ubject: Rumsfeld and flying
From: Stephen Harding
Date: 3/7/04 5:05 AM Pacific Standard Time
Message-id:

ArtKramr wrote:

I think back to the days of my training in Texas. Every instructor we had
was a
combat veteran who completed his tour of duty and came back to instruct. My
Bombing instructor was a veteran of 25 missions with the bloody 100th bomb
group. He flew them from England to Berlin without fighter escort taking
horrible losses. He not only tought us our basic job, but he let us know
what
it acutually was like in combat and all during my tour of duty his training
resulted in the fact that there were no surprises for us in combat
except
for the time we are attacked by an ME 262. I find it interesting that
Rumsfeld
was an instructor who had never been to combat. I don't see that as a
change
for the better in flight training.

My father was an instructor with no combat experience.
I'm not certain what sort of instructor; basic I'd suppose.

He was all set to strap on a P-47 and destroy the LW single
handedly he once told me, but found to his great disappointment
that he'd been made an instructor!

As you have said, he too was afraid the war would be over by
the time he got there as it was, and now, he's saddled with
an instructors job!

Said he got a lecture by the CO saying how important good
instruction was, and that he would indeed be doing an
important part in destroying the LW.

He eventually converted to B-29s as a way to get to combat
in the Pacific, only to have that war end before he could
actually get there. "Bum luck" I guess.

Eventually got his "combat" experience in a sort of way.
Flying during the Berlin Airlift cost a lot of people their
lives flying very difficult weather and conditions. A few
bullet holes in his transport aircraft during Korea and
especially Vietnam (even to the French at Dien Bien Phu).
All the various "crises" of the Cold War (Suez crisis,
Libyan crisis, Lebanon crisis,...).

I can no longer quiz him on the details, and I probably
have some of them wrong, but although he'll never be a USAF
"combat veteran", it sure as hell wasn't through a lack of
effort on his part in trying! He simply followed the orders
that the USAF gave him. No wrangling, no "influence".

[Actually, after his death we got some of his official records
and there was a comment on some form stating "Congressional
influence" or something such as this.

This apparently dated from his original posting to Japan again
without the family being allowed to come. My mother broke
ranks with the AF and wrote her Congressman and Senator
claiming all his overseas posts were without family and it
was finally time for the family to be posted with him!

We ended up being stationed in Tachikawa, Japan with him for
3 years and got there via SS President Roosevelt, a President
lines luxury cruise ship (without Dad since he had to fly the
plane there)! My mother should have spoken up much earlier!]


SMH



Good post. Lets not confuse fine men like yoour father who did everything they
could to get in with men who never tried or even worked to avoid doing combat
duty. We had all too many of those. Obviously we can't say that every man wh
never saw combat because it was :no fault of their own: There were all too many
who never saw combat and it damn well was the fault of their deliberate
avoidance where possible. But your dad flew the Berlin airlift, I would say
that constitutes combat in every sense of the word. But to say that every man
who never saw combat really wanted to, but it was just bad luck that he didn't
is failing to deal with reality. There wer even many that used self inflicted
wounds to avoid combat or who feighned insanity or would marry any woman they
could get their hands on, ge her pregnant to avoid being called up. There were
those who signed up at colleges and universities to get delays in being
called up just to avoid combat. Avoiding combat was a minor industry that we
now refuse to look at and now cover up as not being "politically correct"


Arthur Kramer
344th BG 494th BS
England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany
Visit my WW II B-26 website at:
http://www.coastcomp.com/artkramer