson of 12-7 and 9-11.

2009-11-10T15:46:00.000-08:00

SOFT TARGET, HARD SELL

The United States Army is a soft target but the solution to the problem is a hard sell.

Rant Mode ON:

At Fort Hood, Texas, on November 5, a Muslim zealot or a crazed army psychiatrist (take your pick) went on a shooting rampage, killing 13 people--mostly soldiers--and wounding 30 others. After perhaps 10 minutes he was shot and wounded by civilian police hired by the Department of Defense. (Reportedly a SWAT team arrived half an hour later.) One of the responders was wounded herself, but fortunately she will survive.

The Fort Hood massacre was unique only in the body count. Remaining in a state of denial for years, the United State Army has ignored lethal assaults by soldiers and civilians sympathetic to our enemies:

In Kuwait in 2003 a Muslim GI “fragged” 16 of his comrades with grenades and rifle fire, killing two. He was sentenced to death but his case has been on appeal since 2006. No military personnel have been executed since 1961.

In 2007 federal agents arrested six Muslims in New Jersey who planned an attack on Fort Dix, based on knowledge gained in pizza deliveries.

In June 2009 a Muslim civilian shot two soldiers at an Arkansas recruiting office, killing one.

Before anybody jumps on the anti-profiling soapbox, listen up: We should not suspect every Muslim in the U.S. armed forces. If we’re going to pursue the global war on terror, we need Muslims for their cultural knowledge and language skills. Some of them are better soldiers and better Americans than many Christians, Jews, and atheists.

But…

The situation goes way back. In 1985, after four marines were executed in a San Salvador restaurant, a naval aviator asked some admirals why officers in nonflying billets were denied smallarms training. He considered the situation “demeaning to military professionals.” No explanation was forthcoming.

Lapse-dissolve, fast forward:

After 9-11; after nine years of a two-front war against radical Islam; after repeated attacks within our own borders, WHEN WILL THE ARMY WAKE UP AND DO AWAY WITH PREDATOR ENHANCEMENT ZONES?

Apparently not anytime soon.

Some perspective: The Fort Hood toll exceeds the KIAs of 14 Coalition countries in Afghanistan since 2001, and it’s more than 17 of the 24 allied nations have lost in Iraq since the invasion in 2003.

That’s why it’s called the Global War on Terrorism!

Fort Hood’s commander addressed a news conference the night of the attack. Responding to a question about soldiers being armed henceforth, he said that measure was not being considered, adding, “This is our home.” The implication being that decent people do not own weapons to defend their homes. He noted that additional military and civilian police patrols would be deployed.

Here’s what the general’s policy means in flesh and blood terms:

An unarmed military policeman said, "I told him (the killer) stop and drop your weapons. I identified myself as police and he turned and fired a couple of rounds at me. I didn't hear him say a word ... he just turned and fired."

WHY WOULD THE KILLER DO OTHERWISE?

A judicial officer quoted in an internet circular was present. He said, “I’ve been trained how to respond to gunfire, but with my own weapon. To have no weapon, I don’t know how to explain what that felt like.”

HE SHOULDN’T HAVE TO KNOW WHAT THAT FELT LIKE! In a self-respecting army, he wouldn’t have to.

We the People pay an enormous amount of tax dollars to maintain a professional army. Our soldiers (and marines and sailors and airmen) are not half-trained conscripts, though some cynics have noted that many are half-trained volunteers.

The problem is administrative, not tactical. By definition, the military is a control-freak institution. Consequently, officers (read: careerists) seek to control circumstances that might affect their careers, so they impose bureaucratic limits upon potential solutions. The unimaginative among them—the huge majority—default to school solutions. In the Fort Hood case, the school solution is cops: civilian contractors and MPs patrolling more than before. A spokesman said that (excepting police) anyone transporting a weapon on base must keep it unloaded and out of reach.

Apparently nobody at Hood has broken out of the school solution box: allowing soldiers to carry weapons. Says a retired NCO, “They’ll start strip searching troops arriving on base before they allow any of them to carry guns.”

The army needn’t arm everybody. Let’s face it—many of our troops have no business packing iron because they lack the training and/or the disposition for it. But many others are fully capable of carrying rifles and pistols with routine safety. After all, nearly everybody in the Israeli Army carries weapons off duty. The internet shows pictures of teenaged girls in green, hanging out at the post exchange or riding public transportation with unloaded M16s or Galils. Totally safe, ready to respond.

Obviously, if the Israelis can do it, so can we. The difference is that Israel lives 24-7 with a combat mindset. To an extent so does Switzerland. America does not, and never has.
Besides additional police patrols, the army is addressing the situation with counseling, which we hope proves helpful but certainly pegs the irony meter. After all, the “suspect” in the shooting is a psychiatrist produced by the same system that enabled the massacre in the first place!

Our suggestion to The Army of One: allow competent soldiers to carry their issue weapon on base, unloaded with a full mag available. Yes, some guns may be lost or stolen. Yes, some idiot will pop a round that might hurt or even kill somebody. So what? We lose nearly 2,000 people in DoD every year: over one-quarter through accidents and negligence. But how many firearms accidents does it take to offset 13 KIAs and 30 WIAs on one of the world’s biggest military bases? How often do we sustain 40 combat casualties in one day?

However, since service politicians may be trusted to place their perceived personal interests ahead of the troops (witness the nine-year Tailhook witch hunt), we may not trust many star-wearers to Do The Right Thing. Consequently, what’s required is a DoD directive requiring combat-trained troops to carry on base, and permitting qualified individuals in uniform off base to carry openly or concealed. Absent that, we’ll see more of the same.

In closing, consider an old military maxim: “A commander may be forgiven for being defeated. He may not be forgiven for being surprised.”

On November 5, Fort Hood and the U.S. Army were surprised. Forgiveness will depend upon the state of mind of the bereaved survivors. Meanwhile, it remains a hard sell to change the army’s policy favoring itself as a soft target.

Rant Mode to STANDBY.

2009-10-31T12:47:00.000-07:00

GRADING ON THE CURVE

A late-great friend of mine, a dedicated warrior, observed that war is a full-contact sport. He was right, of course. Combat is graded pass-fail, and sometimes you can do everything right and still flunk the course.

However, in the 21st century, some people believe that all human endeavors should be graded on a curve—or not graded at all. It’s indicative of the declining standards and feel-good attitude that infected humans in recent decades. Outcome-based education is but one example: “educators” concluded that since lower-performing kids’ self esteem might suffer if some were designated “winners,” the solution was to give everybody a trophy or an attaboy just for showing up.

That’s bad enough. Unfortunately, now the grade-on-the-curve philosophy is being applied to courage.

Earlier this year Republican Congressman Duncan Hunter of California opined that too few Medals of Honor are being awarded in the Global War on Terrorism. As of this month, since 2001 six men have received the nation’s highest award for valor in Iraq and Afghanistan: three Army, two Navy, and one Marine. All those awards were posthumous.

“We haven’t given one (Medal of Honor) to a living person yet,” Hunter says, “so does that mean not a single living soldier, sailor, airman or Marine has committed an act of valor and something so courageous that he’s earned the Medal of Honor?”

Hunter certainly is qualified to comment on the situation: he’s a Vietnam combat veteran with extensive military-affairs experience on The Hill. But as a former soldier and experienced politician, he must know that the military awards process has been broken for approximately forever.

I’m unusually familiar with the Medal of Honor: I’ve been privileged to number seven recipients among my friends and several more among my associates. In writing two books on the subject, some patterns emerged, and chief among them is that frequently people receive medals for doing their job. It started under political influence in the Civil War and continues so today. The problem is systemic: if it were ever going to be fixed, it would have been corrected decades ago. Witness Hawaiian Senator Daniel Inouye’s receipt of the Medal 55 years after WW II with 20 of his friends: the nation’s highest award handed out by the bucketful. (Never mind that his 442nd Regimental Combat Team already was the most-decorated outfit of the war.) Or even a century later: among Bill Clinton’s last official acts was presenting the Medal to Theodore Roosevelt’s great-grandson. In 1898 Teddy had led his Rough Riders up Kettle Hill in Cuba—a commander who commanded his troops, nothing more. In fact, nearly all Spanish-American War medals were awarded for lifesaving rather than direct combat.

Yes, some partisans claim that waivers for the statutory time limits are justified because of lost paperwork or perceived injustices, but it still boils down to politics. Think about it: when the President of the United States receives the Nobel Peace Prize for two weeks in office, the value of other awards become diluted by commonality and lowered standards. That situation should not apply to the Medal of Honor.

The thing about the Congressional Medal of Honor Society is that it does not get to select its members. Those eligible for membership are first approved by the U.S. Government, and the numbers are declining steadily. Currently there are fewer than 100.

Which brings us to the lack of living recipients. It’s obvious that neither the Bush nor Obama administrations would tolerate walking-talking heroes who might say something, um, impolitic. There is no smoking gun for such a policy—no signed directive saying, “There will be no more living Medal of Honor recipients.” But clearly that’s what’s at work. (In contrast, during the Vietnam debacle, the loathsome Lyndon Johnson used to tell an aide, “Trot me out a hero. I need to make a speech.” LBJ knew all about working the system: the citation for his WW II Silver Star was an outright fabrication.)

Mr. Hunter recommended that current Medal of Honor recipients serve on a panel to provide the Department of Defense recommendations for combat awards from the Silver Star upward. It’s a good idea. Though the veterans’ recommendations would be nonbinding, at least there could be a semblance of consistency in the awards process, assuming DoD pays attention.
However, a problem persists: the nature of the GWOT is different from previous wars. By far the greatest number of combat casualties is due to roadside bombs. Obviously, that situation does not lend itself to the kind of action that produces Medals of Honor. The MoH citations thus far all involve direct action against hostile fighters, not IEDs.

Rep. Hunter says, “I’ve got guys telling me stories about killing terrorists with their helmets, knifing them, getting in fistfights with them when they’re out of ammunition,” he said. “That sounds like old-time warfare to me.”

Agreed. But every war/feud/conflict involves people killing people mano-a-mano. The point is, that’s what soldiers do. Killing the enemy in and of itself is not “above and beyond the call of duty,” the operative phrase in MoH citations.

But there’s duty and there’s duty. I am slightly acquainted with a former Army sergeant who, in 2004, with other GIs he entered an Iraqi house full of goblins and covered the withdrawal of several wounded soldiers. Then he returned to pursue other enemies and, though shot in one shoulder, he emerged after killing five jihadists, the last by using a personal knife. He was recommended for the Medal of Honor but received a Silver Star—apparently because he survived. Certainly The Big One has been awarded for far, far less. (In the 1930s an aged general received the MoH for “a life of splendid public service.”)

So let’s not further dilute the Medal of Honor by awarding it on some sort of quota system. Instead, let’s recognize the unusual nature of the current “conflicts” and retain the standards intended for America’s most cherished decoration—whether the recipients are living or dead.

Why Do We Fly?

2009-09-28T18:34:00.000-07:00

WHY DO WE FLY?

Why do we fly? More particularly, why do we enjoy it so immensely? What is it about being off the ground that so completely absorbs so many men and women?

I asked a sampling of my aviation friends why they fly.

First, some ground rules. As much as some of us revel in The Glory of Flight, it isn’t about scenery. Anybody with an airline ticket can look out the window and marvel at God’s wondrous vista: sun-drenched clouds sprayed orange-yellow or brilliant white against cerulean blue; an aerial palette to etch in the retina of one’s memory forever.

That’s not flying, it’s sight seeing.

Now, I grew up flying behind round engines that flung oil on my goggles. I would not trade that experience for anything. But is sitting in an open cockpit, subjected to the elements in all four seasons, really the essence of flying?

For some the answer is not only Yes but Hell Yes. For others, a canopy and a heated cockpit are part of the Experience of Flight.

For purists, Pure Flight means gliders. No artificial propulsion; just God’s wind over manmade wings; you can hear and feel the airframe working, talking to you. Sailplanes truly are craft of the air.

Then there’s helicopters, which are a whole ‘nuther subject entirely. I like helos; I really do. While I’ve only played with three types (Huey, H-3 and H-52), they were just plain fun. Even with a stability augmentation system as in the ’52, a chopper is a lively, active mount not entirely unlike a horse. Here’s a comment from a long-time friend who earned a poor but honest living pulling jet pilots out of Haiphong Harbor: “A hover takeoff might not quicken the pulse like a burner go, and certainly we're not as speedy, but the thrill is there on an overwater hover or a destroyer flight-deck landing. Same boys, different toys.”

As in any endeavor involving humans, there’s a strong element of competition. One of the most accomplished airmen I’ve ever known has ratings for almost everything but multi-engine jet seaplanes, and he says, “My passion for flying is a combination of the freedom I feel in flight and my love to compete. In the Navy it was to be the best carrier pilot I could be. To win the best landing grades for an entire combat deployment was a high point for me. I want to compete with others to win every dogfight, to have the best bombing scores, to be the only one to get aboard on a pitching deck when the rest of the recovery bingos to the beach, to lead a strike against a difficult target, to challenge myself to keep the needles centered on an ILS to minimums.”

Some airmen seek perfection in three dimensions. This comes from a former military, commercial, and current private pilot: “Flying is fun and satisfying because there are perfect ways to do every part of it. I seriously doubt if anyone has ever flown an absolutely perfect flight, but if you are worth a damn, you are always trying. When you get something absolutely right, it is righteous. Throw in the accompanying elements of danger and competition, and the results can be wildly exhilarating. I am sure that a bullfighter might make the same claims on his profession, except when he is finished, he is left with 2,000 pounds of pot roast. And I doubt that any Grand Prix racer ever felt about his mount as this aviator does. Airplanes have souls, and they lend their ‘drivers’ a certain ethereal class lacking in more vulgar brawls. A wrecked airplane is always a tragedy in ways that a wadded-up dragster is not.”

A highly-experienced commercial pilot says, “To me, going somewhere, anywhere, represents adventure and romance. Flying yourself there increases this by an order magnitude. To do a first-rate job of flight planning, followed by a first-rate nav job, is what makes flying. Given a few hours of instruction, even a chimp can drive an aeroplane through the air (I know someone who has done it). But planning the trip and doing the nav is what brings the satisfaction to me. I will admit to smiling at making a good landing, or a smooth ILS approach, but you have to have done the other stuff right to get to that point."

A former Air Force colonel says, “There is nothing more satisfying than making a good landing under tough conditions. When I was a C-47 IP at Wright-Pat, I had a temporary copilot, indignant that he had to fly in a Gooney Bird. We came back from Boston in rotten weather, lots of ice with snow piled on both sides of the runway several feet high. It was minimums, and I flew a GCA and broke out in blowing snow and a cross wind, and then touched down so softly that you couldn’t feel it--one of those landings where the oleos take time to compress. When we had shut down, the copilot looked over and said, ‘Clutch player,’ and got up and left. It made my day.”

There’s more than just flying. A highly-experienced performer and instructor explains, “There are many nuances to the enjoyment of flying, from experiencing the sunrise at altitude to the type of people you get to associate with, to subtle pleasures such as the smell of high octane fuel or the fumes from a jet engine, but I believe that the essence of the appeal of flying is its element of danger. It is not fashionable to believe that flying is dangerous, and statistically it may not be, but the fact is that leaving the ground at relatively high speeds is ipso facto dangerous. To buttress my argument, look at the popularity of air racing and aerobatics, where the danger level is higher. So in short: aesthetics plus danger.”

To me, there is no single reason for flying--it’s a smorgasbord of attractions. It’s the art of flying, controlling a machine in three dimensions rather than two, perhaps best exemplified by the rarity of a perfect three-point landing. But it’s also navigation: predicting with precision the point in place and time when that machine would arrive where I intended it to. And perhaps most of all, it’s the shared experience with like-minded men and women. A parachutist once said that he didn’t especially relish sky-diving “But I like to be around people who like to jump.” Certainly that applies to those who fly airplanes.

Yet for all the introspection and thought, one response stands out. It comes from a long-longtime friend, a former Air Force officer who loved P-38s, made ace in a Mustang, moved on to “One Oh Deuces” and spent a couple thousand happy hours flying C-47s really low, doing things he still cannot talk about. He spoke for legions of aviators when he said he loves flying “Because I do it better than most people.”

I cannot add anything to that sentiment, and would not presume to try.

Why Do We Shoot?

2009-08-25T20:10:00.000-07:00

WHY DO WE SHOOT?

I like to shoot. More specifically, I enjoy hitting a target, but surprisingly few marksmen ever ask: why?

The question first occurred to me while testing a new rifle from a field position. I had just hit a 12-inch plate three for three at 880 yards. At that moment my father drove up, and apparently I still had the silly grin on my face because he asked, “What’re you smiling about?” His own smile belied the practiced grumpiness in his voice.

With ill-disguised false modesty, I related my triumph in the blandest terms possible: something about proving the new 168-grain handloads. Warning me not to wear out the barrel, Dad drove off, leaving me to savor the moment.

As I packed the Robar custom rifle in its case, I realized that I felt an odd ambivalence. Certainly I was happy with the gun, with my handloads, and with my performance. But I couldn’t help wondering: why I felt so good. It was something more than simply hitting a relatively small target at half a mile. Part of the reason obviously was the immediate feedback: I knew instantly whether I’d been successful. But what was it about ringing the gong three times in a row that felt so rewarding?

Unable to answer the question, I began trying to dissect my marksman’s emotions. The deeper I delved into the subject, the more complex it became. Clearly I needed help—a larger sampling.

In 1997 I began taking an informal poll, asking dozens of marksmen from various disciplines why they liked to shoot. What is it about hitting a mark with some type of projectile that is so appealing? After the first few responses I realized that some restrictions were necessary if the survey were to hold any value. I began narrowing the focus, eliminating generic responses such as “It’s fun” or “I like the challenge.”

At that point we began getting nowhere fast. When shooters were asked to be more specific, the inevitable response was a prolonged silence preceding, “I’ll have to get back to you.”

One important factor emerged early: concentration. As one national champion said, “When I’m shooting I can’t think about anything else. I have to focus on what I’m doing, and that’s relaxing for me.” Any serious marksman agrees: mortgages, appointments, and politics simply vanish for the duration of the shot or series of shots. Shooting is, therefore, relaxing.

“But,” exclaim the antgunners, “so is golf or tennis or tiddlywinks.” Which may be true, as shooting holds some of the attraction found in other accuracy games, but there’s a sensory difference: “Like golf except louder,” according to a Florida pistol competitor. An Arizona attorney agrees: “The stronger the stimulus the stronger the response.” Another Arizonan flatly explains, “I like recoil.”

Others cited less tangible reasons, such as the California instructor who eloquently replied, “I enjoy the rich history that goes with skill at arms, as well as appreciating the engineering genius that gave birth to these artifacts. My involvement in shooting makes me feel part of the continuum of history and gives me a greater appreciation of the deeds of historical figures.”

However, two key factors emerged from the poll: distance and control.

Shooting has to do with action at a distance: “You do something here, something happens over there,” says a civilian marksman. A military professional agrees: “Man is a control freak. Not only does he wants to be in control of himself, but also over everything he can manage…even at extended ranges.”

Control—especially self control—is a recurring theme. A Marine sergeant explained, “I think it has to do with man overcoming and controlling the forces or laws of nature. Taking that a step deeper, I’m sure some would say that it all boils down to control.”

Almost as important as common denominators such as control were the omissions. Several respondents listed more than one factor but nobody cited hunting as a major reason for enjoying shooting. While many shooters are hunters, not all hunters are recreational marksmen. Even conceding that filling the stew pot is rewarding for many people, it has little to do with the specific attraction of shooting well. The Spanish philosopher Jose’ Ortega y Gassett wrote in Meditations on Hunting: “One does not hunt in order to kill; one kills in order to have hunted.” Clearly the same applies to our survey: thousands of accomplished shooters have never used a firearm to kill anything.

Similarly, the few references to power seemed to belie the old claim that firearms represent a surrogate for sex. Presumably the subject had been put to bed (so to speak) over seven decades earlier when Sigmund Freud wrote in General Introduction to Psychoanalysis, “A fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity.” Apparently Dr. Freud, who almost certainly was not a shooter, understood what marksmen know empirically: shooting is a mental exercise. The payoff occurs above the neck, not below the belt.

So: how do we summarize the survey? Clearly there are a variety of reasons for shooting, and many (perhaps most) are separate from the practical applications of self preservation. Very few marksmen directly addressed the initial question: what is the attraction of striking a mark at a distance?

To a large extent, the question answers itself. Shooting by definition involves conquering distance. (Remember: “You do something here; something happens over there.”)

However, nobody conquers distance with accuracy unless he conquers himself; that is why marksmen invariably are “control freaks.” They possess the motivation and the discipline to control their equipment, their bodies, and—most of all—their minds. Fully 40 percent of my respondents cited control of self or their environment as a primary reward for shooting.

In the end, perhaps the answer can only be found within ourselves. Each marksman has a personal reason for his pursuit, and each finds satisfaction and accomplishment within the parameters he (or she) sets for himself. In the end, that is enough.

The Nuke Season

2009-08-07T12:54:00.001-07:00

THE NUKE SEASON

What does baseball have to do with atom bombs?

A whimsical baseball movie was the 1949 Ray Milland offering, It Happens Every Spring. It’s an enjoyable tale about a college professor who invents a formula that repels wood, making it impossible for a batter to hit a ball coated with the stuff. The title refers to the annual onset of spring training.

That’s a lot like The Nuke Season. It happens every August with the anniversaries of the A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Since we’re now into this year’s Nuke Season, I’ll address the matter.

(Caution: if facts do not matter to you, skip this Rant. Some people prefer emotion to facts.)

Inevitably The Nuke Season features the following:

The bombs were unnecessary since Japan was about to surrender.
Truman only wanted to impress the Soviets.
Racist America used nukes against Asians but not against Germans.
A demonstration should have been made before destroying a city.
Blockade was preferable to bombing.

None of the foregoing assertions bear examination, to wit:

As British historian Max Hastings noted in Retribution (2008), "The myth that the Japanese were ready to surrender anyway has been so completely discredited by modern research that it is astonishing some writers continue to give it credence.” In researching Whirlwind, my upcoming volume on air operations over Japan, I found a wealth of Japanese testimony supporting Hastings’ conclusion. In 1943 Prime Minister Tojo admitted there was no viable plan to win the war, but hostilities continued. Admiral Onishi, the kamikaze master, asserted in March 1945 that the war had just begun. And a general staff officer told POWs that the war would last at least until 1948.

Furthermore, the war cabinet’s actions give 0.00 credence to the notion that Japan was about to surrender. Tokyo rebuffed the allies’ Potsdam declaration calling for capitulation, and then sought intervention by the Soviets, who already planned to invade the Kurile Islands! There is no documentation that any of the eight men ruling Japan (including the emperor) stated before Hiroshima that they would have surrendered under any circumstances—not even when some were on trial for their lives. None stated that Soviet entry--plus some guarantee of the imperial system--would have moved them individually, must less triggered the necessary set of actions within the cabinet, that would have ended the war before the nukes were released. Two weeks before Hiroshima, Tokyo’s ambassador to Moscow said the best possible outcome was capitulation, perhaps with some guarantee of the emperor’s status—a situation rejected by the foreign minister and known by U.S. intelligence at the time.

So: if Tokyo was “about to surrender anyway” why did Hirohito have to over-ride his warlords?

Harry Truman’s presumed intention to cow the Soviets with the nukes is another unsupportable contention. As commander in chief his first obligation was to the American forces facing a horrific invasion. Forcing Japan to surrender soonest was Job One, and any geopolitical fallout (!) was a tertiary concern if it was ever discussed at all.

I encountered the “racism” mantra in college, and it still arises from the moldy PC pond. No less an authority than Malcolm X (!) stated that America would not use nukes against whites—a bald lie when the entire Manhattan Project was spurred by the German nuclear program. Colonel Paul Tibbets’ 509th Composite Group originally was instructed to conduct a dual strike: Germany and Japan. But “the weapon” was not available until July 1945, over two months after Germany surrendered. (When I noted that fact, the tweedy prof merely scrawled, “Are you sure?” and gave me a B+.)

Dropping a demonstration bomb was considered but rejected on at least two counts: it might be a dud, which would only reinforce Tokyo’s resolve; and there existed material for only two weapons at the time. Besides, there were in fact two demonstrations before Japan surrendered: at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

That leaves blockade which, short of invasion, was the only option other than declaring peace and going home. But as my colleague Rich Frank has observed, blockade would have killed more people than the two A-bombs. Precious time would have passed, with at least hundreds of thousands of Japanese starving to death, plus perhaps millions more dead in Asia. As it was, perhaps 100,000 died there every month from famine, disease, and Japanese brutality. I have yet to see any critic even mention that fact. And it does not count the American KIAs sustaining a blockade—a cost that nuke critics seem willing to ignore.

So, here’s the deal:

You are Harry Truman in early August 1945. You have responsibility for ending a war that has killed nearly 400,000 Americans, with many thousands more to die in an invasion. Your military is divided on the subject: the Army under the megalomaniacal General Douglas MacArthur favors invasion while the Navy, which understands the human cost, opposes it. You know from intelligence sources that Tokyo is nowhere near capitulation. The daily cost of hostilities runs in the thousands

You face an enemy unlike any in American history. You have seen the films of mothers throwing their infants off Saipan’s cliffs and jumping after them. You know that Tokyo is impervious to civilian suffering: after Curt LeMay’s B-29s burned down one-seventh of the city and killed at least 85,000 people one night in March, the war cabinet never flinched. You know that the government has closed schools and conscripted most of the civilian population into “volunteer” resistance units.

Now your scientists present you with the supreme weapon with the potential for convincing the samurai zealots in Tokyo to “bear the unbearable.” If you decline that option and the invasion proceeds, eventually the parents of tens of thousands of GIs, Marines, and sailors will demand to know why you sent their sons to their deaths. You may or may not be lynched, but you definitely will be impeached.

What do you do?

It’s the lingering question whenever The Nuke Season rolls around.

Tillman's Rules of Writing

2009-08-02T16:41:00.000-07:00

TILLMAN’S RULES OF WRITING

I’ve given it a lot of thought over the years (well, OK, decades) and I believe there are only three factors in writing. In order of importance they are Clarity, Brevity, and Style.

Obviously, Clarity is Job One because writing’s purpose is to communicate. But as others have lamented, the language of King James, Shakespeare, Hemingway and Churchill (not to mention PJ O’Rourke) has fallen upon hard times. For reasons that no human can explain, corporate English has mutated into an arcane, convoluted, downright ugly entity. I’ve sat through a military briefing in which a board of admirals talked to one another in their Beltway argot, actually using inane phrases such as “event-driven human value chain.” I have absolutely no idea what an event-driven human value chain might be. Obviously neither did the speakers.

But the problem is far more widespread than merely in corporate environs. Consider the following passage from a best-selling 1980s novel. (Character’s names have been changed to protect the offender.) “Bob asked George if he thought he was getting fat.”

Go ahead: tell us who asked what of whom. But that’s not merely the fault of the author; it betrays an indifferent publisher. The editor could have retrieved the passage thusly: “Bob asked George if George thought Bob was getting fat.” That’s awkward but crystal clear. “Bob asked George if Bob was getting fat” is less confusing but still wordy.

How about: “Bob mosied up to George and asked, ‘Hey dude, am I getting fat?’”

Brevity is Job Two, and it often suffers as well. If you can say it in eight words instead of eleven, why not? Consider the order that launched Operation Overlord, the allied invasion of Nazi-Occupied Europe. The entire document, issued by the Combined Chiefs of Staff in February 1944, comprised 578 words. In eight paragraphs it designated General Dwight Eisenhower supreme allied commander in Europe, and in 68 words assigned his specific task:

“You will enter the continent of Europe and, in conjunction with the other United Nations, undertake operations aimed at the heart of Germany and the destruction of her armed forces. The date for entering the Continent is the month of May, 1944. After adequate Channel ports have been secured, exploitation will be directed towards securing an area that will facilitate both ground and air operations against the enemy.”

You can hardly say it more efficiently.

As we’ve learned to our cost (fiscal and otherwise), brevity has been exiled from the U.S. Government. In the 1980s the Department of Defense fought and lost the Paperwork Reduction War, and today it’s even worse. At present the proposed health care bill runs 1,017 pages—another of those massive documents that nobody bothers to read before approving.

Style is important, but IMO it’s not as important as Clarity or Brevity. If I see a common problem with new writers, it’s the tendency to concentrate on how they phrase their message rather than how well they communicate it. Most scribes want to be considered stylish, “irregardless” of how they accomplished Job One and Job Two.

Then there’s punctuation. My sympathy goes to the possessive apostrophe, because it’s so widely flogged and abused. For reasons that nobody can explain, it is inserted before the letter S where totally unnecessary. The following was noted years ago in an Arizona trailer park: “Tonight’s movie: My Hero’s Have Alway’s Been Cowboy’s.”

You can’t make up stuff like that. But Birmingham, England, has decided to rid apostrophe’s (!) from its lexicon entirely. According to the BBC, the formerly “St. Paul’s Square” now is “St Pauls Square”—evidently periods were banned as well.
Calculated nitwittery: it’s here to stay.

For all the abuse heaped upon The Mother Tongue, it retains its luster (“lustre” in Birmingham). The following observation comes from a longtime colleague who made a poor but honest (and extraordinarily colorful) living in the U.S. State Department. I had made passing mention to English as the lingua franca of technology (try saying “carubetor” in Hindustani), prompting Bart to declare:

“Actually, there's more to the adoption of English as a ‘lingua franca’ than technology. (By the way, did you notice that we use ‘lingua franca’ as meaning a world-wide understandable language? Of course, French use to be the diplomatic language and lingua franca means literally "language of the Franks [French]". But no more). Many languages--French being the principal exception-- simply incorporate English technical words into their own vocabulary. Russian, Mongolian, Japanese, and most Romance languages are replete with such terms.

“But that doesn't explain why English is now the common shared language for science, business, diplomacy, tourism, etc. The real reason is that English is practically unique in one very important respect. Even though English has more words than any other language (more than 400,000 and growing by thousands of words a day), it is the ONLY language that will permit someone to make themselves understood if they can master 500 simple words and only three or four basic grammar rules. No other spoken language comes close. That's why English is the most taught foreign language world-wide. It's the mandatory second language in Russia, China, Japan, and most of South America.”Those of us whose native language is English are truly fortunate.”

Incidentally, Bart’s first foray into international discourse occurred while strapped into the rear seat of an F-4J Phantom, seeking local indigenous personnel on his radar scope, the better to launch an AIM-7 Sparrow. He didn’t need a degree in English to accomplish that mission, but it surely helped..
http://www.btillman.com/

Favorite Books I Have Written

2009-07-12T13:38:00.000-07:00

When I’m asked what’s my favorite among the 45+ books I’ve written, often I toss off a response “Whatever one I’m writing.” But the fact is that authors write for one of two reasons (or both): enjoyment and money. I’d have to say that I enjoy making money!

Here’s some thoughts on a few of my favorites.

Sentimental favorite: the first, of course. The Dauntless Dive Bomber of WW II (Naval Institute Press 1976.) It began when Dad and I were restoring then the world’s only airworthy SBD, and the book is still in print 33 years later.

Commercial favorite: my first novel, Warriors, (Bantam 1990) coauthored with my late-great friend, Cdr. John Nichols. Saddam Hussein became our chief publicist when he invaded Kuwait a few months later, and ours happened to be one of only two Mideast thrillers on the market at the time. It sold extremely well until Bush 41 called off the war.

Most influential book: a tossup between On Yankee Station (Naval Institute 1987), again with “Pirate” Nichols, and What We Need (Zenith 2007). OYS was adopted for the Air Force and Marine Corps reading lists (the Navy thought it was too critical) and WWN still generates discussion about our military priorities.

My best writing: “Flame on Tarawa,” in Steve Coonts’ Victory anthology (Forge, 2003).

Easiest long book to write: Dauntless: The Novel (Bantam 1992). I’d spent 20 years researching the Pacific War for other books and wrote 90,000 words in about four months. Of course, it helped that I had flight time in the airplane.

Hardest to write: Wildcats to Tomcats (Phalanx, 1995). Working with Wally Schirra, Zeke Cormier, and Phil Wood was downright fun. But they were fighter pilots—rugged individualists--and I think it took about eight years.

Closest to a definitive history: Clash of the Carriers (NAL 2005). The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot was the subject of only 3 or 4 previous books in 60 years, and the sources I used could not be duplicated today. That’s why I’m glad I wrote Clash when I did, while enough veterans were still living.

Shortest definitive treatment of any subject: TBD Devastator Units of the US Navy (Osprey, 2000). The much-maligned Douglas torpedo plane was a better machine than conventional wisdom allows, but its combat career was so brief that I had a hard time meeting the 35,000 word requirement.

Most overlooked: The Sixth Battle (Bantam, 1992), a techno-thriller postulating a clash with the post-Soviet navy in the Indian Ocean. I wrote it with my brother, who did most of the research. Wargamers absolutely love it but the novel received little promotion.

Some books that are so good I wish I’d written them:

Billy Gashade by Loren Estleman
Guadalcanal by Richard B. Frank
Taking Flight by Dick Hallion
Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors by Jim Hornfischer
The First Team series by John Lundstrom