Posted on 04/14/2005 5:15:57 PM PDT by Lysandru
CLASHING MILITARY CULTURES
By RALPH PETERS
April 13, 2005 -- LAST month, I sat in the of fice of Col. Jon "Dog" Davis, a veteran Marine aviator. While at war, the Corps' pilots had seen a rise in their accident rate. Davis was determined to do something about it. I wanted to be sympathetic, so I said, "Well, you're flying some very old aircraft."
Davis, a taut, no-nonsense Marine, looked me in the eye and said, "They may be old, but they're good. That's no excuse."
snip
Morally bankrupt, the Air Force is willing to turn a blind eye to the pressing needs of soldiers and Marines at war in order to get more of its $300-million-apiece junk fighters. With newer, far more costly aircraft than the Marines possess, the Air Force pleads that it just can't defend our country without devouring the nation's defense budget.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Again, I am asking (asked earlier to someone else), give me references to the charge that the USAF awards valor medals to guys who have not faced enemy action.
I need references.
>>Silly little uninformed me.<<
At least you got that part right.
Damn. . .well stated. . .wish I had scrolled down the thread before I started posting. Would have saved a lot of bandwidth.
Ralph Peters is always a promoter of the grunt on the ground who does the toughest job. Not one Air Force man has lost his life in this Iraq war
>>I'm just having a little inter-service fun.<<
Really.
In that case every post I sent to your attention was in jest.
Lighten up, lady.
"As an active duty Airman I can tell you that we do not recieve free cable...at least not at any base that I've ever heard of. We pay for it just the same as everyone else."
Same here. No free cable in the rooms, but we did have cable in the common day room (Keesler AFB), paid for by the Air Force I presume.
In another, possibly related, story, a check was received today, to purchase 5,000 sail boats, and begin small craft training for 10,000 mexican national coyotes (coyote is a name for a border-crossing facilitator). After the Minutemen set up to shut down the rest of the border, the sea will be the next entry point. President Bush has made his wishes well known, to continue to provide cheap labor to his constituents...
I'm sorry. Here is what Ralph Peters said--->>>
How low can a service go? Not a single Air Force fighter pilot has lost his life in combat in Iraq. But the Air Force is willing to slander those who do our nation's fighting and dying.
Former Elmendorf airman dies in Iraq April 21, 2003 - by Maria Downey Anchorage, Alaska - Elmendorf has lost a former airman in a combat mission in Iraq.
Capt. Eric Das of Amarillo, Texas was killed in action April 7 when his F-15E Strike Eagle went down. The 30-year-old pilot was assigned to the 90th Fighter Squadron at Elmendorf Air Force Base from around January 1998 to May 2001.
Das was most recently assigned to the 333rd Fighter Squadron in Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina.
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CHRIS KAHN Associated Press Writer Apr 23, 2003
ROANOKE, Va. (AP) _ The second of two Air Force officers killed in an F-15E Strike Eagle aircraft in Iraq has been identified as a South Boston man, the Pentagon said Wednesday.
Maj. William R. "Salty" Watkins III, 37, was the weapons system officer on the plane when it went down April 7 during a combat mission near Tikrit, north of Baghdad, according to military officials.
The Pentagon has not said whether the plane was shot down or was lost under other circumstances.
The pilot was Capt. Eric B. Das, of Amarillo, Texas. His remains were identified last week.
Watkins leaves behind his wife of five years, Maj. Melissa Watkins, an intelligence officer stationed at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina, and his 11-month-old son, William. Melissa Watkins is expecting the couple's second child in August.
"Bill's legacy will continue in the lives of his two children as it will in the memories that each of us holds dear of this truly caring and loving man," the family said in a statement released Wednesday. "We have always been and will continue to be proud to have known him even for this very short time."
Watkins' family was told he was missing shortly after the crash. On Tuesday, they found out he was dead.
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What is it with Freepers who wish more USAF officers had died? I was shot at (poorly) over Iraq - does the fact they missed mean I'm a coward?
Oh, but wait - we now have weapons that make it MORE ACCURATE to drop a bomb from 20,000 than from 300. The USAF is OBVIOUSLY squandering money to pamper their crews (altho I am old enough to remember dropping using napalm numbers - it was more like scraping than dropping).
Unlike those who attack the USAF, I'm not trying to make myself look big by taking cheap shots at others. I have a son driving in convoys in Iraq right now. My daughter was there last summer, and her husband (USMC infantry) has been there as well.
But the fact that Iraq didn't dare launch a plane speaks volumes about how well the USAF does its job - as does the fact that we spent years flying over Iraq getting shot at daily without taking a single loss.
Unfortunately, myopic Ralph Peters wants the grunts on the ground to start dying from air attacks before he'll agree to build new planes...and by then, it will be too late.
My previous post corrected that. Not one USAF fighter pilot has been killed in this Iraq war
Even the military installations are different. A Marine base is well-maintained and perfectly groomed, but utterly without frills. Guest quarters are Motel 6, not the St. Regis. Air Force bases are the country clubs of la vie militaire.
>>My previous post corrected that. <<
No sir, it did not.
>>Not one USAF fighter pilot has been killed in this Iraq war<<
Previous post by Mr Rogers described a F-15E aircrew that died. F-15E is a fighter; the aircrew are fighter aircrew.
Rogers said it best.
What do these toads want? More to die? Tactics, doctrine, strategy and training ensure we avoid dying. That is the aim of going into the fight: kill the other guy and avoid being killed in the process.
A nearly indestructible aircraft. I was evaced (1968) on one that took a lot of hits getting out of Hue. One crewman with a roll of green tape kept patching up the hydraulics. We made it into Phu Bai trailing smoke and parts – but made it.
Another:
Airman Killed in Iraq
SSgt. Dustin W. Peters, 25, was killed July 11 when the Army convoy in which he was riding in Iraq was hit by an “improvised explosive device,” according to a USAF news release.
Peters, a native of El Dorado, Kan., was attached to the Army’s 494th Truck Company at Balad AB, Iraq. He had deployed from Little Rock AFB, Ark., to the 332nd Air Expeditionary Wing in February. He was on his fourth deployment since arriving at Little Rock in November 2000.
AH! A US Navy carrier – now that’s good living!
Evrn if they had bad equipment.. consider this..
During World War II, near the end of it, if you either had a rifle or were in a jeep with a .50 cal machine gun, you were expected to go head to head with a Panzer tank--those that refused were considered either cowards or traitors. This was part of the battle of the bulge. Panzers, in addition to the big gun, had a top mounted machine gun that could rotate on the turret, and a pair of front mounted machine guns that pointed straight ahead.. The jeeps with a crew of two or three had one that would just drive, one with a rifle in his hand and grenades, and one manning the machine gun, and they would go in between panzers, the rifleman providing harassment fire to keep the tank driver from popping his head out much, and when he did, throwing a grenade in the tank. The machine gunners were firing at the weakspots on the panzer, along the sides and the vents near the back shielding the fuel tank. Lost many doing that, but the Germans lost most of their remaining effective resistance to allied forces...
I bid two "Zoomies" in a Minuteman Command Module. Many, many megatons of thermonuclear death from a couple of skinny kids who spend their spare time studying for a Master's degree in Management. Those two are so deadly that our politicians have been afraid to ever unleash them.
Rambo was a Hollywood creation.
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