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Politics : To be a Liberal,you have to believe that..... -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Merritt who wrote (4644)	10/27/1999 6:15:00 PM
From: Henry Volquardsen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6418

Merritt, my limited time with the Navy was in the 70s and I had trouble with their definitions as well. One of my clearest memories is of screwing up close order drill, again, and being told I would never be a good officer because I thought to much :) fwiw the definitions are also pretty standard for military historians. Your right it was subordinate to the regular army but formations such as the Eight Air Force were already acting largely independant. Also on a senior level the US military can be quite factionalized when it comes to issues of weapon systems development. Bomber generals vs aviator admirals, aviator admirals vs battleship admirals, Marine Corp generals vs Army generals etce etc etc. All fighting for the procurement dollar and to advance their theories of warfare. It can be quite politicized. I don't want to dismiss the efforts of the strategic air campaign. Those men fought very bravely and made a heroic effort. It is just that I've been wondering recently if all the expenditure actually shortened the war significantly. Meanwhile I've developed the opinion that if the same men, material and fuel had been spent on more tanks and fighter bombers we could have shortened the European war by a year. In the summer of '44 Patton was forced to stop so they could divert fuel to Montgomery. This gave the Germans in front of him a chance to regroup. If they had been able to keep both Patton and Montgomery supplied with fuel it is quite possible Patton could have gotten very deep into Germany by the fall of '44. I have no personal memories of the war era but have gotten memories from my parents. They were however in Germany at the time. Wild memories. My father was one of those young boys drafted into the German Army in '44, he was 14. My mother was strafed by an RAF pilot when she was out in the field milking the cows, she was 12. They both saw more action than my mother's father who was a petty officer in the German Navy. He drove a supply truck from Paris to Le Havre. The only comabt stories he ever had involved French waiters :) Henry

To: Merritt who wrote (4644)	10/27/1999 7:38:00 PM
From: Henry Volquardsen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6418

interesting report on the ABC evening news. they were discussing the ongoing air campaign against Iraq. Even discounting the usual media bs it made some interesting points. First they mentioned how the political leadership in Washington continues to insist the ongoing air campaign is effective and putting pressure on the Iraqi leadership. They then say that the leadership in the field is saying that we haven't made a dent in Iraqi air defense. The other point that made me shake my head was that in order to reduce potential civilian casualties they are filling bombs with concrete to reduce the blast radius. So we are dropping bombs but we are altering them so they don't hurt to much. Talk about a screwed up politicized policy.