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| Keel plate of the never completed USS United States (CVA-58) |
The current brouhaha with Chief Gallagher, the Navy, the Department of Defense, and the President of the United States isn't anything new. While this episode of disagreements between the armed forces and its civilian leadership is, in the big scheme of things, rather small, there was a much more dangerous episode in 1949, it was known as the Revolt of the Admirals.
At the time the bomber generals in the Air Force were convinced that wars such as WWII were a thing of the past, the future belonged to the long range bomber loaded with nuclear weapons. On the other hand, President Harry Truman was concerned with the huge budgets of the armed forces and finding ways to cut those expenditures. (Sound familiar?)
When it all started the United States had a monopoly on nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them. With the detonation of the first Soviet atomic bomb in August of 1949, that began to change. (Note that left leaning assholes in our government and that of the UK helped the Russians a great deal in building that bomb. I don't use the term "asshole" lightly here.)
But before the hubbub died down, the Marine Corps came close to being disbanded, the Navy came close to losing all of its carriers (and certainly all, or most, of their aviation assets), and the Army came close to being reduced to a small, ineffective shadow of its WWII self.
A former corporate type became the Secretary of Defense (not McNamara, but Louis Johnson's appointment foreshadowed future idiocy of the type) and the US military came close to becoming a "kill 'em all, let God sort 'em out force" because of the arrogant stupidity of the Air Force's bomber generals.
Yes, why rely on conventional military force when you can just nuke Moscow or Beijing?
Well, you can't can you? Especially when the other side also has nukes and the means to deliver them. Blowing up Moscow might result in "bye bye New York City." (Why nuke DC, when you can leave the morons in place in order to keep us doing stupid things? New York is a far more worthwhile target.)
Anyhoo, go read this and this and be prepared to comment below. I would flesh this out more but I am close to hitting the road for the homeland and three days with family. No doubt too much food will be involved, adult beverages, and no doubt a football game or two. As for...
What?
Did someone say pie?
I believe someone did, and yes, if you wish to focus on pie in the comments, knock yourselves out. It's a Thanksgiving free-for-all!
"Truman called for a naval blockade of North Korea, and was shocked to learn that such a blockade could only be imposed "on paper", since the U.S. Navy no longer had the warships with which to carry out his request." Because of his own decisions.... Shades of The Arkansas Pecker and the Georgia Peanut. A Peace Dividend so to speak.
ReplyDeleteDig around for Operation Rollup. It explains how we got hardware to Korea so fast. And now I understand why we HAD to do that. Truman's admin had all but murdered the military. They scoured the WW2 Pacific battlefields, brought the hardware to Japan, refurbed it and reissued it to fight in Korea. They talk about time being of the essence, but it appears it was more about the money. One documentary that I saw, details how much money they saved by doing this. I thought it odd that they were quoting dollars and cents, but after reading about McNamara Senior, I understand that emphasis completely.
Found the clip https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=febFix6f2pE
I watched a program not too long ago about Operation Rollup, very interesting. Money is always a factor with politicians.
DeleteThey literally went to salvage operators and bought planes back. P-51s and Corsairs that were scheduled to be broken up were hauled back into service. In some ways the Korean War saved the American Military.
DeleteWon't disagree, never thought of it that way.
DeleteInteresting, Truman was a relic from ww1, and could be learned from. It was called winner demobilization. The classic drawdown. In his day, everyone did it. And every country that did it suffered the same problem on the troops return. Unemployment. But, did anyone learn from that? Not even Eisenhower. So, along comes a nuke punk, and what does he do? Same. Even his advisors said so, from the biggest and best think tanks then, said yup. So, does that forgive Regan for bargaining with the iatola to keep prisoners and selling weapons to Central America during Carter's administration?
ReplyDeleteAnother problem, nukes don't have to hit the big apple to be effective, kill the food supply, bomb the Rockies, let the fallout kill the countryside.
New York is a far easier target, cripple the financial system and the money dries up. No money, nothing moves.
DeletePlus everything is concentrated on one island. The Nazis had a plan to hit it with a nuke from their antipodal bomber, hit anywhere near the center with a 10kt warhead and the island would have been flattened.
DeleteAfter WW2 we had the GI Bill, that gave a lot of the vets someplace off the streets to be. Houses to be built and engineers to be trained. Those engineers built the modern America!
DeleteBeans - Very true.
DeleteRob - GI Bill was an awesome thing.
DeleteBack then, some Admirals had the spine to do the right thing. I am not sure that is true any longer.
ReplyDeleteConcur.
DeleteWell those links provided more info than what I knew about the Air Force/Army/Navy imbroglio post WWII. Wonder how the US Space Command is going to play out among the services now. As for pie, yes, apple pie procured yesterday since seven inches of the white stuff arrived overnight and there's a wire down across the backyard, phone or cable not power, time to call it in ....(sigh). Enjoy the day of givng thanks folks!
ReplyDeleteAh, snow. We had it last year in NH at this time, but this year is rather pleasant. So far.
DeleteHey Old AFSarge;
ReplyDeleteYeah the postwar United States Military especially the Navy and the newly formed USAF were quite full of themselves, I recall all the things that the U.S Army and the Marines did in the 1950's to try to stay relevant. Look up "Pentomic " in Wiki. It explains the Army concept and it was done to keep viable in the Airforce/Navy kerfluffle in the budget battles.
I remember it well. Thing is they were all wrong.
DeleteYeah at age 75 I'm old enough to remember the "Pentomic Army". When they were issuing nuke bazookas (Davy Crockett) to corporals and putting other nuke missile sys on jeeps (Lacross). Good times... :)
DeleteWas a member of that "Pentomic Army" in Germany in 1960-63, poised to counter the slavic hordes at the Fulda Gap. We had the Davy Crockett platoon in our Combat Support company, super hush-hush but we all knew what it was.
DeleteSafe travels Sarge, enjoy the pie. I've learned that there will be NO pecan pie this year due to a guest who has severe nut allergies. I'm going into withdrawal already.
Virgil - Nothing would frighten me more than an E-4 with access to nukes!
DeleteFlugelman - Pecan pie, love it, can't eat it anymore, diverticulitis. Miss it I do.
DeletePie awaits....
ReplyDeletehttps://lionskip.blogspot.com/2019/11/tg-merriment.html
Yum!
DeleteMany things about Truman I like. This was not one of them. But, seriously, the US was heading into a financial crisis in 46, with too much debt and no way to pay it off. Drawdown of the armed forces seemed like a reasonable thing to do. Just with drawdown also meant shuttering all those wartime businesses and now you have massive unemployment in the civilian market just at a time you drop a million or two ex-uniformed people into the already gutted job market.
ReplyDeleteAnd then we spent a poop-ton of money during the Berlin Airlift. Further damaging us financially.
Something had to be done. And Nukes were the new shiny hotness, the 'Stealth' and 'Modular Mission' of their day.
As to the State Department, oh I mean Soviet spying on our nuclear program, well, Alger Hiss should have been right next to the Rosenbergs on riding the lightning. One wonders who in the State Department protected that jerk. Senator McCarthy, loudmouth that he was, was right about Soviet penetration of our government and our entertainment industry (little remembered, but John Wayne and a collection of conservatives actually formed a conservative actor's guild in response to the red menace. I am glad he never lived long enough to see the Red China takeover.)
Same here as regards Harry S.
DeleteAs to pie, baking apple (double crust) and pumpkin(single crust) tonight. And getting the turkey breasts out to thaw in my 67 degree house (they've been sitting in the refrigerator since last Thursday and they are still pretty much frozen.
ReplyDeleteAnd fresh bread for Mrs. Andrew. Nothing says love like fresh baked yeast bread.
Yum, apple and pumpkin pie. True statement on the bread!
DeletePie. Yes, please. Through earnest but somewhat un-coordinated efforts, our current tally is five pies for seven people.
ReplyDeleteOur pie story. So Monday, wife and daughter head out to shop for Thanksgiving dinner (which will be at daughter and hubby's house, 20 minutes down the road from ours). I am assigned the lesser mission of the usual grocery list for the wife and at home. I depart sometime later and make my way to Winco at my own pace.
As I am pushing my cart across the store at the end of the aisles, contact right! There are my wife and daughter not 15 feet away, facing me. Sorta. My daughter has their cart, sees me, makes eye contact. My wife has just inquired of the nice young store clerk where the pie filling is to be found. "Right this way, ma'am" and he makes his way to and around me towards the next aisle over. My wife, in close pursuit, follows him right around me not two feet away, oblivious to my presence. I pivot to face her in the turn, but say nothing, as an evil plan is already forming. Wife and clerk disappear down the next aisle.
I look back to my daughter, still with their cart, look slightly gobsmacked. She leaves the cart and walks around to look down the next aisle. Then she gestures emphatically for me to join her. Her phone is already out. We take a double selfie of the two of us laughing our a$$es of with my wife in the background still oblivious. I step back out of sight, my daughter goes to show selfie to her mother. Priceless.
Hahaha! Great story!
DeleteWe're having crumb top apple pie and pumpkin pie. I also like cherry pie but I'm in the minority, so no cherry pie. I like hot pie and cold pie equally. Pie is an important part of any celebration. And left over stuffing with some turkey heated in a skillet (crispy) and then throw a couple of over-easy eggs on top for breakfast. Life is good.
ReplyDeleteNow I'm hungry again!
DeleteHave a safe trip and Happy Thanksgiving, Sarge!
ReplyDeleteWe're going up to a major gathering of the clan to give thanks, and I'm sure we'll have several kinds of pie!
Happy Thanksgiving drjim!
DeleteThe true ignorance and stupidity of the bomber generals was never more exposed than in "The 11 Days Of Christmas" (Marshall L. Michel III). The failure of the commanders to realize their mistakes in planning and execution of Linebacker II bordered on nothing less than criminal. To compound their errors they didn't change their plans until the crews threatened to mutiny against dying for some desk bound leaders in SAC that had no concept of non-nuke ops. Nixon should have lined them up against the wall....
ReplyDeleteCompletely agree!
DeleteIt was a good debate- whether or not we needed a Navy when we had an Air Force with strategic bombing capability. But obviously that that limits us to the most kinetic form of action. The carrier provides us with far more options short of large scale bombing, including just the visible deterrent of parking a carrier off a country's coast. And the USAF can't keep sea lanes open of course as Denfeld addressed. These days the debate in congress is more about guns vs. butter and not one of a strategic nature like this was. We and the Defense Industrial Complex has shot ourselves in the foot a little because of the huge expense and quality of the Navy (and all defense). Quantity has a quality all its own but we don't have a force sized (and funded) to really sail the 7 seas with any significant impact. I'm not saying we need fewer carriers, but more that don't cost $10B would be good, as would true Frigates and more DDs. When I was flying, a good month was 30 hours. Today I think it's half that. We also have a bunch of CGs that we're not maintaining. According to a friend who is the maintenance manager for a CG down here, we're actually paying for it, but nobody is able to keep the workers accountable for the work so it's done poorly, or not at all. Sad state. There's a lot of stuff you don't read about in the news, but it's really bad at the shipyard.
ReplyDeleteThere's one way to make the shipyards accountable. Put a few big shots in prison, not Martha Stewart prison, but "Hi, ma name's Bubba, I'se yo cellmate" prison.
DeleteYou can pay me now, or you can pay me later. But you always pay.
Tuna/
ReplyDeleteHell, they had already almost halved our 30 hrs/mo in USAFE as far back as 1971!! FORGET advanced tng in cmbt tactics--it was down to keeping current in basic skills just to keep from killing oneself.
Virgil, I recall juvat saying it got better after the Peanut Farmer left office. No doubt it dropped during the Community Organizer's "reign."
DeleteSpeaking of Tempest and Gallagher, which is a Scots surname, more or less, I'm reminded of a wee little book I took down off my Grandma's shelf one day when I were nobbut a lad. It was called Tempest over Scotland. I selected it because I knew that the RAF had a fighter plane called Tempest, and Scotland is in England (possibly in the southeast, where the Battle of Britain was), therefore it must be a book about the RAF in WWII and just chock-full of dazzling aerial war stories.
ReplyDeleteTurned out to be a bunch of old religious stuff about some preacher guy named Knox back in the dark ages. Poop! (Hadn't learned $#!+ and firetruck yet).
It was a First Edition with a nice little note to my Grandma on the title page, written and signed by the author Norman Nygaard. He was rather a prolific author for a Presbyterian pastor from Kimball, Nebraska. He married my Mom and Dad, btw.
Funny how stuff becomes stuff.
Kinda interesting indeed. I had to take a walk to recover from the "Scotland is in England" comment. Ahem, both are in the United Kingdom. Anyhoo, I would've thought the same as you, figuring it would have been the aircraft.
DeleteGrumble, mumble, grumble, "Scotland is in England" - that's a hard one to swallow. 😉