Aside from the personal side of my dad's Eighth Air Force involvement, two of my neighbors in the 1970s and '80s were D-Day veterans, one at the Ranger raid on the artillery positions at Pont du Hoc, the other at Omaha. The Omaha Beach vet bcame the first Company First Sergeant when the local National Guard outfit was formed just after the Korean War, and by the late '70s most of his old pals had moved on or passed away. The new NG First Sergeant was a pal of mine [and the rigger who packed my reserve parachute] and I filled him in on the origins of his unit. On their next anniversary dinner, you-know-who was their guest of honor. He later told me how he couldn't help noticing that the faces of some of the new guys bore a more than passing resemblance to some of the old hands from his days from the outfit...and now I'm noticing the same thing, only with tank crews. He also told me that he couldn't sleep for the first two or three nights after Omaha Beach, and that it returned to him in his dreams at least once or twice a week, every week, ever since then. And did so until he too passed away in 2004.
Our generals were stick-in-the-muds.
Not entirely- *Pursuit* George and Billy Mitchell certainly were not; but that is stll to be expected after a military purge/downsizing after a major conflict; particularly when it is a mostly-citizen military under arms and a professional military establishment running the show.
For example, the Flying Tigers — Chennault if I recall his name correctly, failed to impress enough US officers with the importance of fighter planes and united-fighter tactics. Why he ended up in China.
In April, 1937, Claire L. Chennault retired as a captin from active duty in the then-Army Air Corps and accepted an offer from Madame Chiang Kai-shek for a three month mission to China to make a confidential survey of the Chinese Air Force. At that time China and Japan were on the verge of war and the fledgling Chinese Air Force was beset by internal problems and torn between American and Italian influence.
Even while the good Captain commanded the American Volunteer Group in combat, his official job was adviser to the Central Bank of China, and his passport listed his occupation as a farmer. Chennault himself stated that he was a civilian advisor to the Secretary of the Commission for Aeronautical Affairs, first Madame Chiang and later T.V. Soong. But he really didn't have to press his case for changes in Chinese fighter- and light bomber- acquisition and tactical employment. The Japanese made it quite clear to the Chinese that unless the Japanese aircraft were driven from the sky, they would be free to do whatever they pleased to the Chinese cities and countryside. The job, the overall result was clear: keep the Japs out of China's skies. That was the strategy. The tactics had to be developed as things went along. And the aircraft supplied by the United States were an easy choice: they were the only thing available at that time with a chance of getting the job done.
I wonder if the pictured survivor of the Jap bombing of Shanghai managed to grow up, to have kids of his/her own. I wonder what those kids might be like today:
I had studied it some. According to Eisenhower’s Lts, the Brits were far more willing to try out new gadgets and tactics. They had a much easier time than we did.
Are you familiar with the efforts of British Major General Percy Hobart and his 79th Division, who studied the failings at the British landing at Dieppe and improvised and engineered ways to overcome those problems? The term *Hobart's Funnies* was sometimes applied.
So far as Brits and *new tactics* you might consider one Major Vladimir Peniakoff [Yes, a Brit, born in Belgium!] usually known as *Popski,* after a newspaper cartoon character of the day, after Australian and New Zealand radio operators gave up on trying to get his name straight. General Field Marshal Sir Bernard Law Montgomery said that Popski's unit, which never numbered more than a hundred or so men, was the most effective intelligence gathering unit of the Second World War.
