Posted on 10/09/2004 6:51:06 PM PDT by neverdem
I have no idea who Strangelove was based on. Edward Teller perhaps?
Ping for one of the greatest films of all time.
One of my favorite comedies. So many funny lines.
True, 7MMmag.
Curtis LeMay was the POC and Go-To Guy when the Roos-skis rolled around Berlin and began their Blockade/Embargo of the city. And is a personal God of mine.
LeMay initiated and laid the groundwork for the Berlin Airlift. Getting what C-47s and C-54s he could in Europe and the UK (and later the US) to begin flying in supplies of wheat and coal.
Though he took the wrong approach in making the flights more of a race. Which resulted in accidents and crashes. And his being replaced. Rather than the steady constant fall of a raindrop on a stone.
From there LeMay, became the fire-breathing Father of SAC!
What struck me about the film, then and now. Is that the cast. With Heavy Hitters like Scott and Hayden, most noted for drama (The Hustler, Asphalt Jungle) Slipped seamlessly into their comdeic roles and truly brought them to life!
Jack.
I'm also a LeMay fan. But the Berlin Airlift wasn't his idea (though he made it work and saved the city). The first such project was in the China-Burma-India Campaign, after the Japanese took control of Burma. Army Air Corp pilots (and a few American and other civilian cargo pilots) supplied Brits, Nationalist Chinese and a few Americans from India. Flying the Hump was the first Berlin Airlift.
It didn't exactly make the Soviets look good either. It's just good old fashioned nihilism.
I maintain that the ominous quote from LeMay notwithstanding, the General and all SAC commanders who followed him were bound to their oath, would never condone or encourage the unauthorized release of nuclear weapons without presidential approval, unless it was clearly demonstrated beyond doubt that the presidential line of authority no longer existed, in which case pre-planning would carry the day.
The fact is, SAC's psychological screening program obviously did the job because nobody in our armed forces has ever gone berserk or tried to fire a nuke on their own without authorization.
Dr Strangelove, like "Fail-Safe", was fiction and may have borrowed from factual instances and data, but the nuclear disasters they portrayed were never even close to actually occurring, except in the minds of the anti-nuclear crowd who believed in unilateral disarmament.
One of the things I find funny is that the Soviets are never portrayed as having problems with failsafes, etc. They lost a bunch of subs, had a mutiny on a destroyer (that almost made it to safety!), shot down innocent airliners (that they KNEW were airliners!), irradiated parts of the Ukraine, apparently have misplaced some nukes, and generally effed up on a regular basis - but noooooo!, they would never have a problem with their military. Not the Worker's Paradise - they'd never screw up like we would.
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