More veterans removed at Vietnam War Memorial

When I first saw this story, I assumed that it almost had to be a hoax. After the previous incidents with veterans and the added expenditures involved in closing open spaces to keep veterans from paying their respects to the Honored Dead one would assume that even a novice politician would move to staunch the bleeding. But instead, it seems that the White House is doubling down, as reported at The Weekly Standard.

Via William Jacobson, NBC’s affiliate in Washington, D.C. reports that police ordered tourists and Vietnam war veterans who were visiting the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall to leave the memorial at one point on Friday.

After one group of veterans went around the barricade, “the park ranger told them the wall was closed,” NBC’s Mark Seagraves reported. “Later another group of vets showed up and moved the barricades. At that point, the memorial filled with vets and tourists. That’s when police came and moved everyone out.”

As usual, it sounds like our veterans accounted themselves in a professional dignified manner, but were not going to put up with any nonsense.

The veterans then moved the barricade and walked down to the wall to pay their respects. But a flood of tourists followed even though the memorial is closed to the general public.

“The consensus among the group of Vietnam veterans was we’re going to go anyway. We’ll go through the barricade,” North Carolina resident Reid Mendenhall said.

U.S. Park Police arrive to the scene, asked everyone to leave and put the barricade back into place.

Conflict over the closure of D.C.’s war memorials has drawn a lot of controversy this week.

Yes… a lot of controversy is putting it mildly. The President can pick all the battles with congressional Republicans that he likes and probably not draw too much political fire from the middle. But if you wanted to conduct a poll of who is least likely to be blamed for anything in this country by the general public, veterans visiting war memorials would have to come in somewhere near the bottom of the list, behind possibly only puppies.

How many more of these stories can the administration sustain before the “no compromise, no negotiations” crowd realizes that they’re going to have to come to the table? Assuming, that is, that the stories actually make it onto the national news.

What Mr. Huey Hotshot did should have gotten his @ss FEB’d & court martialed right then & there.

With semirigid rotor systems (Huey, AH-1G, OH58A) your worst nightmare is the rotor system “unloading”. Wild maneuvering (like rolling inverted) can impart negative G’s & then the blades instead of flexing upward are suddenly forced downward & stressed in the opposite direction they were designed for & then everything from mast bumping to slicing the tail boom happens & then it’s sayonara GI.

Now...an RTT (return to target) is different. You spot something just beneath you through the chin bubble. You roll the A/C inverted & at the same time pull every last ounce of pitch and point the nose at the target, then the induced rotor thrust outweighs the fall of the A/C & then you roll out either level or aimed at what you had just spotted beneath your A/C.

Cobra pilots are trained in this. Hotdogs in a Huey or OH-58 will attempt it. RTT enables the attack bird to engage a target without making a turn.

Now... I learned to fly Hueys on UH-1Bs & UH-1Ds. Main difference between the D & H model is shaft horsepower, 1300 or so on the H which not only means greater lift but reduces the occurrence of main rotor rpm bleed off which is a huge factor in high density altitude environments (moist hot air produces less lift). Hotshot no doubt assumed that all that extra shaft horsepower would also prevent rotor unloading when he did his dangerous maneuver.

Don’t know where this is going except I was too scared of my own limitations to ever do stupid things in the aircraft. Especially with pax on board. Something about old pilots & bold pilots don’t mix.

Anyway, neat story. So Roger Ramjet claimed a complete 360 loop? From the noises you describe he no doubt overtorqued the main rotor system & the tail rotor as well. They should have made him buy that helicopter & I wonder why the AVUM or AVIM maintenance officers didn’t find something really fishy in a brand new A/C getting trashed that quickly and anyway I wonder what remarks he entered in the logbook, that should have tipped everybody off.

I salute you, sir. Had I been born 3-5 years earlier, I could have walked in your shoes. In the summer of 1974, I had a job working to recruit college kids to ROTC. Since I signed up not a single one, I made nothing.

That fall, they offered us a paper to sign releasing us of all further military obligations (along with any future benefits which went along with it) in return for checking out. About 90% of us signed the paper and got out. A few of my friends and classmates chose to stay and compete for the dwindling number of military positions. Most of us signed with mixed emotions.

If this country is ever to be righted again, I suppose a similar program could be instituted to clear out the "openly gay" element.

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