From: (BUFDRVR)
Date: 8/7/2004 12:00 AM Central Daylight Time
Message-id:

Of course you must see that those who say I have no knowledge of WW II are
those who never were in WW II.

Not really. Much of my knowledge on WWII comes from authors who were there or
interviewed participants at the Strategic, Tactical and operational levels.

They, as far as WW II goes, are just wannabees

Are you serious? I love the B-17 and I would like to think if I wasn't
-(minus)
27 years old at the out break of war that I would have gotten a chance to
pilot
one, but I'm far from a "wannabee". I wouldn't trade my experience for yours
or
any other. Perhaps that's a bit egotistical, but it's true.

Then of course it turns out that they are all Neocons. while I am a yellow
dog Democrat. See a connection?

I grew tired and disappointed with you long before you went on your political
tirade and exposed your political beliefs.


BUFDRVR


You could try telling Art that all war is local and those who are there have
only the vaguest idea what is going on much further than the eye can see. When
I was in combat in Viet Nam I could tell you exactly what I had experienced,
but had no idea about the rest of the war. The same goes for Art. He can tell
you what it's like to be a bombardier in B-26s, but he can't tell you what the
men who PUT him there did nor could he tell you what the poor slobs in the
infantry experienced.

He has no idea the maintainers who fixed and armed that B-26 pulled additional
duties he benefitted from like KP, trash, latrine details and how they felt
about it.

Even today most aircrews have no idea how many people put them in the air
besides the base ops, crew chiefs, weather guessers and the like. I can't tell
you how many aircrewmen believed the crewchiefs knew more about individual
systems than the specialists. Nor could I tell you how many times I couldn't
fix an aircraft because the pilot/nav/FE/load was too busy to explain his
writeups beyond "I told the crewchief." This is one of the reasons I loathed
most aircrewmen who became maintenance officers.

Just as a matter of curiosity are pilots ever taught what drives the indicators
they rely on? If they are they frequently forget. I loved it when they would
tell me the rate of turn pointer on the ADI doesn't work so I need to change
the ADI. It's driven by a gyro separate from the vertical gyro.

Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired