Friday, December 20, 2019

Combined Arms

Combined arms attack on Beney, September 12, 1918
(Source)
Yesterday's post, wherein I sing the praises of the "lowly" infantryman, sparked some excellent (as always) comments. But the following excerpt from juvat got me to thinking (always a dangerous proposition).


I have underlined what I took to be the salient points -
  • a war is won by a well-constructed, mutually supporting system
  • a war cannot be won without infantry
  • infantry is the key ingredient
  • without logistics, all the combat arms are useless
  • logistics
  • logistics
  • logistics
Yeah, I repeated that last bit three times as it's, how you say, muy importante. I actually had a post on that very topic, a post I called "Beans, Bullets, and Bandages." Now I'm not talking about unsere Bohnen*, no, I speak of actual legumes, the kind you eat. (And which are so darned good with rice.) You can read that post here.

One of the key points was this -

“Logistics...as vital to military success as daily food is to daily work.”
      -- Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan, Armaments and Arbitration, 1912

The good captain being right up there with Clausewitz as a theorist and writer on des affaires militaires, that is, he was a really smart guy.

Logistics is what makes fighting a battle, a campaign, and the entire war possible. If your troops aren't getting fed, have nothing to kill the enemy with, and can't patch themselves up when wounded, you can do all the fighting you want, you can have all the infantry, tanks, artillery, aircraft, and ships you could ever want...

And you will lose. Those folks "in the rear with the gear" as the dumber operators might put it, serve a vital role, a critical role. Juvat argues that they, and not the infantry, are the "key" ingredient. He wouldn't be wrong either, but (and this is a rather big but, you in the back, stop giggling) all the beans, bullets, and bandages in the world can not win a battle. They make victory possible, sure, but they aren't doing the actual killing and breaking of things which is how you win a battle/campaign/war.

So Sarge, it's the infantry, right?

Well, yes and no. Even if they do call the chaps with the crossed rifle insignia, the Queen of Battle. Now before your mind goes places it should stay away from...
The earliest attributed quote credits Sir William Napier (1785-1860) with saying “Infantry is the Queen of Battles.” In a text by a Mr. G. Maspero, published in 1892, the army of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal (7th century, B.C.) is described as follows: "There is, on an average one hundred foot soldiers to every ten cavalry and every single chariot; the infantry is really Queen of the Assyrian battles.” The expression hailing infantry as the queen of battle was widely in use at the time of Napoleon I (1769-1821).
The ascendancy of the infantryman has been dated as far back as the English victory at Crecy in 1346, and to the later Battle of Agincourt, scene of another English victory over the French, in 1415. The decisive weapon in both battles was the English longbow; at Crecy the French crossbowmen could not match the rate of fire of the bowmen, while at Agincourt the massed French cavalry fell before the waves of arrows fired against them by an outnumbered English army led by the young king, Henry V. Both battles were stunning affirmations of the power of capably led and properly armed infantrymen.
References to the queen of battle (or battles) continue to appear in doctrinal literature from the time of the First World War until today, and one of the most popular theories on the selection of the queen as symbol of our branch lies in the queen’s dominance of a chessboard, where she enjoys much more freedom of movement and mobility than any other piece. Her position as the most powerful piece on the board is indeed analogous to the role of the Infantry on the battlefield, and – like our branch – it is she who may well determine the final outcome. The king, on the other hand, is a vulnerable figure, and must rely upon others to protect him. (Source)
To continue the analogy of the chessboard, can you win with just a queen if the other player has all of his/her pieces? Well, if your opponent wasn't very good, and you were, then maybe you could pull it off. But all of those other pieces are there for a reason. They all contribute to victory, they are all components of a team, a combined arms team if you will allow me to put it that way.

In the first Gulf War airpower prepared the battlefield so thoroughly that Iraqi units were trying to surrender to helicopters for crying out loud. But still the infantry, accompanied by tanks and artillery, had to go in to finish what airpower had started.

Try to go up against an entrenched enemy with just infantry - can you say Passchendaele, the Somme, the Marne? (I knew you could.) Your infantry are going to die in their thousands, which they did. You need aircraft to find 'em, artillery to fix 'em in place, tanks to poke holes in the defenses, then your infantry has a chance of surviving. It takes a team.

Need to seize an island or assault a beach? You'll need ships to carry the combined arms teams to the beach, your ships to provide Naval Gun Fire Support (well, not so much these days) and transport supplies to that beach, your aircraft to establish air superiority so your troops can maneuver freely and theirs cannot. You use every tool in your arsenal so that the enemy can't fight effectively and yours can go in, kill the enemy and break his stuff.

Every tool in the armed forces' tool box has a role (well, except maybe for LCS, I still can't figure out what it's good for - until it gets its mine warfare module it's just a waste of parts and sailors who could be employed elsewhere). Each part has its tasks and missions, each part, to win in battle, must be used effectively and in concert with the other parts.

Combined arms, it's kinda like "scissors, rock, paper." Which (surprise, surprise) I wrote about here. (I swear a lot of my posts come from the comments you Chanters make, keep 'em coming.) While that post covered the Napoleonic era, the theory of combined arms has grown to encompass newer unit types and specialized versions of older unit types. For instance, a paratrooper is a descendant of the guys who walked to war, now they ride helos and jump out of aircraft to vertically envelop the enemy. They're in the enemy's rear before the enemy knows what the heck is going on, if you do it right. D-Day, they did it right, Arnhem, well you know how that worked out.

Improvements in technology have made war more lethal. Individual unit lethality and mobility have increased to amazing levels, levels a soldier of the 19th Century couldn't begin to imagine. But the various components need to work together.

And yeah, they need to be supplied.

Combined arms, very sexy, logistics not so much. But they go hand in hand.

Or you will lose.

Thoughts?




* Our Beans, i.e. my fellow blogger here at The Chant.

62 comments:

  1. Enter the M4 Sherman, the perfect blend of the logistical and the fight-istical....

    Because you have to assess weapons systems holistically, not just hole-isticaly.

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    1. Well played a bear, well played.

      But you're absolutely right on the Sherman.

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    2. Methinks a bear is trying to channel his inner Gilbert-Sullivan...

      But, truthfully, the Sherman was much better than people made and make it out to be. Just, well, you tend to lose a lot when you're attacking against an army that's had 3-4 years to sight every gun, know every terrain weakness.

      The Sherm was at least as good as any Mk IV panzer. Even the 'short' 75mm gun originally fitted was surprisingly powerful in comparison to a kraut gun of equivalent size (we actually had very very good 'gunpowder' in comparison to the Germans, something about not having it made by slaves and such...)

      And the Sherm was amazingly adaptable in factory, in depot, in the field.

      As good as a T-34 without the disposable factor of the T-34..

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    3. It was a good, all around combat vehicle. Plus we could build thousands of 'em.

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    4. And we had, eventually, air supremacy, and sea supremacy, and our logistics production facility was secure, and the population was overwhelmingly in support of the effort. As I said...a well coordinated system of support...which with a little bit of luck thrown in allows the infantryman to sit on the enemy king's throne.

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    5. It also helped that... the doctrine was to use the Shermans to support infantry, and use tank destroyers, air support and artillery to kill tanks. The scene in 'Fury' where all the Shermans go running into a fight with the German Tiger was... not doctrinal. Spot, shoot if needed, but let the more powerful TDs or Artillery get the tank. Sure, you can shoot the Tiger's tracks out, and leave them and call fire, which was actually how most tankers tried to fight. Cripple the enemy, get out of his sight, bring sky cancer down upon the striken. Even better if you wait for the crew to pop out and try to fix the tracks...

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    6. Well, that was Hollywood versus reality. Fury is one of my favorite war flicks, but it's not a documentary by any means.

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    7. Back when I was in high school, Wisconsin Public TV had a program on about armor in WWII. They asked a German PanzerGeneral what tank, if he could have any tank of WWII, would he have equipped his forces with. Everyone thought Panther, but he said he would have chosen the Sherman, armed with the 7.5 cm KwK42/L70 of the Panther. The Sherman would always start, no matter what, and would keep on running, while the KwK 42 would allow it to poke holes in anything it came across.

      He basically wanted the ISherman, which the Israelis had pretty good luck with.

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  2. Let me descend to nit picking; the load an infantryman carries. My late son was a medic in the 1st/4th Infantry and went into the field with the infantry. I was at his house one day and he had his "battle rattle" laid out on their bed. I picked it up. Holy s%^t, it weighed a ton! He just laughed and told me that was just part of his load and didn't include his medic pack or weapon and ammo.

    Circa 1965 we combat engineers carried the same load out as infantry and the weight was far less. Granted, we didn't have body armour. I wonder how all that weight impacts the ability of today's infantry?

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    1. The load an infantryman carries is definitely substantial, probably always has been. The British soldiers who went up the slope at Bunker Hill probably carried about a hundred pounds of gear, musket, ammo, three days rations. Look at some of the photos from the Falklands, the British paras were weighted done like mules.

      Imagine carrying that load in the desert, or in the jungle. The infantry has my respect for that and many other things.

      But yeah, the fatigue of humping all that has to be wearying.

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    2. The current 100-150lb load out of the modern American soldier/marine is the heaviest load-out pretty much known to man. Much of the load is located in the off-axis packs (yeah, some people carry packs multiple) which makes it even worse to carry.

      A well-equipped medieval soldier's battle rattle was about 50lbs. Armor, weapons, basic kit. Maybe 60lbs for heavier armed and armored. That's it. Why? Because he (and most assuredly a 'HE' except for a few very unique cases) had.. servants or camp followers to carry the rest of the stuff, food, ammo, replacement parts, tents, the whole schmear.

      At the beginning of the Great Unpleasantness of 1861-1865, Union soldiers could buy a quite effective front armor plate, actually proof against rifled musket ammo of the time. Forward thinking officers (in the day when it was not uncommon, actually very common, for the officers to pay for his troop's equipment past the basic gun and even sometimes including the gun) jumped on the bandwagon and equipped their troops with body armor. Until the troops found out that the armor weighed them down when they were running away...

      The current issue with most infantry today in the US is that their backs and knees are taking long-term damage. But I don't know, short of powered body armor, what can be done. Maybe have dedicated IFVs or APCs that travel with the troops so the vehicle carries the secondary stuff. But that won't work for light infantry that current policy dictates they carry everything.

      There's a solution out there. Already some armies are equipping their troops with powered 'donkeys' or unmanned vehicles to carry stuff. That will work well in flat or semi-flat terrain, but not mountainous terrain. Plus the enemy will target the vehicles...

      Which comes back to needing to be innovative. Some of the new body armor technology is getting better, lighter, stronger. But not fast enough. The push in the Army for the 6.8 caseless (God, yet another technological leap too far, too fast) is going to increase the loadout of the trooper, not decrease weight and volume. And there's only so much 'fat' that can be trimmed from clothing, packs, plate carriers and tac vests, shelters, shovels, knives, forks, spoons, food, water, batteries and battle computers and radios and and and and.

      After a hard day of fighting, I thought my 50lbs of kit, mostly well distributed except for some weapons (which I bound around my longest weapon and made a bindle out of it) was a pain to carry the mile back from the fight to the tent or car (when we were Ramada-Rangering - living off-site at a hotel for a week, hey, clean bathrooms you're not sharing with a thousand other people are really nice..)

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    3. Yeah, where do you draw the line?

      Battle kit is heavy, too heavy perhaps.

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    4. What you do, if you expect your troops to carry everything, is you have multiple packs on a single frame. Carry the whole kit, get to a place to drop non-combat essentials, only have war-fighting pack, get to a rally point, drop off mortar rounds, or Carl Gustav rounds, or belted ammo with the appropriate weapon unit and drop that pack part, by the time a trooper is on the sharp end he's got water, food, and his ammo and grenades and comm gear. But that requires control of the battle field from the first drop-off point all the way to the shooting fighting.

      Now, if you expect to go forward and make a fixed position and hold it for a while, ya gotta keep all your kit with you, or have relays bring forward the gear once the fixed position is taken and fortification starts.

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    5. History has many examples of the grunts leaving most of their kit behind (with one or more of their more useless comrades to watch over it) and never seeing their kit again. It's a little better for motorized infantry, at least they can leave stuff in their vehicles.

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    6. Until the vehicle gets hit, and the crew has to bail...

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    7. Well, that would kind of ruin things wouldn't it?

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  3. Hey AFSarge;

    We have a lot of logistics, it is tailored to our way of war. No one but us can do it that way, it is tied in with our prosperity. We also value our soldiers, we will expend a lot of ordinance rather than our lives, we started doing that during the civil war and it really showed during WWII and the later conflicts.

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    1. Expend ammo, not lives. It's our way.

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    2. Saw this on a poster in the Canadian Infantry Officer School in Gagetown New Brunswick thirty years ago(obviously WW2 vintage). If you are unsure of a unit to your front here is a primer. Fire a couple of shots above their heads and wait for their reaction.

      1. If they give up without firing a shot back, they're Italian.
      2. If they give up after they shoot a couple of rounds, they're French.
      3. If they answer your shots with multiple MGs, they're German.
      4. If they answer your shot with rapid, precise rifle fire, they're British/Canadian.
      5. If they respond with artillery and/or air strike, they're American

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    3. The French, during WWI, sneered at our reliance on close fire support by artillery. But then again, we didn't lose so many men that our whole army basically mutinied.

      After Tarawa, Bloody Tarawa and Makin, the doctrine of capturing outer islands within range of the primary target, and using those islands as firebases for support of the main invasion (think, oh, a ring representing an atoll, main island is big stone, along the rest of the band are smaller islands represented by smaller outer stones. Big island/stone has the bases and runways and port facilities.) Capture the outer islands 2-3-4 days in advance, drop a metric crapload of stuff on these islands, and fire away. There's no need to sneak up on an island in the middle of the ocean, as they can see you coming (well, a large task force, at least. Small boats or subs can do the sneaky thing - like Merrel's Raiders.)

      The US Army's official history of WWII, in the 'Seizure of the Gilberts and Marshalls,' has after-action analysis of Tarawa and Makin and basically said that the regular loadout of a massive 80 rounds of .30-06 was woefully inadequate. More like 240 rounds, and make sure there's lots more ammo available. So the troops went in with about 120 rounds and supplies were scheduled to land starting in the second wave.

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    4. And in WWII the Germans felt we weren't fighting "fair" by our reliance on artillery. Heh, sucked to be them.

      Whatever ammo you're carrying, it's not enough. Carry as much as you can bear, that resupply might be delayed. And usually is!

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    5. One sees a LOT of photos of GIs in Europe, with their eight pouch cartridge belts, and a bandoleer of another eight clips for the M-1.

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  4. Some years back, one of my fellow employees was a young USMC combat vet. IIRC, the marine on this book cover was his platoon leader--

    https://www.amazon.com/Glory-Frontline-Account-Battle-Fallujah/dp/B0036HO8MK/ref=sr_1_4?crid=3R28UQ3N5I9DQ&keywords=no+true+glory+by+bing+west&qid=1576856962&s=books&sprefix=no+true+%2Caps%2C184&sr=1-4

    He was not a big guy, stood about 5' 8", and was very athletic. All the gear he had to hump over in the sand box had eventually resulted in permanent injury to his back, and he could no longer run an any long distance (even in gym shorts) without excruciating pain. He had been medially discharged. Yeah, all that s--t gets heavy.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxzfqce0jqY

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    1. A man I remember. I speak his name aloud on Memorial Day Sunday every year. We grew up in the same town, went to the same high school, though 30 years apart. Lance Corporal Kurt Dechen, 1st of the 25th Marines. Killed in action on his 24th birthday in Fallujah. A Marine rifleman.

      Some gave all.

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  5. Germans early in WW2 made best use of combined arms. Panzer division had organic motorised artillery, infantry, engineers, dedicated scouting batallion using fast vehicles like armored cars and motorcycles, you name it.
    Where they lagged badly was logistics. This was not much trouble in short-range hops against Poland or France but they really got out of their league in the vast distances of Soviet Russia. And m,uch of their army transpirt was still horse drawn...
    By 1944 Soviets themselves got better car pool than Germans courtesy of Lend-Lease and used it to good effect in Bagration and other great offensives.

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    1. While the Panzer Divisions dashed into Russia with speed, the bulk of their non-motorized infantry supports walked to the war, just like their grandfathers and their fathers before them.

      Good observation Paweł!

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    2. The Germans in Belgium and West France were very appreciative of all the bicycles the civilians left lying around.

      Russia, in the mud and snow? No bikes.

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    3. Yeah, in Russia pavement was limited to the bigger towns and cities. Even motorcycles had a hard time in the wetter weather.

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    4. That, and there were no pesky peasants leaving piles of 2 wheeled pedal pushers around for the Prussians to pilfer.

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    5. Bicycles were standard issue in some western European armies. If you can, find the Danish movie April 9th (that date was in 1940, hint, hint). Bicycles are involved. It's a brilliant movie in my estimation, brilliant. (It is available on Amazon Prime.)

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    6. Oh, better yet, I read "Bicycles in War" by Martin Caidin (whom I met, before his death, well, lets say it's sometimes best not to meet the people behind the books) which does a very good job of dealing with, well, bikes at war, from pre WW1 all the way up to the Vietnam Wars (French and ours, two distinctive wars, they ran theirs badly and lost ground, we ran ours badly and were held back from going north.)

      Good book. The things you can on a bike, besides ride it, that is.

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    7. Never knew Caidin wrote a book on bikes. Interesting. So you didn't care for him?

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  6. I remember a story about German POWs in Normandy. At first they were pretty cocky, but as they got closer to the beach and say all the *stuff* being landed they started to see that it was a lost cause. Some were in tears for their Vaterland by the time they got back to the beach.

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    1. I've heard that story. They had no idea of the logistics capabilities of the United States.

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    2. (Don McCollor)...production was amazing. At Vancouver on the Columbia River, an escort aircraft carrier was being launched every week for a year. Seagoing tankers were being built in Savage, MN at head of navigation of the Mississippi. Landing craft were being built far up the Ohio and Missouri rivers. The Ford Liberator plant at Willow Run was producing a heavy bomber every hour day and night. The Bath Iron Works in Maine by itself built more destroyers than the entire Empire of Japans, and strangest of all, destroyer escorts were being built at a shipyard in Denver, Colorado - eight hundred miles from the sea and a mile above it (in pieces, shipped to the coast, and welded together). Kaiser (for publicity) built a Liberty Ship freighter in (times vary) four days, 15 hours, 34 minutes. At the end of the week it put to sea with crew and cargo...

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    3. I wonder if we could do that today. I know the talent is there, but is the will?

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    4. ...I think yes, (although this is now somewhat dated)...On 911, there was a request from the Coast Guard "All Available Boats To Assist". There was an evacuation of people from lower Manhattan that was twice as large as Dunkirk, and done in single day. No orders, no plan, just hundreds of boats coming to help...

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    5. Tom Hanks narrated a most excellent documentary, doing a wonderful job of it.

      https://www.americanwaterways.com/media/videos/boatlift-tom-hanks-narrates-untold-tale-911-resilience

      Tom Hanks and Mike Rowe could probably narrate the dictionary and make it sound interesting.

      So could Shohreh Aghdashloo, what a tremendously interesting and sexy voice. Like what Lauren Bacall would have had if she hadn't thrashed her throat smoking so much.

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    6. Unknown - Yes, you're right. People pitched in that day, sad how few remember.

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    7. Beans - Ah yes, narrators, Morgan Freeman is a favorite, The WSO posted the following on Facebook, made me laugh...

      Mom: If y'all don't stop it right now, you won't get a single present this year!

      Morgan Freeman: But it didn't matter how the children behaved - they would get presents. She knew it, they knew it, Santa and Baby Jesus knew it.


      Concur on Shohreh Aghdashloo's voice. Wow. She's also pretty easy on the eyes. (Plays a great character in The Expanse as well, a show I need to get back to watching...)

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    8. Ah, 'The Expanse,' it was great until all my favorite characters were killed or turned out to be turd-burglars. And with my hearing, I have to turn the tv up pretty high to hear her throaty, sexy, furry fingernails running up and down my spine voice.

      One of those 'If I was single I'd try propositioning her just to get the opportunity to get shot down by her' people,

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    9. SS ROBERT E. PEARY. I read a book on Liberties, the author of which was an officer on a different Liberty. When the PEARY set sail, the author's CO pointed to her, and said, " They built her on four days. Thank God I am not on board her! "

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  7. (Don McCollor) [comment on 911 was mine]...For logistics and the way it was, listen to Scott Miller "Red Ball Express" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1m7Q3uJgAZw)..."The men can eat their belts, but the tanks must have gas"...

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    1. The Red Ball Express was a particularly American creation. Everyone else wanted and used rail, we used trucks, lots and lots of trucks. And we still couldn't keep up with the advances.

      We Americans are weird. Like the Berlin Airlift, a very American thing (yes, the English participated, but in reality it was us the USA. And us who did weird and wonderful things like attach candy bars to parachutes from flares in order to drop them to children.

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    2. Don - Ah, I thought it was but wasn't sure until now. The Red Ball Express was so quintessentially American.

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    3. Beans - My Dad was actually stationed in Berlin during the Airlift. Which was an amazing thing, we pretty much told Stalin to shove his blockade up his Georgian ass.

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    4. (Don McCollor)...I think the Berlin Airlift was were ground controlled approach was born. It required precision flying of a different sort. Cargo planes would take off, fly and land at three minute intervals day and night in appalling weather, and would fly back to West Germany on a missed approach, returning in the next bloc. Final approach was below and between high rise apartment buildings under ground radar control. With the C54, ten tons of cargo was landing every three minutes. Although fictional, Leon Uris (1963) gives a good account of it in "Armageddon"...

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    5. Leon Uris had some great books, not exactly history, but not exactly fiction either.

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  8. In Robb White's novel "Up Periscope" (soon to be a major motion picture!) USS Shark is beached in the lagoon of an atoll trying to repair hull damage. A Japanese (perhaps more than one, it's been a while) bomber attacks and they shoot it down. After the action the ship's cook comes up on deck to look around. He picks up a spent 20mm case and remarks that they cost a dollar apiece ($15 in 2019 bucks). One of the crewmen then mentions a War Bond billboard he'd seen in San Francisco which said, iirc, "It takes millions to win a war. To lose one takes everything you've got."

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  9. Have a book! A very good read, if somewhat long.
    https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading-room/title-list-alphabetically/b/beans-bullets-black-oil.html

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  10. Thanks for the shout out for MIW. LCS is not the best we can do, but it's all we will have soon. Then again- maybe not: https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2019/12/19/congress-slashes-funding-for-the-navys-lcs-sensors-again/

    There are a ton of sailors sitting on ships and ashore right now awaiting those looooooong delayed mission packages. Waste of manpower.

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    1. We NEED a mine warfare capability, LCS ain't it.

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  11. The LCS is a complete waste of everything involved. I would much rather have Marinette Marine make NANSENs license built as DEGs.

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