Another Billy Michell day....for those of you who know their military history

[rbaker]

My man, The Joint Chief of Staff (the first) USMC Gen Peter Pace relieved of command for cause. what a disgrace. A great Marine stumbled for stating his opposition to the homosexuals and adultery when asked by our left wing news media. How dare he state a good Christian principle!

Man, that made them all very nervous in Congress. He should have known better and kept his thoughts to himself in this politically correct society. He's lucky they didn't tar and feather him and run him out of town sitting backwards on a Mule. Ah the good ole' days. When you pee into the wind, you must accept a little backwash in your face. Bravo, my Man. Now go write a book or something.

[chip anderson]

Have you seen the new luxury car available with the roatating headlights that follow the direction of the steering wheel. Another "new inovation". when did it first appear. Many, many years ago on The "Mitchell" made by, Gen. Billy Mitchell.
Who first found that airplanes could take off for carriers? Billy Mitchell, our government wasn't interested but our friends the Japanese were watching and they were very interested.
Who proved that ships could be sunk by bombs dropped from carrier lauched Airplanes? Billy Mitchell, again our government wasn't interested, but the Japanese were watching.
Who predicted that some day airplanes would fly over a thousand mile an hour? Billy Mitchell. Our government thought he was a fool, but the Germans thought it could be done (they didn't make it but they did make the second jet aircraft which they stole from an Englishman, and given enough time, they would have made the 1000 mile per hour plane.
Gen. Mitchell also made the first car with four wheel brakes, GM and Ford spent a lot of money saying they were unsafe. Then when they drove the Mitchell out of business, they put four wheel brakes on thier cars.

Sallute' General Mitchell!

[DragonLensmanWV]

Ol' Mitchell was a S.O.B. but he was one when we needed him. Seems his biggest problem was in not knowing when to not be one.
A good biography is here:
http://www.homeofheroes.com/wings/part1/5_mitchell.html

I think Chip might be mixing him up with a different Billy Mitchell that headed up GM's design team for decades. I think the first car with a steerable center headlight was the Tucker
http://www.tuckerclub.org/index.php

The Mitchell was a different car:
http://www.tomstrongman.com/ClassicCars/Mitchell/Index.htm

[rbaker]

As any Marine Aviator will tell you the first air operations were performed by Eugene Ely. On November 14, 1910 Eugene Ely took off from deck of cruiser USS Birmingam and on 18 January 1911 he landing on board USS Pennsylvania. (For those of you from the South it was not a single flight nor was it sponsored by NASCAR.)

[chip anderson]

Wasn't the same Billy Mitchell that was with G.M. for all practical purposes, G.M. destroyed General Mitchell's automotive aspriations. I think you will find that General Mitchell was responsible for the air operations described, just not the pilot preforming them.
Had General Mitchell been listened to instead of court martialed, The U.S. would have had such a strong air force WWII and expecially the Japanese part of same would never have ocurred.

[rinselberg]

Not an expert myself, but from what I have read (occasionally and mostly long ago) and seen on TV (more recently), the U.S. actually had the kind of land and carrier-based aircraft that could have made both Pearl Harbor and the Philippines rather costly propositions for the Japanese, instead of the "cake-walk" military operations that in fact transpired, leaving the Japanese almost completely unscathed. The problems were insufficient U.S. pilot training, lack of an up-to-date air defense "doctrine", general military unreadiness and indecision and incompetence at all levels of command up to the very top. The latter reasons, really, more than any lack of pilot training. The few U.S. pilots that did get into the air during the first attacks of World War Two were very effective, I think.

Whoever it was that pushed the development of the B-17 long range bombers before the war came to the U.S. really saved the day, I think.


Will you be the first to submit a correct answer for my recent OptiBoard brain teaser? See Werewolf Test (http://www.optiboard.com/forums/showthread.php?t=22658).

[chip anderson]

Billy Mitchell was WWI, had he been listened to we would have been so far ahead of everyone on one would have concidered any sort of attack in 1941 or probably anytime later.
I think the man responsible for the B17 lauch from carriers was Happ Arnold with a little help from Curtis LeMay.

[rbaker]

That was Lt. Col. Jimmy Dolittle and they were 16 B-25's launched from the USS Hornet on April 18, 1942 for a raid on Tokyo.

[rbaker]

rinselberg – Doctrine must by necessity follow technology and the turn of the century brought many new technologies to the battlefield. New weapons such as the machine gun, tank and aircraft presented challenges that are even with us today. But the real challenge then, as it is now, is the political influences that impact the day to day operations of the warfighter.

[chip anderson]

Actually I think Col. Doolitte lead the raid, don't know if he had anything to do with it's conception although he may have had. I do remember that the raid had to be lauched several hundred miles early because one of the carriers or it's scouts was spotted by a Jap (Yes, this was the correct term at the time and we didn't care if they hated us as we weren't very fond of them at the time) plane.:cheers:

[rbaker]

I just know someone is going to pipe up and excoriate you for using a pejorative term for the wonderful folks who brought us The Rape of Nanking and The Bataan Death March, to cite just a few historical events.

What these detractors seem to forget is that it is necessary to depersonalize a person before you kill him (unless you are a sociopath.) Actually, Lemay was in Europe where he, following the lead of the British, was one of the implementers of the doctrine of strategic bombing which led to strikes like those of Dresden. An unpalatable fact, to Mr. and Mrs. Joe Lunchpail is the fact that warfighting is the height of brutality and it requires the participants to see their enemy as non-human animals. Unless we are willing to see our sons and daughters undergo this transformation of character we had best not unleash the Dogs of War.

So if it is upsetting to you when the old vets refer to past, present and future enemies in a less than politically correct manner, thats just TS.

[DragonLensmanWV]

I just know someone is going to pipe up and excoriate you for using a pejorative term for the wonderful folks who brought us The Rape of Nanking and The Bataan Death March, to cite just a few historical events.

What these detractors seem to forget is that it is necessary to depersonalize a person before you kill him (unless you are a sociopath.) Actually, Lemay was in Europe where he, following the lead of the British, was one of the implementers of the doctrine of strategic bombing which led to strikes like those of Dresden. An unpalatable fact, to Mr. and Mrs. Joe Lunchpail is the fact that warfighting is the height of brutality and it requires the participants to see their enemy as non-human animals. Unless we are willing to see our sons and daughters undergo this transformation of character we had best not unleash the Dogs of War.

So if it is upsetting to you when the old vets refer to past, present and future enemies in a less than politically correct manner, thats just TS.


Don't bother me!:D

Those are the kind of guys you need during those kind of times.If we had some like that now, we might already have Bin Laden and not been in Iraq.