Everyone likes a coarse, concussive slamdown now and then: This guy knocked her off the internet.

Many momentary amusements.

• Years ago there was something about this in a book, but who knows which one. It's fun to think that all that decaying materiel has new value.

• A word origin that;s fun to know.

• Fuggin' weather, man....

• Neutralizing Iran remotely, and not for the first time.

…But look at the scrolling ad for groceries in the left margin and not that the prices for a sheep's head via the internet are a spectacular bargain! Each culture defines technological progress in its own darling way.

• Consider this house.

• Wanna make sure everyone saw this covid story, because it's a crying-on-the-inside kind of joke.

• Sensible people in early November.

• Soap carving.

A rather long but very interesting article on one of the pivotal aircraft in the Battle of Britain that wasn't a Spitfire. WWII buffs will already know what the article's about.

I've heard, by the way, that what almost licked the British wasn't lack of airplanes, which they could build pretty quickly, but the lack of pilots, which took much longer to develop.

Daddy, that a great piece for us non-enthusiasts.

ORD, are you a sports car guy? Did you ever read about the Porsche 917?

I've heard, by the way, that what almost licked the British wasn't lack of airplanes, which they could build pretty quickly, but the lack of pilots, which took much longer to develop. ~ Old RPM Daddy at November 30, 2020 1:49 PM

Lack of experienced and well-trained pilots is what licked the Japanese. Neither the Japanese nor the Germans had created a mechanized society, full of people fascinated by machines. The US had. As a result, the US could turn out a pilot in nine months, where Japan and the European powers needed at least year and often, two.

Of course, "turn out" is a relative term. In the beginning, US pilots often lacked experience in the type of aircraft they would fly into combat, many learning to fly their assigned aircraft type on their first mission. As the pipeline filled up, however, that changed. By the end of the war, a rookie US pilot usually had over 450 hours flight time with around 250 in his assigned aircraft.

The US military realized quickly that the secret to winning a war is logistics - quantity over quality - but quantity where you needed it and not sitting in a supply depot or a training school. We built more aircraft in one year than Japan did in the entire war; and, what's more, we could put pilots in them.

No other nation in that war could have put together a Red Ball Express. No other nation had a population in which driving was a general skill.

ORPMD, you might find this article on the failure of German mechanization in World War II interesting.

"Hitler’s generals, raised on the dogma of Clausewitz and Moltke, could not understand that war is won in the factory." — Joseph Stalin

Today, the US military boasts a logistics capacity that dwarfs that of any adversary we might face. Thirteen years of near-constant warfare in Afghanistan and Iraq have served to hone the US military's ability to supply and maintain forces in the field.

> the US military boasts a logistics
> capacity that dwarfs that of
> any adversary

If only we could say the same for our civilian side.

(I almost said "civilian sector," but had only had one glass of wine, and snapped out of it.)

"Today, the US military boasts a logistics capacity that dwarfs that of any adversary we might face."

Heh. During the 96-hour War crushing Iraq, the USA ran "Bombs-R-Us", delivering munitions to spec within 72 hours or so of the request.

And I heard the Quartermaster General of the US Army was the great-great grandson of the Quartermaster General of the US Army -- for Ulysses Grant.

> the US military boasts a logistics
> capacity that dwarfs that of any
> adversary

I heart that point. Logistics, logistics, logistics. Here follow Three Little Thangs, each of which includes no citation beyond my own foggy memory.

I was listening to the radio in November of 1990, probably NPR, for a discussion of Desert Shield. It was the week before Thanksgiving. A military expert discussed the the provision of troops already in theater, and the preparations for invasion. (IIRC, the population in situ was well over six figures at that point.) It wasn't a particularly colorful chat, but I'll never forget his closing point, offered a week before Thanksgiving. Paraphrase: 'The magnitude of this airlift is unprecedented in world history; never has so much materiel been moved so far so fast for so many. But there haven't been any airstrip accidents, and statistically, that's unlikely to last. The numbers *will* catch up to us. If you hear of an incident in the days ahead, it DOES NOT mean the effort is going badly.' I'll never forget it. A plane crashed four days later. Logistics is about science & brains.

Embarrassed not to remember for certain which it was... But in one of the Gulf wars, probably Desert Storm, post-assault media coverage included an interview with a teenage-ish girl... A recruit of slender accomplishment and limited leadership prospects, so to speak, from some backwater heritage. She spoke of the chaos and violence of the first hours, which are present no matter how much training and planning is provided. She said that as the shitty skies were falling all around her, she had one guiding principle, paraphrased: 'If our fucking invasion fails, it won't be because I didn't drive this fuel truck to where the troops are expecting it to be as they break through the lines.' Her story of perseverance followed. She and the truck made it. Logistics is about courage.

Years later, someone pointed out that no other nation on the planet can put that many soldiers that far from home and keep them in fighting trim as can the United States. In Desert Storm, some soldiers had been there a few days, some a few weeks, and some for six freaking months. The fighters from any other nation on the planet, including the Chinese, will start crawling out of their skin four days after arriving, or certainly after two weeks. All the good food will be gone quickly, or will be rationed only to officers. They're kids with guns, lonely and far from home. Someone will find out how to get alcohol from the local village, or some ethnic factions will start picking fights in their tent city. Logistics is about discipline as well as provisioning.


I appreciate (and sometimes participate in) the new and popular American reticence about foreign wars. Children and other living things, Babe, I get it.

But we're throwing away, or at least recklessly belittling, one of the great treasures of civilization, and one which is ours exclusively, when our military becomes a plaything for theories of Woke Studies majors regarding the historical role of Autistic Wheelchair Lesbians of Color in American warmaking.

Seriously, I saw some kiosks for that shit at the USAF museum in Dayton a few years ago.

In his book, The Iraq War, John Keegan supplied the following observation of American logistical prowess:

British observers who travelled with the Americans have testified to the awesomeness of the spectacle. “The armor had halted,” a British colonel described to me, “dozens of vehicles abreast in the first line and dozens more in the lines behind them. Suddenly out of the dust appeared every logistic vehicle you can imagine, tankers, water bowsers, ammunition trucks, mobile repair workshops, ration trucks. As they stopped, crews began connecting up hoses, hoisting pallets, throwing off crates. The contents were seized by the combat troops and disappeared inside the fighting vehicles as fast as they could be stowed. Sooner than you could imagine, the combat echelon was re-supplied and ready to move forward again.” Re-supply, quite as much as firepower or air support, was to be the secret of the coalition’s overwhelming of Saddam’s forces.

In an article I read a few years ago about a flight into Bagram Air Base, the reporter was sitting next to a Belgian colonel as they snuck in for a landing. They were sneaking because the enemy liked to shoot missiles at planes that were lit up and slowed for a landing.

As a safety precaution, incoming planes had to fly in total darkness and land at high speed. The colonel told the reporter that "only the Americans could do this." No other country possessed the capacity to fly a heavily-laden transport into a hostile airfield at high speed on instruments.

I remember a description of the descent of W's Air Force One for the Thanksgiving visit that went like that. The reporters had been flattered by the invitation to come along, not imagining there might be so much as a moment of discomfort on that safest of all aircraft....