Man, I really hope that’s in reference to the watch, and not something else to be shaken only twice.
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When I was your age, you just had to guess where you were going. If you sailed for India and ended up in the Bahamas, so be it. That was just how it was.
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My dad was a paratrooper in the 101st Airborne. The first time he was ever on an airplane he had to jump out of it. He still hates to fly.
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I have no excuse, other than too many strange people and a complete loss of dignity, but I hate to fly.
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I don’t think anyone enjoys flying as a means of travel anymore. It’s something you only tolerate.
Still beats going in covered wagons crawling along waiting for the Injuns or disease to get ya like we had it back in my day.
Kids nowadays with their Tik Tokking and rock and roll don’t know how good they have it.
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Oh, I remember the basics of pilotage, dead reckoning and using an E6B whilst writing everything on my kneeboard and trying to fly all the while getting beat to shit in thermals and winds down low because the Cessna 150 I was in was held together with baling wire, duct tape, chewing gum, spit and hope. Oh, and my instructor at that time in Tucson, Andy, was a high functioning alcoholic who stunk of booze, breath mints and coffee.
At least that -150 had a cool Snoopy WWI Flying Ace logo on the tail.
Holy shit, my private pilot training was “interesting.”
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Pretty sure it’s secretly designed that way. It’s part of the test.
Being in a narrow, uncomfortable, unpressurized aluminum tube, while wearing a cumbersome, ill fitting sheepskin flying suit with a sometimes working electric heating element and trying to stay alive with Krauts trying to kill you for several hours is mind boggling to me, Neil.
And, your Dad and so many others kept going every other day or so for a minimum of 25 missions in broad daylight over Europe.
Holy shit, I’ll never complain about a 4 leg, 11 hour duty day.
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My buds who went through military pilot training would agree.
They just wore cool flight suits and got paid a bit better.
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I’ve posted this before, but it’s worth re-upping.
The fact that the aircraft was crap does NOT denigrate the service of the men who flew missions in these death traps. If anything, it makes it all the more remarkable that they would climb back into one day after day.
The RAF was sending people up in horrifically vulnerable equipment too, they just had the good sense to do it at night.
This is why I always come back to the Mosquito. The “wooden wonder” was pretty much the most survivable plane in the sky in WWII while simultaneously being one of the most deadly to the enemy.
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True, but the technology back then and knowledge of things was so primitive by today’s standards and such- the design and development of airplanes was advancing so rapidly as they figured out things, a mere 40 yrs ish after the Wright Brothers first flew.
Those death traps were all they knew, and often times could take one helluva beating and bring people home- they were mass produced, easy to produce and for the most part did a magnificent job.
I marvel at what those aviators back then had to endure and what they went through while I sit in a warm, cozy, pressurized tube 6 miles above the earth doing 7-9 miles a minute with no one shooting at me, all the while thinking of the layover in San Diego.
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My dad actually went in in '42 as an Army Air mechanic–his dad owned a Texaco station in Texarkana so I guess he knew how to change oil–and only switched to flying late in the war because, I suspect, casualties in B17s in Europe were so brutally high and they were roping in everybody they could lay their hands on. His flying experience was mostly training and flying around the US, which is probably why I’m around to type this. That said, he told me once what it was like to be in that nose cone when the plane landed. He said that all he could do was shut his eyes.
For the guys who actually flew in those things on bombing raids, it’s unimaginable. Adding people shooting at you to the cold and noise and fear and it would have been horrific. It was D-Day every day!
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I think the issue - at least the way this YTuber presents it - is that leadership kept doubling and re-doubling down on tactics and theories that were proven failures. Daytime bombing was not “surgical” and more guns made things worse (and required more airmen to fire them which just meant more dead airmen).
It was WW1 tactics in the air.
LeMay would have been tried and convicted of war crimes if the US hadn’t won the war.
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Have you seen “The Bombing of Germany” episode of American Experience on PBS? The point about Curtis Lemay is one of several discussions on the morality of the campaign
eventually bombing civilian targets.
Also recommend “The Cold Blue” on HBO. It’s recovered original footage from William Wyler who made the Memphis Belle documentary during the war. Damn good hour of your time.
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No, I haven’t seen either of those. Thanks for the pointers.
[Arthur “Bomber” Harris has left the chat running]
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I’ve seen the HBO documentary when it first came out and was released it theaters. It was superbly done.
Haven’t seen the American Experience episode, though. Thanks for recommending that.
Exactly.
Plus, some of the post mission data collected wasn’t accurate as far as damage reporting and accuracy. LeMay didn’t care- it was a meat grinder for him.
That’s a very good way to put it, WWI tactics in WWII.
Some of my buddies who flew combat in Iraq and Afghanistan have shared with me what they did and saw, I had an instructor in the schoolhouse 2 weeks ago who won a Silver Star for supporting American assets on the ground at the Tigris River, and I was able to find a video recreation of what he and his wingman did in ‘03. Wow. Come to find out, my training partner and good buddy who was a Marine F-18 driver assigned to a USN squadron at that time, had relieved our instructor’s squadron mate a few days earlier on scene in Baghdad after she had to limp a badly shot to hell A-10 back to base. He and our instructor (who was an A-10 driver/USAF) had a moment in our post flight debrief when they connected the dots about that time. It was interesting seeing them reminiscing about that.
Said friends have also shared that as far as the data collection and post mission assessments go, things are much more accurate and lethal, to put it simply. Some things are seared in their brains forever that they can’t unsee.
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