Rumsfeld and flying

On 07 Mar 2004 04:38:28 GMT, (ArtKramr) wrote:

Subject: Rumsfeld and flying
From: Buzzer
Date: 3/6/04 8:31 PM Pacific Standard Time
Message-id:

On 07 Mar 2004 03:25:15 GMT, (BUFDRVR) wrote:

I find it interesting that Rumsfeld
was an instructor who had never been to combat.

It's hard for me to believe that you cannot conceptualize that not everyone
during times of combat operations sees action. I've got several good friends
who, through no fault of their own, have exactly *zero* combat hours. These
guys would have jumped on a jet for England or Diego Garcia in a heart beat,
but it wasn't thier job. What was there job? They were teaching brand new
navigators and co-pilots how to operate the B-52, a critical job considering
the drastic under manning we had (and have) in the B-52. You need to get it
out
of your thick head that what you were doing on a daily basis was the most
important job in the history of the world and anyone who wasn't doing it was
a
slackard.

I know I'm wasting my time here....why do I bother?

Your good friends were a bunch of slackers. Everyone knows all you
have to do is volunteer for combat and off you go. An even worse
situation is if an instructor doesn't have combat time all the
trainees will not respect them.
The more I think about it I wonder if the combat veterans in WWII
pulled a reverse Vietnam war situation. When they returned home they
spit on the civilians that stayed stateside doing useless things like
building Arts aircraft, building bombs and ammo, ect..?


You are not far wrong. Most of those who built our planes and ammo were woman
and old men and high school kids. Damn few who could go to war stayed behind,

Did any of your relatives stay behind in WWII Art?
Did they all see combat?
How many of your relatives served during the Civil War, and wars after
that? All of them in combat?

And when we all came back and found that someone our age got a deferment for
any reason other than physical we did nott ake kindly to them But those were
different times with obviously different standards.

Really Art it isn't much different today. It is still the I was in
combat and you weren't from the Korean war, Vietnam, etc. I believe
it is one of the reasons veterans can't get together and present a
united front like AARP and the senior citizens. One of the reasons the
goverment can walk all over veterans and retired military and get away
with it..

On Sat, 6 Mar 2004 22:50:14 -0600, "D. Strang"
wrote:

"BUFDRVR" wrote

It's hard for me to believe that you cannot conceptualize that not everyone
during times of combat operations sees action. I've got several good friends
who, through no fault of their own, have exactly *zero* combat hours.

I used to fly with a navigator who had .5 combat hours. He got it on the way
to Thailand in a C-141 during the Vietnam war.

I was a passenger on a C-130 in 1967 that was suppose to fly from Ubon
to Okinawa and they pulled that trick. Plane landed and pulled onto
the taxiway and sat. I figured we had made really good time to
Okinawa. Crew chief put the steps out and came back and asked if I
wanted to get out and take a look around DaNang?
DANANG? DANANG, VIETNAM? What the are we doing here?
Crew needed to land so they could get their combat pay for the month..

It's just phenomenal the amount of **** in Art's brain.

Being an Instructor has very little to do with combat. Many combat vets
take awhile before they can become effective teachers. They tend to be
perfectionists, and are used to crews who are their peers. Once back at
the training center, the pace and mistakes cause them to wash students
out. We had one guy who washed his first three students out, and the
board reinstated all of them with a new instructor. The bad instructor
was sent packing.

On Sun, 7 Mar 2004 01:51:49 -0500, "George Z. Bush"
wrote:

Snip/cut/slash/whack..

There are a lot articles about the Kerry speech, etc, but this one
seems to put it all together the best...

http://www.nationalreview.com/owens/...0401270825.asp

I don't think the claims he made were unsubstantiated, since they were all based
on sworn tesitimony of returned servicemen who had either participated in those
activities or had observed others doing those things. As for it being
widespread, I think that would be your characterization of it, not his. Show me
a transcript where he's quoted as saying that everybody was doing that sort of
stuff. I don't think one exists, but take a stab at it if you think it's worth
the effort.

....And why did he have that speechwriter draft his testimony?

I don't know why he would do that, if in fact he did. Perhaps he just wanted to
make sure that what he said would be accurate, and not colored by the emotional
strain of giving such testimony.

.......and with people who claim to be something that they are not. (Those
aren't all the same person in any of my statements.)

And there's another category of people whose names would fill our list and
who come from both sides of the aisle. Is there any point in pursuing that?

George Z.

Many combat vets
take awhile before they can become effective teachers

If we're speaking about the USAAF in WWII, some never made the
adjustment at all. The army found some men too nervous in the service
to be trusted as teachers. But still it was an inspired system.

Ed mentioned that "some countries" didn't follow this
combat-to-instructor rotation. Actually, I think that should be "no
other country" beside the U.S. The RAF may have done a bit of it,
without advertising it, but in most air forces you flew until you
died. The Germans were particularly egregious. Far from sending combat
pilots to teach, they sent instructors to combat (they did this in a
vain attempt to salvage Tunisia in 1943) thus depriving the air force
of the next generation of trained pilots.

Both Germany and Japan were sending men into combat by the end of the
war with fewer than 150 or even 100 hours of flying time.

all the best -- Dan Ford
email: (requires authentication)

see the Warbird's Forum at www.warbirdforum.com
and the Piper Cub Forum at www.pipercubforum.com

And when we all came back and found that someone our age got a deferment
for
any reason other than physical we did nott ake kindly to them But those
were
different times with obviously different standards.

Really Art it isn't much different today.

Well, I won't speak for the other services, but in the USAF, the guys/gals left
behind aren't treated any differently than those who went. The only minor
difference is the guys who went have a few more tales to tell at the bar. Why
would I possibly look down upon a guy who didn't go to combat through no fault
of his own? I missed out on DESERT STRIKE in 1996 because I was home on leave
and it was a "come as you are" operation that was 80 hours from notification to
weapons launch. Was it my fault I missed out? No, just bad timing. In 1998 I
was also a victim of poor timing. I had just returned from upgrading to
aircraft commander in November and by mid-December I was *nearly* finished with
mission qualification training.....when Clinton ordered Operation DESERT FOX.
Once again, through no fault of my own, 75% of my squadron picked up and left
for the Indian Ocean. Not only did the guys who go not look down on me when
they got back, they made a point not to discuss the operation around me because
they knew it had killed me not to go. Since then, I haven't missed a combat
operation involving BUFFs and don't think any less of those who have.


BUFDRVR

"Stay on the bomb run boys, I'm gonna get those bomb doors open if it harelips
everyone on Bear Creek"

"Kevin Brooks" wrote in message
news

"ArtKramr" wrote in message
...
Subject: Rumsfeld and flying
From: Buzzer
Date: 3/6/04 8:31 PM Pacific Standard Time
Message-id:

On 07 Mar 2004 03:25:15 GMT, (BUFDRVR) wrote:

I find it interesting that Rumsfeld
was an instructor who had never been to combat.

It's hard for me to believe that you cannot conceptualize that not
everyone
during times of combat operations sees action. I've got several good
friends
who, through no fault of their own, have exactly *zero* combat hours.
These
guys would have jumped on a jet for England or Diego Garcia in a heart
beat,
but it wasn't thier job. What was there job? They were teaching brand
new
navigators and co-pilots how to operate the B-52, a critical job
considering
the drastic under manning we had (and have) in the B-52. You need to
get
it
out
of your thick head that what you were doing on a daily basis was the
most
important job in the history of the world and anyone who wasn't doing
it
was
a
slackard.

I know I'm wasting my time here....why do I bother?

Your good friends were a bunch of slackers. Everyone knows all you
have to do is volunteer for combat and off you go. An even worse
situation is if an instructor doesn't have combat time all the
trainees will not respect them.
The more I think about it I wonder if the combat veterans in WWII
pulled a reverse Vietnam war situation. When they returned home they
spit on the civilians that stayed stateside doing useless things like
building Arts aircraft, building bombs and ammo, ect..?


You are not far wrong. Most of those who built our planes and ammo were
woman
and old men and high school kids.

No, they were not. That may be *your* twisted perception of reality, but
it
is no more correct than your recent ludicrous pronouncements about the
National Guard during WWII.

"In 1944 there were 104,450,000 people over 14. Of that total 65,140,000
were in the labor force either as workers or in the military and
38,590,000
were not in the labor force (down less than 4 million from 1940). There
were
46,520,000 males in the labor force including the military, of whom
35,460,000 were in the civilian workforce and 19,170,000 women in the
civilian workforce."

www.ndu.edu/inss/McNair/mcnair50/m50c13n.html

The male civilian workforce vastly outnumbered the women workforce (about
two to one), and the fact of the matter is that the majority of those
males
would have had to have fallen into the age group which would have been
eligable for military service (if not the draft).

Damn few who could go to war stayed behind,

In actuality, since the US armed forces only totalled about 11 plus
million
strong at its peak, your statement is again wrong, since there were some
35
million men serving in the civilian workforce, and even if you were very
generous and said only one-third of those fell within the military's
age-eligibility range, you'd still have one military age male serving in
the
civilian workforce for every man in the military force.

And when we all came back and found that someone our age got a
deferment
for
any reason other than physical we did nott ake kindly to them But those
were
different times with obviously different standards.

Guess you might have taken more kindly to them if you had been smart
enough
to realize that it would have been sort of hard for you to drop bombs that
were never manufactured because there were no younger, skilled, strong men
back in the States to help manufacture them; the women and old men
couldn't
do it all. In the end the contribution of a mobilized US industrial base
to
the war effort was every bit as valuable as that of the military forces,
and
in fact neither would have existed without the other. One has to wonder
how
willing a young, cocky Loo-tenant bombadier-by-golly like yourself, fresh
back from winning the war all by your lonesome, was to go up to a big
brawny
crew of male shipbuilders/railroad workers/etc., and tell them how you did
not take kindly to their contribution to the war effort. Since you still
apparently have the use of your typing fingers, the obvious answer to that
is, "Not very."

Brooks



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




Well said!!!!

"Dave Kearton" wrote in
message ...

"D. Strang" wrote in message
news:bSx2c.10362$m4.4748@okepread03...
| "BUFDRVR" wrote
|
| It's hard for me to believe that you cannot conceptualize that not
everyone
| during times of combat operations sees action. I've got several good
friends
| who, through no fault of their own, have exactly *zero* combat hours.
|
| I used to fly with a navigator who had .5 combat hours. He got it on
the
way
| to Thailand in a C-141 during the Vietnam war.
|
| It's just phenomenal the amount of **** in Art's brain.
|
| Being an Instructor has very little to do with combat. Many combat vets
| take awhile before they can become effective teachers. They tend to be
| perfectionists, and are used to crews who are their peers. Once back at
| the training center, the pace and mistakes cause them to wash students
| out. We had one guy who washed his first three students out, and the
| board reinstated all of them with a new instructor. The bad instructor
| was sent packing.
|
|




OK guys, I've been following this discussion (and others) for a while
now.

I've noticed a fair amount of frustration in both sides of the argument
that's drifting into personal invective. Can we all remember that Art
is one of us, he's a regular here ?


Whether you agree with him or not, perhaps we can all treat him with the
respect due to any senior citizen, any veteran and any gentleman that we
meet somewhere.


Don't get me wrong, I'll be the first to call a spade a spade when some
no-name coward chucks **** at someone here, for no real reason, but some
of the comments that have been flying around in this discussion, simply
show no respect.



I guess I'd like us to seperate what he's saying from who is sayng it and
treat Art with a little more courtesy, as is his due.


In turn, Art can take a deeper breath and do the same.




Thank you gentlemen



Dave Kearton




Yes, a real deep one and back off about six miles...........

T3

"Ed Rasimus" wrote in message
...
On 06 Mar 2004 18:38:56 GMT, (ArtKramr) wrote:

This is a very emotional issue for me. I think of absent friends who
still lie
in foreign graves. Then I think of those who could have gone and didn't.
And
no amount of discussion will convince me that these two calibers of men
were
equal

Arthur Kramer

And, yet you don't seem to respect the opinion of those of us who
served in SEA that the actions of Lt John F. Kerry after his
exceptionally brief service were to the detriment of half a million of
his brothers in arms who were still in harms way. Which doesn't even
begin to address the several hundred who were languishing in NVN
prison camps while he gave aid and comfort to the enemy.

Don't play the lost comrades card with me.


Ed Rasimus
Fighter Pilot (USAF-Ret)
"When Thunder Rolled"
Smithsonian Institution Press
ISBN #1-58834-103-8


Not that I'm a big fan of Kerry, I don't believe voicing one's opinion
against and unjust war where over 50,000 of our brothers died is giving "aid
and comfort to the enemy" Jane Fonda he "ain't"Not even close...........


T3

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

"Pete" wrote in message
...

"ArtKramr" wrote

The Marines who stormed the beaches of the pacific got what they
volunteered
for., The airborne that held Bastogne got what they volunteered for.
The
Air
Corps that took devastating losses over Berlin and Ploesti got what they
volunteered for., The Suubmariners got what they volunteered for.
Maybe
some
of those who didn't volunteer didn't try hard enough. Think that is a
possibility?

Not in the situation I laid, out, no. Higher HQ says go, you go. If they
say
stay here and do other stuff, that's what you do. You follow orders. There
is no AF Form or procedure called "I want to go" except for going on
active
duty in the first place.

The wing in question was the only one in USAFE to not send any
jets/pilots/maintainers. There was no question of 'volunteering'. We were
already on active duty. And we *all* wanted to go.

Similarly, not everyone on active duty during Vietnam saw action in SEA.
There was still a mission several thousand miles away in
Germany/England/Holland/Korea/Japan to handle.

Pete


There was a running joke in the '60's about a guy who got naked with only an
American flag who went down to the draft office and wanted to sign up for
duty in VN, they took one look at him and said
your f'ing crazy, to which he said write it down!!

T3