A New Year is upon us and in times like these I think it's good to remember the past, so we don't repeat the mistakes in the future. Unfortunately, I think that a lot of the younger generation don't even know there is a past, or if so, have been fed the pablum version of it. But, perhaps unfortunately, I do remember.
I remember growing up during the great depression, where some 25 percent of the work force was unemployed. Unbridled speculation on wall street, fueled by stocks being bought on large margins (i.e. borrowed money) resulted an a great crash in the stock market in 1929 followed by a bigger one in 1932 when the house of cards came tumbling down. Making matters worse, we had the greatest man made environmental disaster in American history. Poor farming methods on the Great Plains,which had been dubbed the Great American Desert, resulted in the removal of all the top soil and the protection the native grasses provided against drought conditions and the high winds that frequently sweep the plains. A lot of this was driven by an unusually wet period that happens infrequently, encouraging the farmers to put more and more acreage under the plow. This was only made possible due to the introduction and use of mechanized farming methods. The average rain fall for the Great Plains is about 10 inches per year. The drought hit the plain states during the same time as the stock market crash. The combination of unprotected soil, a severe drought and high winds created what has been called the great dust bowl of the 1930's. This confluence of events resulted in great hardships to the nation, but particularly to the people of the great plains. In fact this was part of a greater depression that gripped the whole world.
I remember Franklin Roosevelt and his attempts to move the nation out of the depression. It turned out that all his efforts actually accomplished little in the broad sense, and in the opinion of many economists, many of his programs had the opposite effect. But, these programs and FDR's approach, created a whole new mindset as to the role of government into the everyday lives of the people. Roosevelt tried all kinds of things to get his programs moving, including trying to pack the Supreme Court so that some of his questionable programs wouldn't be nullified by court action. It was literately the beginning of the welfare state that has blossomed into full fruition today. But, the poor people and unemployed loved him because he looked like he was trying to do something. He created a whole set of alphabet soup agencies that were funded directly by the federal government. It did provide jobs for a lot of people, but the numbers were small compared to the total unemployment. One of the better projects that came under the New Deal was the building of Boulder Dam. He also set up agencies to develop and introduce new farming methods into the great American desert. Relief agencies and work programs of all kinds were formed, each trying to alleviate the effects of the high unemployment.
The great depression lasted from about 1932 until we started gearing up war production in 1939. A little research into history will show that the entrance of our nation into WWII was the act that finally pulled the nation out of the Great Depression. That's something to contemplate. But, the seeds had been sown on the expanded role of government into the lives of it's people. The citizens began to look to government to provide a "safety net" to guard against the ups and downs of the economy and to protect against lack of planning and foresight on the part of the individual. I remember Pearl Harbor and how unprepared we were to fight a global war. We jumped with both feet into the mobilization of American industry to supply the material to fight that war, a luxury granted us by the vast oceans that surrounded our nation. That did allow us the time to rearm. American industry performed beyond any ones expectations and we began to turn out war materials at a fantastic rate. The supply line to England had to be increased, and we figured out how to commission the primary cargo hauler, the Liberty Ship, at a rate of three ships a day. We were building them faster than the German U-Boats could sink them. We entered the war with a lot of operational equipment that was inferior to that of our enemy. We had nothing to match Japanese Zero or the German Me109. But, shortly we were supplying the fleet with the F6F Hellcat and the F4U Corsair, perhaps the best pure fighter in the US armed forces; both planes far superior to anything the Japanese had. The Army Air Corps very quickly got the P47 thunderbolt and the best fighter in the European theater, the P51 Mustang. The Mustang fulfilled a role in the European strategic bombing operations that was absolutely essential to the continuation of daylight precision bombing. Before the P51, bomber sorties deep into enemy territory, out of the the range of all other fighters, resulted in horrific casualty losses of bombers and crews. The Mustang could accompany the Bombers all the way to Berlin and back. Without that plane the destruction of German production by bombing the facilities deep inside Germany would have been even more costly to the Eight Air Force than it was. The strategy might have been cancelled altogether due to the unacceptable losses. The British had tried it early in the war and decided they couldn't accept the losses. They reverted to nighttime carpet bombing of cities.
I remember Franklin Roosevelt and his attempts to move the nation out of the depression. It turned out that all his efforts actually accomplished little in the broad sense, and in the opinion of many economists, many of his programs had the opposite effect. But, these programs and FDR's approach, created a whole new mindset as to the role of government into the everyday lives of the people. Roosevelt tried all kinds of things to get his programs moving, including trying to pack the Supreme Court so that some of his questionable programs wouldn't be nullified by court action. It was literately the beginning of the welfare state that has blossomed into full fruition today. But, the poor people and unemployed loved him because he looked like he was trying to do something. He created a whole set of alphabet soup agencies that were funded directly by the federal government. It did provide jobs for a lot of people, but the numbers were small compared to the total unemployment. One of the better projects that came under the New Deal was the building of Boulder Dam. He also set up agencies to develop and introduce new farming methods into the great American desert. Relief agencies and work programs of all kinds were formed, each trying to alleviate the effects of the high unemployment.
The great depression lasted from about 1932 until we started gearing up war production in 1939. A little research into history will show that the entrance of our nation into WWII was the act that finally pulled the nation out of the Great Depression. That's something to contemplate. But, the seeds had been sown on the expanded role of government into the lives of it's people. The citizens began to look to government to provide a "safety net" to guard against the ups and downs of the economy and to protect against lack of planning and foresight on the part of the individual. I remember Pearl Harbor and how unprepared we were to fight a global war. We jumped with both feet into the mobilization of American industry to supply the material to fight that war, a luxury granted us by the vast oceans that surrounded our nation. That did allow us the time to rearm. American industry performed beyond any ones expectations and we began to turn out war materials at a fantastic rate. The supply line to England had to be increased, and we figured out how to commission the primary cargo hauler, the Liberty Ship, at a rate of three ships a day. We were building them faster than the German U-Boats could sink them. We entered the war with a lot of operational equipment that was inferior to that of our enemy. We had nothing to match Japanese Zero or the German Me109. But, shortly we were supplying the fleet with the F6F Hellcat and the F4U Corsair, perhaps the best pure fighter in the US armed forces; both planes far superior to anything the Japanese had. The Army Air Corps very quickly got the P47 thunderbolt and the best fighter in the European theater, the P51 Mustang. The Mustang fulfilled a role in the European strategic bombing operations that was absolutely essential to the continuation of daylight precision bombing. Before the P51, bomber sorties deep into enemy territory, out of the the range of all other fighters, resulted in horrific casualty losses of bombers and crews. The Mustang could accompany the Bombers all the way to Berlin and back. Without that plane the destruction of German production by bombing the facilities deep inside Germany would have been even more costly to the Eight Air Force than it was. The strategy might have been cancelled altogether due to the unacceptable losses. The British had tried it early in the war and decided they couldn't accept the losses. They reverted to nighttime carpet bombing of cities.
The P51 Mustang was the primary weapon that won air supremacy over western Europe and permitted the invasion at Normandy on June 6, 1944. The control of the air over western Europe was so essential for the invasion to be successful, that as the invasion date approached, the bombers were sent to prime and sensitive targets in Germany, especially Berlin, with the sole purpose of drawing the German fighters up to defend so that the Mustangs could shoot them down. And it worked. The Allies achieved commanding air superiority over western Europe. The Germans had almost no fighter cover on D Day, 1944.
I remember the stupidity of Hitler when he declared war on the USA and brought the whole industrial might of the United States against him. That's after he was dumb enough to open up a war with the Soviet Union with England still alive and kicking at his back door. It should be said that this was the war that Roosevelt wanted to fight and Hitler played right into his hands. The emphasis of American power was primarily concentrated on the European theater. The Pacific theater had to do the best it could for awhile. That was never more clear than at Guadalcanal. American industrial power was so great however, that both fronts were supplied with massive amount of equipment as the war progressed.
I remember the Bataan Death March and the atrocities committed by the Japanese and the Germans prior to and during WWII. I remember the German Death Camps where Jews along with other people were put to death by the millions. The Germans seem to have come to grips with what was done in their name, but the Japanese still seem to be in denial.
I remember the battle at Midway, which was a battle we had every right to lose, in spite of the fact that we knew that the Japanese were coming and when. Carrier warfare was new to everybody engaged in that battle on the American side. The Japanese had superior planes (the Japanese Zero fighter), more carriers and experienced battle hardened combat pilots. The main purpose of the Midway invasion, other than gaining a forward base for the Japanese, was to draw the American carriers into a decisive battle so the Japanese could destroy them. The Japanese plan was to occupy Midway and then trap the American carriers when they were sent to the rescue. They knew that we couldn't lose Midway and would do everything in our power to prevent the Japanese from occupying it. Their intelligence told them that our carriers were still at Pearl Harbor. The Japanese did send out scout planes to search the oceans in case the American fleet was out there. It is believed that one of the scout planes actually spotted the American fleet, but had radio problems and was not able to report back. The Japanese fleet's commanders assumed they were still at Pearl. In any event our scout planes, a Navy PBY, spotted their fleet first.
We attacked in an uncoordinated fashion, against doctrine, resulting in the almost total lose of all the torpedo planes, who attacked without fighter cover, not scoring even a single torpedo into a Japanese ship. It was, to say the least, suicide for the crews of the American torpedo planes. But, the torpedo attack had pulled the Japanese fighter cover down to lower levels and when the dive bombers arrived there was no fighter cover over the Japanese fleet. The dive bombers had a field day, sinking three of the four Japanese carriers within minutes. The fourth carrier was found and sunk a little later but not before she found one of the American carriers and attacked, inflicting sever damage. The carrier, The Yorktown, was subsequently sunk by a torpedo. The only major lose for the Americans was the Yorktown. Due to that series of circumstances, what could have been a disaster turned into a major American victory where we destroyed the cream of the Japanese Naval air arm including their best pilots.
I remember Guadalcanal where we were desperate to deny the Japanese an airfield that would threaten the supply lines from the USA to Australia. We sent in the Marines with inadequate supplies, inadequate Naval support, and WWI firearms. And they held on, somehow. The initial landing was almost unopposed as we seem to have caught the Japanese totally unaware. They captured the uncompleted airfield very quickly. The Japanese quickly started to move men and firepower onto the island from their base at Rabaul in a desperate attempt to take the airfield back. The US Navy was generally over matched by the well trained Japanese Naval forces in the beginning and we had to pull our transports, with all their supplies, out of the area or risk getting them sunk. That left the Marines eating captured Japanese rations with little hope of immediate resupply of essentials. After the Marines and Army Air Corp were able to move aircraft into the airfield that the Sea Bee's had built using Japanese equipment, we were able to establish air superiority during the day. With no night fighting equipment the American planes were grounded at night.
The small detachment of Marines were flying the F4F Wildcat and the Army the P400 (a variation on the P39). The Army aircraft were essentially ineffective because of the low ceiling that of the P400. That left the main combat operations to the Marines in the heavily outnumbered Wildcats and the Navy to bear the brunt of fighting over Guadalcanal. The Navy was still flying the F4F Wildcat also, but with tactics developed by the Flying Tigers, who flew the similarly out classed P40 Warhawk, and some imagination by a couple of Naval aviators, they were able to maximize the advantages of the Wildcat and avoid the Zeros strengths. The heavily armored Wildcat could take significant punishment and still fly, while the Zero, while agile, speedy and with a great climb rate, turned out to be rather fragile when hit with incendiaries from the Wildcats 50 caliber guns.
The popular term in the fleet for the Grumman factory that produced both the F4F Wildcat and later the highly effective F6F Hellcat was "The Grumman Iron Works". The Grumman designs always put great emphasis on protecting the pilot and making the plane survivable. The Hellcat was without question a very effective airplane in the Pacific, attaining a kill ratio of nine to one over the Japanese planes. It was the favorite plane of the Naval Aviators because it was rugged and adapted well to carrier landings. The Marines latched onto the F4U and it remained their favorite plane into the Korean war. It achieved a kill ratio of 11 to 1 over the Japanese planes. They feared it more than any other plane. The biggest problem with the F4U was the initial difficulty in landing on an aircraft carrier due to it's long nose. The British figured how to do it however, and it became a standard carrier plane for the American Navy. The F4U had the longest production run of any fighter in the armed forces.
For a long time the night belonged to the Japanese Naval forces which had trained extensively for fighting a Naval engagement at night. They pretty much had their way when the Sun went down. In Naval battles fought at night between the two adversaries, the Japanese wrecked havoc on the American fleet. However, the day belonged to the Americans after they achieved air superiority and the Japanese avoided any daytime activity. For months the Japanese continued to provide men and material to Guadalcanal coming down through the slot from Rabaul, which they controlled.
The Japanese finally withdrew their forces six months later, after they decided the cost in men was too great.
Of course then there was Tarawa, where we had to learn how to assault an entrenched enemy, an expensive lesson, and finally through a chain of bloody islands ending at Okinawa, where the Japanese Kamikaze attacks wrecked havoc on the American fleet and the loss of Marines on the island looked like a horrible precursor of things to come with the invasion of Japan. In between were gut wrenching operations as the Naval Forces under Admiral Nimitz and the Army forces under General MacArthur fought one bloody battle after another moving toward the Japanese homeland. The projected casually rates for the Naval and Army forces that would be involved in an invasion of Japan were mind numbing, which made the decision to drop the Atomic Bombs to attempt to end the war a no brainer. That act saved hundreds of thousands, or more likely millions, of both American and Japanese lives by negating the need for an all out invasion of Japan.
I remember the rise of Adolf Hitler and path of appeasements that led him to think he could invade Poland in concert with Stalin and the USSR, without England and France honoring their agreements with Poland. By agreement they split the country in half. He had finally taken a step too far and both England and France declared war on Germany. I'm still not sure why they didn't include the USSR which invaded from the east. The German SS troops treated the Poles very badly, but probably not as bad as the Soviet troops. There are well documented cases of mass executions of Polish military and civilians by both the Germans and the Soviets.
As is usual, a nation enters a war with the leadership of people who fought in the last war and developed their tactics and strategies based on that experience. France was setting up for a WWI type battle, concentrating on fixed defensive positions. The problem was that the Germans didn't suffer from that affliction and unleashed a new form or warfare on the French and the British Expeditionary forces on the continent. The French forces, which outnumbered and were really better equipped than the Germans, were overwhelmed in short order. A good part of the British forces were trapped on the western coast of France at Dunkirk, and only were saved by a massive evacuation effort performed by almost everything that could float which was dispatched from England for the rescue.
What followed has been called the Battle of Britain. It was a fight that was actually waged on two fronts, the air over England and the North Atlantic ocean. The term is generally used only in regard to the air war that was fought between the RAF and the Luftwaffe for control of the air over England. Hitler planned to invade England but had to have air superiority over the channel to do so.
It was a desperate war, and a new kind of war. The Germans sent wave after wave of bombers escorted by the Bf109 fighters over England day after day and the RAF rose to meet them. The original goal of the Luftwaffe was to destroy RAF fighter command. They would bomb it's airfields and when the Spitfires and Hurricanes came up to do combat shoot them out of the sky. It was working. The loses on both sides were serious. It became a war of attrition. The British propaganda had the RAF shooting down a lot more German planes than they were losing, but the fact was that the losses were almost equal. England was in dire straits.
But, the Germans made three strategic errors during the Battle. First, they did not develop a long range bomber capability so that they could not reach the manufacturing facilities in western and northern England. Therefore they could not get at the factories that were churning out the fighters that were being made for the RAF. Secondly, they totally overlooked the importance of the newly developed technology of RADAR, that let Fighter Command have sufficient warnings so that they could get their fighters into the air and in the right position to intercept the incoming bombers. That allowed the fighter pilots to be off alert between raids and not having to maintain continuous air patrol. Thirdly, just when the RAF was literally on it's knees, the Germans shifted their focus from attacking the RAF facilities to bombing the English cities, especially London. While London paid the price, the RAF was able to rebuild, acquire new pilots and planes. Then the RAF came out in force and the chance to gain superiority of the air for the Luftwaffe was lost. The plans for the invasion of England was cancelled, and it became the staging platform for the invasion of the European continent. As Churchill said "Never have so many owed so much to so few".
I remember the stupidity of Hitler when he declared war on the USA and brought the whole industrial might of the United States against him. That's after he was dumb enough to open up a war with the Soviet Union with England still alive and kicking at his back door. It should be said that this was the war that Roosevelt wanted to fight and Hitler played right into his hands. The emphasis of American power was primarily concentrated on the European theater. The Pacific theater had to do the best it could for awhile. That was never more clear than at Guadalcanal. American industrial power was so great however, that both fronts were supplied with massive amount of equipment as the war progressed.
I remember the Bataan Death March and the atrocities committed by the Japanese and the Germans prior to and during WWII. I remember the German Death Camps where Jews along with other people were put to death by the millions. The Germans seem to have come to grips with what was done in their name, but the Japanese still seem to be in denial.
I remember the battle at Midway, which was a battle we had every right to lose, in spite of the fact that we knew that the Japanese were coming and when. Carrier warfare was new to everybody engaged in that battle on the American side. The Japanese had superior planes (the Japanese Zero fighter), more carriers and experienced battle hardened combat pilots. The main purpose of the Midway invasion, other than gaining a forward base for the Japanese, was to draw the American carriers into a decisive battle so the Japanese could destroy them. The Japanese plan was to occupy Midway and then trap the American carriers when they were sent to the rescue. They knew that we couldn't lose Midway and would do everything in our power to prevent the Japanese from occupying it. Their intelligence told them that our carriers were still at Pearl Harbor. The Japanese did send out scout planes to search the oceans in case the American fleet was out there. It is believed that one of the scout planes actually spotted the American fleet, but had radio problems and was not able to report back. The Japanese fleet's commanders assumed they were still at Pearl. In any event our scout planes, a Navy PBY, spotted their fleet first.
We attacked in an uncoordinated fashion, against doctrine, resulting in the almost total lose of all the torpedo planes, who attacked without fighter cover, not scoring even a single torpedo into a Japanese ship. It was, to say the least, suicide for the crews of the American torpedo planes. But, the torpedo attack had pulled the Japanese fighter cover down to lower levels and when the dive bombers arrived there was no fighter cover over the Japanese fleet. The dive bombers had a field day, sinking three of the four Japanese carriers within minutes. The fourth carrier was found and sunk a little later but not before she found one of the American carriers and attacked, inflicting sever damage. The carrier, The Yorktown, was subsequently sunk by a torpedo. The only major lose for the Americans was the Yorktown. Due to that series of circumstances, what could have been a disaster turned into a major American victory where we destroyed the cream of the Japanese Naval air arm including their best pilots.
I remember Guadalcanal where we were desperate to deny the Japanese an airfield that would threaten the supply lines from the USA to Australia. We sent in the Marines with inadequate supplies, inadequate Naval support, and WWI firearms. And they held on, somehow. The initial landing was almost unopposed as we seem to have caught the Japanese totally unaware. They captured the uncompleted airfield very quickly. The Japanese quickly started to move men and firepower onto the island from their base at Rabaul in a desperate attempt to take the airfield back. The US Navy was generally over matched by the well trained Japanese Naval forces in the beginning and we had to pull our transports, with all their supplies, out of the area or risk getting them sunk. That left the Marines eating captured Japanese rations with little hope of immediate resupply of essentials. After the Marines and Army Air Corp were able to move aircraft into the airfield that the Sea Bee's had built using Japanese equipment, we were able to establish air superiority during the day. With no night fighting equipment the American planes were grounded at night.
The small detachment of Marines were flying the F4F Wildcat and the Army the P400 (a variation on the P39). The Army aircraft were essentially ineffective because of the low ceiling that of the P400. That left the main combat operations to the Marines in the heavily outnumbered Wildcats and the Navy to bear the brunt of fighting over Guadalcanal. The Navy was still flying the F4F Wildcat also, but with tactics developed by the Flying Tigers, who flew the similarly out classed P40 Warhawk, and some imagination by a couple of Naval aviators, they were able to maximize the advantages of the Wildcat and avoid the Zeros strengths. The heavily armored Wildcat could take significant punishment and still fly, while the Zero, while agile, speedy and with a great climb rate, turned out to be rather fragile when hit with incendiaries from the Wildcats 50 caliber guns.
The popular term in the fleet for the Grumman factory that produced both the F4F Wildcat and later the highly effective F6F Hellcat was "The Grumman Iron Works". The Grumman designs always put great emphasis on protecting the pilot and making the plane survivable. The Hellcat was without question a very effective airplane in the Pacific, attaining a kill ratio of nine to one over the Japanese planes. It was the favorite plane of the Naval Aviators because it was rugged and adapted well to carrier landings. The Marines latched onto the F4U and it remained their favorite plane into the Korean war. It achieved a kill ratio of 11 to 1 over the Japanese planes. They feared it more than any other plane. The biggest problem with the F4U was the initial difficulty in landing on an aircraft carrier due to it's long nose. The British figured how to do it however, and it became a standard carrier plane for the American Navy. The F4U had the longest production run of any fighter in the armed forces.
For a long time the night belonged to the Japanese Naval forces which had trained extensively for fighting a Naval engagement at night. They pretty much had their way when the Sun went down. In Naval battles fought at night between the two adversaries, the Japanese wrecked havoc on the American fleet. However, the day belonged to the Americans after they achieved air superiority and the Japanese avoided any daytime activity. For months the Japanese continued to provide men and material to Guadalcanal coming down through the slot from Rabaul, which they controlled.
The Japanese finally withdrew their forces six months later, after they decided the cost in men was too great.
Of course then there was Tarawa, where we had to learn how to assault an entrenched enemy, an expensive lesson, and finally through a chain of bloody islands ending at Okinawa, where the Japanese Kamikaze attacks wrecked havoc on the American fleet and the loss of Marines on the island looked like a horrible precursor of things to come with the invasion of Japan. In between were gut wrenching operations as the Naval Forces under Admiral Nimitz and the Army forces under General MacArthur fought one bloody battle after another moving toward the Japanese homeland. The projected casually rates for the Naval and Army forces that would be involved in an invasion of Japan were mind numbing, which made the decision to drop the Atomic Bombs to attempt to end the war a no brainer. That act saved hundreds of thousands, or more likely millions, of both American and Japanese lives by negating the need for an all out invasion of Japan.
I remember the rise of Adolf Hitler and path of appeasements that led him to think he could invade Poland in concert with Stalin and the USSR, without England and France honoring their agreements with Poland. By agreement they split the country in half. He had finally taken a step too far and both England and France declared war on Germany. I'm still not sure why they didn't include the USSR which invaded from the east. The German SS troops treated the Poles very badly, but probably not as bad as the Soviet troops. There are well documented cases of mass executions of Polish military and civilians by both the Germans and the Soviets.
As is usual, a nation enters a war with the leadership of people who fought in the last war and developed their tactics and strategies based on that experience. France was setting up for a WWI type battle, concentrating on fixed defensive positions. The problem was that the Germans didn't suffer from that affliction and unleashed a new form or warfare on the French and the British Expeditionary forces on the continent. The French forces, which outnumbered and were really better equipped than the Germans, were overwhelmed in short order. A good part of the British forces were trapped on the western coast of France at Dunkirk, and only were saved by a massive evacuation effort performed by almost everything that could float which was dispatched from England for the rescue.
What followed has been called the Battle of Britain. It was a fight that was actually waged on two fronts, the air over England and the North Atlantic ocean. The term is generally used only in regard to the air war that was fought between the RAF and the Luftwaffe for control of the air over England. Hitler planned to invade England but had to have air superiority over the channel to do so.
It was a desperate war, and a new kind of war. The Germans sent wave after wave of bombers escorted by the Bf109 fighters over England day after day and the RAF rose to meet them. The original goal of the Luftwaffe was to destroy RAF fighter command. They would bomb it's airfields and when the Spitfires and Hurricanes came up to do combat shoot them out of the sky. It was working. The loses on both sides were serious. It became a war of attrition. The British propaganda had the RAF shooting down a lot more German planes than they were losing, but the fact was that the losses were almost equal. England was in dire straits.
But, the Germans made three strategic errors during the Battle. First, they did not develop a long range bomber capability so that they could not reach the manufacturing facilities in western and northern England. Therefore they could not get at the factories that were churning out the fighters that were being made for the RAF. Secondly, they totally overlooked the importance of the newly developed technology of RADAR, that let Fighter Command have sufficient warnings so that they could get their fighters into the air and in the right position to intercept the incoming bombers. That allowed the fighter pilots to be off alert between raids and not having to maintain continuous air patrol. Thirdly, just when the RAF was literally on it's knees, the Germans shifted their focus from attacking the RAF facilities to bombing the English cities, especially London. While London paid the price, the RAF was able to rebuild, acquire new pilots and planes. Then the RAF came out in force and the chance to gain superiority of the air for the Luftwaffe was lost. The plans for the invasion of England was cancelled, and it became the staging platform for the invasion of the European continent. As Churchill said "Never have so many owed so much to so few".
I remember when North Korea invaded the South, with the blessing of the Soviet Union and supported by them, and we again found ourselves in a war that we were not prepared to fight. Our forces in Korea and Japan were
ill prepared to fight any kind of combat. We had denied any kind of heavy equipment, including tanks and heavy field pieces to the South Korean Army because we were afraid that Sigmund Rhee would use it to invade the north. The Russians did not hesitate in supplying North Korea with the latest tanks and heavy artillery however.
The US Army, that first were sent into the fight from Japan, were poorly trained and inadequately supplied occupation troops, but that's all we had. And we got our butts kicked in the beginning, over powered by both men and equipment. This was as a result of the "Peace Dividend" following WWII and the divergence of funding from armed forces into social welfare programs that had become popular during the FDR reign. Our Army was pushed back into a small area at the south east peninsula (The Pusan Perimeter) of Korea and holding on with their teeth. Except for the arrival of the Marines, who were a well trained, and the air cover supplied by the Navy Carriers and the Air Force planes flying out of Japan, the outcome might have been grave. But, we held on. The Port at Pusan was essential if we were going to bring reinforcements into the conflict. If we lost Pusan, we would likely lose the war. At this point,however, the North Korean Army supply lines were stretched to the limit,were being attacked almost continuously from the air. They were having problems keeping their troops supplied.
Because we held on at Pusan we were able to build up our forces in the south and with a daring encircling move by MacArthur with the landing of the Marines at Inchon, the UN forces started to decimate the North Korean Army. The North Korean Army began a hasty retreat north at the behest of their Soviet and Chinese advisers or they would have been totally destroyed.
The push northward continued until the UN forces were virtually at the Yalu river which separates Korea from China. MacArthur's intelligence breakdown was monumental here. He was assured by his most trusted advisers and his own intelligence staff that the Chinese would not enter the war. This was in spite of the fact that Zhou Enlai had warned that the Chinese would enter the war if UN troops went north of the 38th parallel. Well, as history shows The General was dead wrong. Chairman Mao ignited the fuse and the Chinese attacked. About 300 thousand strong.
The Chinese had started to move troops in large numbers into Korea weeks before the UN troops came to a stop at the Yalu. The American forces thought the war was over and they would be going home. A good thing because it was cold and miserable and our troops were not really equipped for prolonged cold weather operations. We were loosing more men to frost bite than we were losing in combat.
The Chinese were able hide their movement from all the aerial surveillance prior to their open attack by moving primarily in the dark and not bringing heavy equipment with them. They basically came with what they could carry or pack on horses or mules. That gave them extreme mobility with respect to UN and American forces which, because we were so highly mechanized, were confined to the existing roads. That allowed the Chinese to move through the hills and encircle the UN forces and out flank them. The Army had rushed pell mell northward, once they got the North Koreans routed, and were very strung out and really not very cohesive. There was essentially a breakdown in the command structure. The Marines, moving up the eastern side of Korea, on the other hand, moved forward with more care, remaining an intact cohesive unit. The Marine commanders were actually criticized for their slower advance.
And then the Chinese struck. They routed the South Korean forces and some divisions of the Army. Many of the Army battalions were over run before they knew what was going on. Many of them just broke and ran leaving the rest to be encircled and cut off. The whole UN line of battle was in confusion. In general the Army forces were in total disarray and were retreating as fast as they could run, leaving the Marines cut off and surrounded by the Chinese Army. An Indian regiment took enormous casualties, holding the line, so that a US Army regiment could successfully retreat southward. This was in spite of the fact that the Army was not overwhelmed in numbers on every front by the Chinese, contrary to the news releases. The Marines, now out numbered and out flanked, were trapped at Chosen in bitter cold weather and had to then fight their way out of the trap, and did so bringing their dead and wounded with them. It was another moment in Marine history for which they can be proud.
The Army, under a new commander, Ridgeway, finally got it's act together and was able to stop the Chinese forces after the initial humiliating retreat. The Army had been pushed back completely out of North Korea, had lost Seoul and was in danger of being being pushed off the peninsula. Under Ridgeway's leadership the Army made a heroic stand at Chi-Yong-Ni against much larger Chinese forces. From there the US forces began to push the Chinese back north. The Marines retook Seoul for the second time. At this point, the war begin to look more and more like WWI trench warfare.
The Korean war saw the introduction of the jet in the equation. In the beginning of the war, all the planes were WWII vintage. The Navy using the F4U as it's primary fighter and the Air Force the P51. With these planes the UN forces commanded total air superiority over the whole of Korea. They were a primary factor in avoiding total defeat in the beginning of the war and the saving of Army and Marine forces when they had to beat a retreat before the Chinese onslaught. Then, a new type of plane appeared over the battlefield. The MIG 15. A new jet powered, swept wing fighter, that completely over matched the American planes. We know, from radio intercepts and other data that many of them were being flown by Russian pilots. We tried to rush our own jet fighters into the gap, but all we had was the Lockheed F80 Shooting Star and the F84 ThunderJet. Neither of them able to counter the speed and fighter capability of the MIG. The ThunderJet, however was an effective ground attack plane as was used in that mission for much of the war. For a time the Communists took control of the air over North Korea. North American Aviation then produced a new American fighter, the F86 Saber Jet. It was a new swept wing design the was faster and more heavily armed than the MIG. In the final tally the F86 proved to be more that a match for the MIG.
One of the defining moments in that war was the decision by President Truman to relieve General MacArthur of command. The tension between MacArthur and his bosses in Washington had been fomenting for some time. The General was openly critical of the decisions being made in Washington about the objectives of the war and how much force should be brought to bar on the enemy, including the use of tactical nuclear weapons. MacArthur's mantra was that there is no substitute for victory. Truman did not want the war to expand outside of Korea and involve the Chinese in an Asian war that could become global. MacArthur felt that we were in a position to win a war against the Chinese and we should do so, if that was required. We can never know what would have happened if The General had his way.
The General was one of the most brilliant tactical commanders in the military, but he had an ego second to none. And he tended to surround himself with a staff that didn't want to tell him anything he didn't want to hear. When MacArthur decided that something was true, the only intelligence that reached him was that which reinforced his opinion. That's why he was so surprised by the North Korean invasion. There were reports at lower levels that were warning of a North Korean buildup and possible invasion but, they never were allowed to reach MacArthur. There were reports of the massive Chinese movement into the south prior to the attack at the Yalu, as well as the direct warning by the Chinese that they would send in troops if the American forces went beyond the 38th parallel. The Chinese could not allow the American military to share a common border with mainland China.
This war was finally stalemated at about the 38th parallel, and after two years of negotiations an armistice was signed that is still in effect.
I remember Vietnam, where again we had to intervene because the Soviet and Chinese backed forces of communist North Vietnam through their surrogate southern wing, the Vietcong, were attempting to take over the south, violating an agreement that partitioned the country until elections could be held to unify it. Elections that the Soviets blocked at every turn so that the communists would have a foothold in Vietnam.
The Vietnamese had been engaged in warfare for years previously against the French forces who were trying to reestablish the French Indo-China colony following WWII after the Japanese surrender, who had occupied the peninsula during WWII. The French had colonized the Indo-China peninsula in the mid 1900's. The Vietnamese drove the French out in 1958, leaving a divided Vietnam as a result of the agreements reached by the settlement. It's a no brainer to know that the North Vietnam leadership were well versed in fighting a conventional land army and how to defeat such an army. They also could field a guerrilla army with years of experience in that type of warfare, and an already established infrastructure supporting that type of operation.
Now we entered a war that we were ill prepared to fight on so many levels. It was, by any definition, in the beginning and throughout, a guerrilla war. Unfortunately we had a senior officer corps trained in WWII and Korea and a brain trust in Washington that didn't have a clue how to fight that kind of war.
Modern communications allowed the Washington crowd to have their finger in the proverbial pie and dictated the conduct of the war in detail. So, at the top, both in Washington and the Military, we had no one who knew anything about how to fight this type of war, and the grunt on the firing line who was frustrated and felt themselves as pawns in the game. They probably should have contacted the French on what not to do. They ended up adopting the strategy of using a war of attrition as the overall plan. We'll kill more of them than they will of us, and then they'll just give up. Apparently none of them had read Sun Tzu"s " The Art of War" which accurately predicted how this would play out against an enemy that was fighting under a different set of ground rules. The North Vietnam leadership had apparently read the book. The analogy I heard once was, that we were fighting the war as if it were a Chess Game and the North Vietnamese were playing the game of Go. Those familiar with the two games will get the analogy. The North Vietnamese decided when and were they would fight, and it was always on their terms. They also understood that war was a political game more so than military. They knew how to play that game well.
This resulted in the longest war in American history, with the body counts piling up and no end in site. The Vietcong just wouldn't play by our rules. The North was obviously, and said so, willing to spend millions of their own peoples lives to unify the country under communism. This was a strange war to the American people who weren't used to this. We won every battle fought, but were losing the war at home. The famous Tet offensive on January 30, 1968, that was covered so extensively by the media, was one of the few times the Vietcong and North Vietnamese attempted more conventional warfare. Some 800,000 communist troops attacked 100 towns and villages throughout South Vietnam. They, for a brief instance lost their minds and played the game according to our rules. They shocked the American high command with this offensive because they had been led to believe that the communist forces were so decimated that they could not launch such an operation. They had an initial wave of victories, which really impressed the media. The Americans quickly recovered and regained all the lost territory. The end result was a total disaster for North Vietnamese and Vietcong forces. The loses they incurred almost decimated their army, with minimal casualties for the American forces. A great tactical victory for the US forces. But, the public got a different picture from the media, which reported it as a Vietcong show of strength and determination. They almost unanimously came to the conclusion that the war was not winnable. And, they were probably right if we didn't get some leadership at the top who could figure out how change the rules of the war we were fighting.
It's no wonder that as time went on the American public began to turn against the war. And they had every right to do so. Not because we were in a war we shouldn't have got involved in, but rather, we were fighting it in a way that only meant more body bags with no end in sight.
The shame is that a lot of the unthinking public took their anger out on the returning members of the Armed Forces as the war continued and as we finally gave up the ghost and evacuated our forces. They spit on them, called them names, accused them of killing babies and even went so far as to attack them. This from people who had no clue on what it was like over there and had no experience what so ever in situations more perilous than getting caught smoking too much weed.
I also remember Jane Fonda, who went to North Vietnam. took her place at an anti-aircraft gun and simulated shooting down American fliers. I will always consider her a traitor. Every American had the right to protest the war, but she stepped over the line to the point of actively giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
I remember the Cold War and the conflict between the Soviet Union and the nations of Western Europe and the United States. Before WWII was even over, Stalin was signaling his intentions to establish a Russian sphere of influence stretching far beyond her own borders. During the war Stalin assured the naive Roosevelt that the Soviets would allow free elections of the territories that they would "liberate" from the Germans as they moved westward. Churchill was not no easily fooled. The Russians had suffered severely under the Germans in the war, so it is easy to understand their passion for revenge.
As the Soviet troops moved west, pushing the German forces back to their homeland and then into eastern Germany, they set up puppet governments under the rule of Moscow. There was no attempt a holding any kind of free election. These countries existed to support the Soviets. Near the end of the war, when the outcome was clear, the Soviets declared war on Japan, invaded and took control of Manchuria. They expected to share in the occupation of Japan, but MacArthur told them he would shoot the first Soviet soldier that set foot on Japan.
As people under the Soviet yoke tried to escape to the west, the Soviets established, what Winston Churchill called, an Iron Current across Europe to keep their people from leaving. Decisions made during the war about the division of Germany among the Allies resulted in Berlin being inside the Soviet sphere. According to the agreement Berlin was to become a sort of free city, with equal access for all the allied powers. That didn't last long. The Soviets blockaded the highways leading into Berlin, attempting to deny the other allied powers from entering. Truman answered that by instituting the Berlin airlift, whereby supplies for the parts of Berlin under the control of the western nations were supplied by a massive air transport system. Stalin in the end backed off. To further partition Berlin, the Soviets built a high wall that divided the city into the east and west zones. Any person in the east part of Berlin who tried to escape to the west was shot on the spot. Many Germans lost their lives on the Berlin Wall.
It was called the Cold War but, it was a real war. Stalin and the Soviets intended to export their influence outward at every opportunity. Many of our modern liberals scoff at the idea, but the Stalin had grand plans of seeing all of Europe, if not the whole world under Soviet influence. It wasn't fought directly between the big powers, but rather in other engagements played out over the globe. The Soviets armed, trained and supported insurgencies in all parts of the world. Korea, Vietnam and Cuba to name a few of the larger ones that were were sucked into. They supplied arms, including the latest Soviet fighters, tanks, Surface to Air Missiles to Egypt and Syria in their fight with Israel. They attempted to take over Afghanistan and got a bloody nose. In Korea it was known that Russian pilots were flying some of the jet fighters involved in the conflict.
Even after Stalin died, the Soviets really never let up. They attempted to establish nuclear missile bases on Cuba. That action came close to triggering a war between us and the Soviets. Kennedy's reaction to the threat and some cooler heads in Moscow barely averted a catastrophe.
They were in a serious arms race with United States, helped along by spies that were funneling American secrets to the Soviets during and after the World War. It turns out there really were communist sympathizers in critical positions in our defense systems and in our intelligence systems.
Ronald Reagan recognized the Soviets venerability and upped the arms race with the expansion of our Navy and modernizing of the Army and Air Force. Trying to keep up, the Soviets spent themselves into bankruptcy. Hard to imagine, but it happened. The Soviet Union collapsed and the subjugated countries broke free of Russian domination.The Berlin wall came down and Germany was reunited. The cold war was over. The problem now; Putin seems to want to put the old Soviet Republic back together and return Russia back to the glory days when she was a major world power. The events going on in the Ukraine at this time is very worrisome to the west. Russia is doing a bit of saber rattling about the situation there. Another place where the potential for armed conflict between the Russians and the NATO powers appears.
I remember the expedition to Granada to rescue the medical students supposedly held by the Granada forces. The operation was a case of killing a fly with a sledge hammer. But, the valuable lesson we learned in that skirmish was just how messed up the organization and communication systems among the various services were. Nobody could talk to anybody. The Army couldn't call on the Air Force for support, nor the Navy. Various Army and Marine forces couldn't communicate. In other words it was a cluster @#$$%. It seemed we learned our lesson and almost immediately the military was reorganized and the communications problem addressed. Later excursions into Iraq indicated that the reorganization and communications resolution were successful.
We were not through with our involvement in foreign conflicts of course. There has been the Iranian revolution. With the revolutionists taking over of the American Embassy and holding the staff prisoners. A failed attempt under Jimmy Carter to free them. There has been two wars during the two Bush administrations. The first, very successful, the second questionable. Then there is Afghanistan, which has captured our attention of late. Events are playing out in the Ukraine that could escalate into something bigger if the Russians enter that conflict. China is in the process of building a major military capability to rival the American forces. That is very frightening, considering the growth and prosperity of the Chinese economy and the number and quality of engineers that she is educating; far exceeding Americas.
In the face of the hostile world we live in, Obama decided that our armed forces must be reduced so that present and projected entitlement programs can be supported. We can only hope that somebody in the administration remembers the lessons of the past, where we cut back our armed forces and paid the price in terms of American blood spilled on battlefields on all corners of the globe.
Apparently Donald Trump has stepped in and gone a long way toward rebuilding our armed forces. But, the Dems in the congress have other ideas about where the money should be spent, so he isn't getting all he wants. But, it is an improvement.
ill prepared to fight any kind of combat. We had denied any kind of heavy equipment, including tanks and heavy field pieces to the South Korean Army because we were afraid that Sigmund Rhee would use it to invade the north. The Russians did not hesitate in supplying North Korea with the latest tanks and heavy artillery however.
The US Army, that first were sent into the fight from Japan, were poorly trained and inadequately supplied occupation troops, but that's all we had. And we got our butts kicked in the beginning, over powered by both men and equipment. This was as a result of the "Peace Dividend" following WWII and the divergence of funding from armed forces into social welfare programs that had become popular during the FDR reign. Our Army was pushed back into a small area at the south east peninsula (The Pusan Perimeter) of Korea and holding on with their teeth. Except for the arrival of the Marines, who were a well trained, and the air cover supplied by the Navy Carriers and the Air Force planes flying out of Japan, the outcome might have been grave. But, we held on. The Port at Pusan was essential if we were going to bring reinforcements into the conflict. If we lost Pusan, we would likely lose the war. At this point,however, the North Korean Army supply lines were stretched to the limit,were being attacked almost continuously from the air. They were having problems keeping their troops supplied.
Because we held on at Pusan we were able to build up our forces in the south and with a daring encircling move by MacArthur with the landing of the Marines at Inchon, the UN forces started to decimate the North Korean Army. The North Korean Army began a hasty retreat north at the behest of their Soviet and Chinese advisers or they would have been totally destroyed.
The push northward continued until the UN forces were virtually at the Yalu river which separates Korea from China. MacArthur's intelligence breakdown was monumental here. He was assured by his most trusted advisers and his own intelligence staff that the Chinese would not enter the war. This was in spite of the fact that Zhou Enlai had warned that the Chinese would enter the war if UN troops went north of the 38th parallel. Well, as history shows The General was dead wrong. Chairman Mao ignited the fuse and the Chinese attacked. About 300 thousand strong.
The Chinese had started to move troops in large numbers into Korea weeks before the UN troops came to a stop at the Yalu. The American forces thought the war was over and they would be going home. A good thing because it was cold and miserable and our troops were not really equipped for prolonged cold weather operations. We were loosing more men to frost bite than we were losing in combat.
The Chinese were able hide their movement from all the aerial surveillance prior to their open attack by moving primarily in the dark and not bringing heavy equipment with them. They basically came with what they could carry or pack on horses or mules. That gave them extreme mobility with respect to UN and American forces which, because we were so highly mechanized, were confined to the existing roads. That allowed the Chinese to move through the hills and encircle the UN forces and out flank them. The Army had rushed pell mell northward, once they got the North Koreans routed, and were very strung out and really not very cohesive. There was essentially a breakdown in the command structure. The Marines, moving up the eastern side of Korea, on the other hand, moved forward with more care, remaining an intact cohesive unit. The Marine commanders were actually criticized for their slower advance.
And then the Chinese struck. They routed the South Korean forces and some divisions of the Army. Many of the Army battalions were over run before they knew what was going on. Many of them just broke and ran leaving the rest to be encircled and cut off. The whole UN line of battle was in confusion. In general the Army forces were in total disarray and were retreating as fast as they could run, leaving the Marines cut off and surrounded by the Chinese Army. An Indian regiment took enormous casualties, holding the line, so that a US Army regiment could successfully retreat southward. This was in spite of the fact that the Army was not overwhelmed in numbers on every front by the Chinese, contrary to the news releases. The Marines, now out numbered and out flanked, were trapped at Chosen in bitter cold weather and had to then fight their way out of the trap, and did so bringing their dead and wounded with them. It was another moment in Marine history for which they can be proud.
The Army, under a new commander, Ridgeway, finally got it's act together and was able to stop the Chinese forces after the initial humiliating retreat. The Army had been pushed back completely out of North Korea, had lost Seoul and was in danger of being being pushed off the peninsula. Under Ridgeway's leadership the Army made a heroic stand at Chi-Yong-Ni against much larger Chinese forces. From there the US forces began to push the Chinese back north. The Marines retook Seoul for the second time. At this point, the war begin to look more and more like WWI trench warfare.
The Korean war saw the introduction of the jet in the equation. In the beginning of the war, all the planes were WWII vintage. The Navy using the F4U as it's primary fighter and the Air Force the P51. With these planes the UN forces commanded total air superiority over the whole of Korea. They were a primary factor in avoiding total defeat in the beginning of the war and the saving of Army and Marine forces when they had to beat a retreat before the Chinese onslaught. Then, a new type of plane appeared over the battlefield. The MIG 15. A new jet powered, swept wing fighter, that completely over matched the American planes. We know, from radio intercepts and other data that many of them were being flown by Russian pilots. We tried to rush our own jet fighters into the gap, but all we had was the Lockheed F80 Shooting Star and the F84 ThunderJet. Neither of them able to counter the speed and fighter capability of the MIG. The ThunderJet, however was an effective ground attack plane as was used in that mission for much of the war. For a time the Communists took control of the air over North Korea. North American Aviation then produced a new American fighter, the F86 Saber Jet. It was a new swept wing design the was faster and more heavily armed than the MIG. In the final tally the F86 proved to be more that a match for the MIG.
One of the defining moments in that war was the decision by President Truman to relieve General MacArthur of command. The tension between MacArthur and his bosses in Washington had been fomenting for some time. The General was openly critical of the decisions being made in Washington about the objectives of the war and how much force should be brought to bar on the enemy, including the use of tactical nuclear weapons. MacArthur's mantra was that there is no substitute for victory. Truman did not want the war to expand outside of Korea and involve the Chinese in an Asian war that could become global. MacArthur felt that we were in a position to win a war against the Chinese and we should do so, if that was required. We can never know what would have happened if The General had his way.
The General was one of the most brilliant tactical commanders in the military, but he had an ego second to none. And he tended to surround himself with a staff that didn't want to tell him anything he didn't want to hear. When MacArthur decided that something was true, the only intelligence that reached him was that which reinforced his opinion. That's why he was so surprised by the North Korean invasion. There were reports at lower levels that were warning of a North Korean buildup and possible invasion but, they never were allowed to reach MacArthur. There were reports of the massive Chinese movement into the south prior to the attack at the Yalu, as well as the direct warning by the Chinese that they would send in troops if the American forces went beyond the 38th parallel. The Chinese could not allow the American military to share a common border with mainland China.
This war was finally stalemated at about the 38th parallel, and after two years of negotiations an armistice was signed that is still in effect.
I remember Vietnam, where again we had to intervene because the Soviet and Chinese backed forces of communist North Vietnam through their surrogate southern wing, the Vietcong, were attempting to take over the south, violating an agreement that partitioned the country until elections could be held to unify it. Elections that the Soviets blocked at every turn so that the communists would have a foothold in Vietnam.
The Vietnamese had been engaged in warfare for years previously against the French forces who were trying to reestablish the French Indo-China colony following WWII after the Japanese surrender, who had occupied the peninsula during WWII. The French had colonized the Indo-China peninsula in the mid 1900's. The Vietnamese drove the French out in 1958, leaving a divided Vietnam as a result of the agreements reached by the settlement. It's a no brainer to know that the North Vietnam leadership were well versed in fighting a conventional land army and how to defeat such an army. They also could field a guerrilla army with years of experience in that type of warfare, and an already established infrastructure supporting that type of operation.
Now we entered a war that we were ill prepared to fight on so many levels. It was, by any definition, in the beginning and throughout, a guerrilla war. Unfortunately we had a senior officer corps trained in WWII and Korea and a brain trust in Washington that didn't have a clue how to fight that kind of war.
Modern communications allowed the Washington crowd to have their finger in the proverbial pie and dictated the conduct of the war in detail. So, at the top, both in Washington and the Military, we had no one who knew anything about how to fight this type of war, and the grunt on the firing line who was frustrated and felt themselves as pawns in the game. They probably should have contacted the French on what not to do. They ended up adopting the strategy of using a war of attrition as the overall plan. We'll kill more of them than they will of us, and then they'll just give up. Apparently none of them had read Sun Tzu"s " The Art of War" which accurately predicted how this would play out against an enemy that was fighting under a different set of ground rules. The North Vietnam leadership had apparently read the book. The analogy I heard once was, that we were fighting the war as if it were a Chess Game and the North Vietnamese were playing the game of Go. Those familiar with the two games will get the analogy. The North Vietnamese decided when and were they would fight, and it was always on their terms. They also understood that war was a political game more so than military. They knew how to play that game well.
This resulted in the longest war in American history, with the body counts piling up and no end in site. The Vietcong just wouldn't play by our rules. The North was obviously, and said so, willing to spend millions of their own peoples lives to unify the country under communism. This was a strange war to the American people who weren't used to this. We won every battle fought, but were losing the war at home. The famous Tet offensive on January 30, 1968, that was covered so extensively by the media, was one of the few times the Vietcong and North Vietnamese attempted more conventional warfare. Some 800,000 communist troops attacked 100 towns and villages throughout South Vietnam. They, for a brief instance lost their minds and played the game according to our rules. They shocked the American high command with this offensive because they had been led to believe that the communist forces were so decimated that they could not launch such an operation. They had an initial wave of victories, which really impressed the media. The Americans quickly recovered and regained all the lost territory. The end result was a total disaster for North Vietnamese and Vietcong forces. The loses they incurred almost decimated their army, with minimal casualties for the American forces. A great tactical victory for the US forces. But, the public got a different picture from the media, which reported it as a Vietcong show of strength and determination. They almost unanimously came to the conclusion that the war was not winnable. And, they were probably right if we didn't get some leadership at the top who could figure out how change the rules of the war we were fighting.
It's no wonder that as time went on the American public began to turn against the war. And they had every right to do so. Not because we were in a war we shouldn't have got involved in, but rather, we were fighting it in a way that only meant more body bags with no end in sight.
The shame is that a lot of the unthinking public took their anger out on the returning members of the Armed Forces as the war continued and as we finally gave up the ghost and evacuated our forces. They spit on them, called them names, accused them of killing babies and even went so far as to attack them. This from people who had no clue on what it was like over there and had no experience what so ever in situations more perilous than getting caught smoking too much weed.
I also remember Jane Fonda, who went to North Vietnam. took her place at an anti-aircraft gun and simulated shooting down American fliers. I will always consider her a traitor. Every American had the right to protest the war, but she stepped over the line to the point of actively giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
I remember the Cold War and the conflict between the Soviet Union and the nations of Western Europe and the United States. Before WWII was even over, Stalin was signaling his intentions to establish a Russian sphere of influence stretching far beyond her own borders. During the war Stalin assured the naive Roosevelt that the Soviets would allow free elections of the territories that they would "liberate" from the Germans as they moved westward. Churchill was not no easily fooled. The Russians had suffered severely under the Germans in the war, so it is easy to understand their passion for revenge.
As the Soviet troops moved west, pushing the German forces back to their homeland and then into eastern Germany, they set up puppet governments under the rule of Moscow. There was no attempt a holding any kind of free election. These countries existed to support the Soviets. Near the end of the war, when the outcome was clear, the Soviets declared war on Japan, invaded and took control of Manchuria. They expected to share in the occupation of Japan, but MacArthur told them he would shoot the first Soviet soldier that set foot on Japan.
As people under the Soviet yoke tried to escape to the west, the Soviets established, what Winston Churchill called, an Iron Current across Europe to keep their people from leaving. Decisions made during the war about the division of Germany among the Allies resulted in Berlin being inside the Soviet sphere. According to the agreement Berlin was to become a sort of free city, with equal access for all the allied powers. That didn't last long. The Soviets blockaded the highways leading into Berlin, attempting to deny the other allied powers from entering. Truman answered that by instituting the Berlin airlift, whereby supplies for the parts of Berlin under the control of the western nations were supplied by a massive air transport system. Stalin in the end backed off. To further partition Berlin, the Soviets built a high wall that divided the city into the east and west zones. Any person in the east part of Berlin who tried to escape to the west was shot on the spot. Many Germans lost their lives on the Berlin Wall.
It was called the Cold War but, it was a real war. Stalin and the Soviets intended to export their influence outward at every opportunity. Many of our modern liberals scoff at the idea, but the Stalin had grand plans of seeing all of Europe, if not the whole world under Soviet influence. It wasn't fought directly between the big powers, but rather in other engagements played out over the globe. The Soviets armed, trained and supported insurgencies in all parts of the world. Korea, Vietnam and Cuba to name a few of the larger ones that were were sucked into. They supplied arms, including the latest Soviet fighters, tanks, Surface to Air Missiles to Egypt and Syria in their fight with Israel. They attempted to take over Afghanistan and got a bloody nose. In Korea it was known that Russian pilots were flying some of the jet fighters involved in the conflict.
Even after Stalin died, the Soviets really never let up. They attempted to establish nuclear missile bases on Cuba. That action came close to triggering a war between us and the Soviets. Kennedy's reaction to the threat and some cooler heads in Moscow barely averted a catastrophe.
They were in a serious arms race with United States, helped along by spies that were funneling American secrets to the Soviets during and after the World War. It turns out there really were communist sympathizers in critical positions in our defense systems and in our intelligence systems.
Ronald Reagan recognized the Soviets venerability and upped the arms race with the expansion of our Navy and modernizing of the Army and Air Force. Trying to keep up, the Soviets spent themselves into bankruptcy. Hard to imagine, but it happened. The Soviet Union collapsed and the subjugated countries broke free of Russian domination.The Berlin wall came down and Germany was reunited. The cold war was over. The problem now; Putin seems to want to put the old Soviet Republic back together and return Russia back to the glory days when she was a major world power. The events going on in the Ukraine at this time is very worrisome to the west. Russia is doing a bit of saber rattling about the situation there. Another place where the potential for armed conflict between the Russians and the NATO powers appears.
I remember the expedition to Granada to rescue the medical students supposedly held by the Granada forces. The operation was a case of killing a fly with a sledge hammer. But, the valuable lesson we learned in that skirmish was just how messed up the organization and communication systems among the various services were. Nobody could talk to anybody. The Army couldn't call on the Air Force for support, nor the Navy. Various Army and Marine forces couldn't communicate. In other words it was a cluster @#$$%. It seemed we learned our lesson and almost immediately the military was reorganized and the communications problem addressed. Later excursions into Iraq indicated that the reorganization and communications resolution were successful.
We were not through with our involvement in foreign conflicts of course. There has been the Iranian revolution. With the revolutionists taking over of the American Embassy and holding the staff prisoners. A failed attempt under Jimmy Carter to free them. There has been two wars during the two Bush administrations. The first, very successful, the second questionable. Then there is Afghanistan, which has captured our attention of late. Events are playing out in the Ukraine that could escalate into something bigger if the Russians enter that conflict. China is in the process of building a major military capability to rival the American forces. That is very frightening, considering the growth and prosperity of the Chinese economy and the number and quality of engineers that she is educating; far exceeding Americas.
In the face of the hostile world we live in, Obama decided that our armed forces must be reduced so that present and projected entitlement programs can be supported. We can only hope that somebody in the administration remembers the lessons of the past, where we cut back our armed forces and paid the price in terms of American blood spilled on battlefields on all corners of the globe.
Apparently Donald Trump has stepped in and gone a long way toward rebuilding our armed forces. But, the Dems in the congress have other ideas about where the money should be spent, so he isn't getting all he wants. But, it is an improvement.
