Posted on 12/11/2006 2:33:55 PM PST by kiriath_jearim
There were a few bad actors in the engineers, but dad's guys by and large did their job and did it well. Including lifting and defusing munitions . . . dad says, "When you're 19, you think you're going to live forever."
History (revisionist or otherwise) indicates that they did their jobs and did them well, against great difficulties and challenges...
Results are what count, and the supplies got where they were needed..
We won the war..
They were recognized, decorated, awarded for their accomplishments..
Maybe some of it was political, but most was due to accomplishment..
That speaks for itself..
The entire film can be viewed here. Reagan does a good job of narrating.
Frank,
I do not have any problem with the Tuskegee Airmen as they were very brave and true heroes in both their combat tour and in fighting the bias of the day...
However, their agents with "The National Tuskegee Airmen Inc" are scum as far as I am concerned. They use tactics of the Marfia in do as I say or else...
My late Father was in Italy also during World War Two, so I consider him just as much a hero as anyone. But he was not 100% perfect.
He raised me to not see the color of a man's skin, however I find too many of those with black skin and a liberal or Democratic bent these days are much greater bigots than any of those white men of year ago they forever condem over and over again while limping anyone with white skin into that same kettle...
We should all be Americans! As one of my college profs said back in 1966, "Hey, we are all pink on the inside!"
I just wish some would remember that...
The same thing happened in the Pacific. By the end of the war the great majority of the best Japanese pilots had been killed. And thank god for that. The early allied pilots fought the ace Japanese pilots and with inferior planes to the Japanese Zeros. By the end of the war we had better planes and better pilots...and a lot more of them. Thank god again.
LOL - I knew that would turn up on this thread.
That makes a lot of sense. I'll buy that. Still wish it didn't have to come down to b vs. w.
Some people, when they say the word "Racist" too much, sort of slur it and it sounds like "Raciss". Same with people who used to say "Communist" too much, it came out "Comuniss", and the same applies to Humaniss as well except that's more like "Sekalar Hoomaniss."
Look, these guys are heroes in every sense of the word and to dissect these men at this point in their lives is sort of cruel.
The people who want to "debunk" the need to take Iwo Jima are engaging in an easy, lackadaisacal armchair quarterbacking long after the fact.
Planners could not assume the war would end in the summer of 1945, not by a long shot. Many many more B-29s and their crews would have been saved if the war had lasted a year or two longer, as was quite possible if the atomic bomb program had not worked out (and the planners in the Pacific did not know about such a highly classified program anyway).
Remember also that the strategic and tactical value of holding Iwo Jima had to do with more than the number of B-29s that had to land there, whatever their status. It allowed fighter cover to be positioned within possible range of Japan (with drop tanks), it would have been increasingly valuable as a staging area if Japan had to be invaded, etc.
If the revisionists had to allow for another 12 or 24 months of war (or even more), and a sustained blockade or even invasion of Japan, all their easy calculations would have to change. That's what Nimitz and his planners had to prepare for in the winter of 1944-45.
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