Picture of the day
- Thread starter jwhc
- Start date
From what I've read, the strategy behind "hamburger hill" in Viet Nam was to force the enemy to deploy troops to the action by taking them away from other areas.
The hill itself was a suspected stronghold of North Vietnamese forces and was also one of the highest points of land in the region.
The secondary objective became one of "saving face"
There were all sorts of body count estimates, but as per normal practice, most were heavily inflated by both sides.
The hill itself was a suspected stronghold of North Vietnamese forces and was also one of the highest points of land in the region.
The secondary objective became one of "saving face"
There were all sorts of body count estimates, but as per normal practice, most were heavily inflated by both sides.
fat tony
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
Where did his hate for anything British come from? Today I can totally get having no use for the Royal mob. Maybe he was on to something but man. . .
Just as an aside, to this day there seems to be an active smear campaign to denigrate and trivialize the contribution of the British Pacific Fleet in WWII.
Growing up in the Canadian education system of the 70's and 80's, I was fed a steady diet of "British Exceptionalism" anytime WWII came up in Social Studies.
In the decades since, I've poked around a wider variety of sources. With few exceptions, most of the successes of the British came from the colonial forces, and the "Other Ranks" outperforming the incompetence of the officer class. By the time WWII came around, Great Britain was already a fading power, with a military who's officer class was riddled with cronyism and a long outdated dependence on the upper class.
Don't get me started on Monty. What a colossal upper class #### with an inflated and completely unjustified ego.
fat tony
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
I can see the logic in that.
Monty inspected my dad’s battalion shortly before the landing in Normandy, June 1944 , dad said Monty strode through the ranks like he was Jesus Christ
You mean Adm. King? Who knows; anti-British sentiment in the USA was and even today to some extent still is a lot like anti-American sentiment in Canada: a cheap and easy way to generate some shared identity and group beloning. Sort of like "who's in, who's out" in elementary school.
Some North Americans suffer from a sense of cultural and educational, to say nothing of historical inferiority in regard to the British which can manifest rather violently at times. Sometimes a personal experience is behind such things. Maybe King felt looked down on when he served on exchange in a Royal Navy ship? My money would be on that.Ike was a pretty smart man, big enough to see beyond his own ego and career, unlike many then and most now. Marshall was another. MacArthur, King, Patton and most of the others were typical self-imagined geniuses. Monty was trying to be Monty and part of that was his consciousness that a commander needed to be "larger than life". The fact is that such personalism in leaders works. Read about the reaction of the rank and file and most of the officer corps of the 8th Army when he arrived and after a few months. Auchinleck was a fine man and a fine officer, a much more gentlemanly person than Monty, but he could not inspire, motivate and kick --- as Monty did. Everyone, except of course Monty and perhaps his staff, had to pass PT tests for a start. A lot of fat and unfit officers were sent home or sent back to Egypt. Weeding out the mentally unfit is not so easy of course.
Of course the Americans are even better at myopic exceptionalism than the British were at the height of their power. Who wrote the American "Recessional" at that moment in their history? No one in fact.
The Pacific War was America's personal war after Pearl Harbour, so of course they didn't want to share. The fact they were two years late to the party just made them even more determined to lose sight of that fact by looking at what came after.
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^^^^^
Fond memories of the 4 years spent at 4 Wing, Baden Soellingen in the early 70’s and a couple of rides in the “zipper” as it was occasionally called was certainly a highlight.
The first pic is a formation from 439 Recce Sqn with the camera pods installed.
Fond memories of the 4 years spent at 4 Wing, Baden Soellingen in the early 70’s and a couple of rides in the “zipper” as it was occasionally called was certainly a highlight.
The first pic is a formation from 439 Recce Sqn with the camera pods installed.
Attachments
The Lockheed F104 Starfighter was the "dream bird" of all the kids I knew who were interested in aircraft.
We loved the fighters from WWI, WWII, Korea, etc. but the F104 Starfighter was the ultimate image in our dreams.
It embodied everything we loved at the time and we had all sorts of visions of its capabilities, most of which were pure fantasy, such as being "outer space capable"
We were very young, not even out of elementary school. When we were told it was impossible, by one of the pilots who came to our school, it broke our hearts.
That being said, at least one made it out of the atmosphere before its engine died and the plane was lost. I don't remember if this was done purposely or not.
It certainly looked the part to us at the time.
I still love its sleek lines and marvel at how small it really was. Mach 2 is fast. That's still fast, even by today's standards.
I don't know if they ever built a "fly by wire" version. That may have cleaned up its image.
It was just too small to fill with a bunch of electronic gear that is needed to survive today.
Appearance wise, the F16 has nothing over the lines of the F104, which just exudes "sleek"
We loved the fighters from WWI, WWII, Korea, etc. but the F104 Starfighter was the ultimate image in our dreams.
It embodied everything we loved at the time and we had all sorts of visions of its capabilities, most of which were pure fantasy, such as being "outer space capable"
We were very young, not even out of elementary school. When we were told it was impossible, by one of the pilots who came to our school, it broke our hearts.
That being said, at least one made it out of the atmosphere before its engine died and the plane was lost. I don't remember if this was done purposely or not.
It certainly looked the part to us at the time.
I still love its sleek lines and marvel at how small it really was. Mach 2 is fast. That's still fast, even by today's standards.
I don't know if they ever built a "fly by wire" version. That may have cleaned up its image.
It was just too small to fill with a bunch of electronic gear that is needed to survive today.
Appearance wise, the F16 has nothing over the lines of the F104, which just exudes "sleek"
- Location
- WMU247 near Edmonton
Yeager with a 104G ???
It had a very mixed reputation. A lot depended on how it was used, and by whom. It was originally developed as a high altitude, high speed, daylight interceptor. Over time, it was shoe-horned into becoming a multi-role, day/night all weather fighter bomber. The West Germans had a lot of problems, more than most other nations. Their air force was just being reconstituted, and a lot of the pilots, and just as importantly ground crews, were WWII veterans who'd been in civvy jobs for the meantime. Take someone in their late teens, early 20's, who was Hot Stuff in and BF-109, have them cool their heals flopping around in Transit Busses of the Sky for airlines for a couple of decades, then shove them into a cutting edge bottle rocket like the F-104, and... Well, let's just say theat their acquired skills weren't a good match for the new airframe.
Then get them to fly low level high speed attack profile runs, in a plane that really wasn't designed for that envelope...
Well, bad things are going to happen.
Like a lot of aircraft, in capable hands, flying the profile it was designed to fly, it did well. But when maintained by insufficiently trained ground crews, flown by pilots raised on aircraft from a completely different era, flying a profile well outside of its design, it became a lawn dart.
Yes, high speed, low level operations with a single engine is bound to get some unplanned results. One day a 439 Sqn driver took a large bird to the centre windscreen and although the windscreen was hardened, it caved in and there was shattered glass and bird guts everywhere. He was lucky he had his visor down and had a wingman with him to guide him back to Lahr.
Another guy, Maj Chesser, swallowed a bird at low level and the engine flamed out and his ejection was at such a low altitude his parachute was still in the deployment stage as he was descending through the trees. He joined our base parachute club and jumped out of our Cessna at 2800’ to see what a parachute ride was all about because his first one wasn’t long enough to recall, lol. On one of my rides in the back seat my buddy George took me on a high speed, low level run down the Rhine river and that was quite impressive to say the least.
The engines we had were the J79-OEL7 and the OEL was Orenda Engines from Malton Ontario. They built the engine under license from the original manufacturer. Orenda had also built the engines for our F-86 Sabre.
Those were the Cold War days when we had multiple bases in Germany and prior to that in France as well. Certainly different days when our military had real equipment, nuclear weapons, a defined role and well trained people.
Another guy, Maj Chesser, swallowed a bird at low level and the engine flamed out and his ejection was at such a low altitude his parachute was still in the deployment stage as he was descending through the trees. He joined our base parachute club and jumped out of our Cessna at 2800’ to see what a parachute ride was all about because his first one wasn’t long enough to recall, lol. On one of my rides in the back seat my buddy George took me on a high speed, low level run down the Rhine river and that was quite impressive to say the least.
The engines we had were the J79-OEL7 and the OEL was Orenda Engines from Malton Ontario. They built the engine under license from the original manufacturer. Orenda had also built the engines for our F-86 Sabre.
Those were the Cold War days when we had multiple bases in Germany and prior to that in France as well. Certainly different days when our military had real equipment, nuclear weapons, a defined role and well trained people.
She's carrying a rifle, likely a Model 92 Winchester, chambered for 44/40, a pistol which is maybe chambered for the same round and covered in bandoliers which appear to be filled with 30-40 Krag or maybe 7x57? Wearing a "funeral" dress.
Dark Alley Dan
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- Darkest Edmonton
The'94 was a favourite with that crowd. Next time you're in Mexico and the mariachi ask what you'd like them to play, drop this one on 'em:
