Posted on 05/24/2016 10:59:57 AM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
More than four decades after the fall of Saigon, Washington is still holding on to various classified details about its fight in Southeast Asia. Among the Pentagon media arm’s still-secret records are photos and video of updated World War II-era bombers the U.S. Air Force sent to hit Laos.
In May 1966, pilots and crews from the 603rd Air Commando Squadron brought eight B-26K Invaders from their base in Louisiana to Nakhon Phanom Air Base in Thailand. Desperate to stem the flow of troops and supplies flowing down the Ho Chi Minh Trail from North Vietnam, the flying branch had sent the modified planes to help hunt down enemy convoys.
“It was a fantastic improvement over the old aircraft,” Air Force colonel Joseph Kittinger, a veteran of the deployment, said in an official interview in 1974. “[But] the aircraft wasn’t designed for what we were using it for.”
War Is Boring obtained this and other previously secret internal oral histories through the Freedom of Information Act. As of April 2016, the Defense Media Activity said it had at least two classified items relating to these sometimes hair-raising missions in their archive.
Well before the United States became embroiled in its war in Vietnam, the Douglas B-26 Invader had a storied history in the American military.
Originally called the A-26, the planes had attacked German and Japanese forces during World War II, bombed North Korean and Chinese formations during the Korean War and become a sometimes infamous symbol of small wars and covert actions in the early stages of the Cold War.
For its time, the twin-engine Invader boasted an impressive top speed of over 350 miles per hour combined with a range of 1,400 mile
(Excerpt) Read more at warisboring.com ...
“and thank you (I guess) for the coffee nose-flush your tag line just caused.”
I need to figure out how to turn my tag line into a graphic.
You’ll enjoy the McMaster book. He began it as a thesis when he was a junior Army officer. He’s now a Lieutenant General, a four star, and maybe one of the few that gives hope for the future of the military after the Obama depravity is gone. There’s a number of youtubes featuring McMaster, and they are well worth watching.
“Now we won the Iraq war. But the aftermath ...not so much (sarcasm).”
That was another fool’s errand brought to us by Bush the Younger and his band of Democracy Project utopians.
In their dream world religion and culture, including Islam, wasn’t something to worry about and so could be ignored. All you had to do was kill their evil dictator, give everyone the vote, and voila! paradise would ensue. Idiots.
I understand that and you are so right. We won that war and the Democrats could not stand it!! the anti war movement was totally humiliated by the great nixon 49 state slaughter of that commie loving McGovern and were out for blood— so they just erased the great victory by stopping the guns and economic support of that country after incredible sacrifice in blood! It is the greatest political criminal act this side of the holocaust. Over one million abandoned Vietnamese died in “retraining” (brain wash) prisons . Thousand drowned like rats at sea trying to escape — remember the “boat people”. My God, what crime the Democrats committed. President Ford called a joint session of Congress ( very unusual) and literally begged the Democrats not to destroy what we had paid for with our blood to no avail. — not a word of history on this . You ask a high school kid who fought in the VietNam war and it will make “watter’s world” look like think tank. Travesty.
There are well documented reasons why Bush went into Iraq but I have always believed a major factor was the fact that Saddam tried to assassinate his father. That ... I can understand.
They should left a harsh dictator in place.
The money — it was only the money. Kissinger’ s book and life do NOT bear out the “ baked in the cake” scenario. We abandoned them after incredible sacrifice because of the anti-war pro communist Democrats in congress cutting off the money. IMO
“They should left a harsh dictator in place.”
That seems to be what is required in the Muslim world. I think Bush the Elder understood that, and it’s why the Kuwait War stopped at the Iraq border.
But Dubya was heavily influenced by the band of neocon goofballs he surrounded himself with, and Dubya’s philosophy was closer to Woodrow Wilson on steroids than anything resembling foreign policy realism.
The U.S. Army owned and flew those CV-2 Caribous in support of our U.S. Army Special Forces A Camps located along the Cambodian border until the U.S. Air Force took them and renamed them C7-A Caribous sometime around May 1967.
When the Army flew CV-2s, they were usually piloted by Warrant Officers with SP5 Crew Chiefs and wouldn't hesitate to land on our dirt runways, but when the Air Force took them, they were usually piloted by Lieutenant Colonels or Majors with Master Sergeant Crew Chiefs and would only land their C7As on paved runways.
Please pass my thanks to your Dad. Those CV-2 Caribous were used for everything from resupply to medevac and were one of our greatest assets.
That is correct history. That is accurate and factual history as apposed to NO HISTORY. There is no mention of this war in “Common CORE”. It is wiped out of history because you have to get the point of assassination of a country by the Democrats cutting off the money. It is too painful for some to face knowing all the death and destruction that followed. But we write this in the face of every hope and attempt that this history is never passed down. It’s absolute truth.
Damn, that sucker is armed for bear.
Perhaps but I don't think Bush I had the stomach to go into Iraq itself and the bloodbath. Bush II proved that could be done and the conquer of Iraq did not take that long. Had they placed a strong dictator in place in Iraq I think it would have been successful. To your point Bush II had ridiculous idealistic ideas about democracy in Iraq.
“The money — it was only the money. Kissinger’ s book and life do NOT bear out the “ baked in the cake” scenario. “
It doesn’t matter what Kissinger thought, he wasn’t around in 1964 when the no-win strategy was decided upon.
McNamara and Bundy and McNaughton were the architects of the policy when it originated in 1964 and they explicitly acknowledged that their strategy wasn’t one that involved victory. It’s in their memos that McMaster cites.
Their goal was too discourage Hanoi from keeping the fight going. But they were lawyers and didn’t know what the hell they were talking about. Pentagon war gamers had already predicted that the gradualism strategy would just harden Hanoi’s position and result in eventual defeat for our side. Hanoi was willing to endure far heavier casualties than McNamara and Bundy and McNaughton thought they would accept. But Hanoi got a vote on that and all that they had to do was wait us out.
In Vietnam, a Navy pilot got his first “kill” against a MiG 17 flying a Sky raider.
Bush the Elder chose foreign policy realists as advisors, Brent Scrowcroft being a prime example. Scrowcroft was a leading critic of Dubya’s plan for invading Iraq.
In WWII we had an entire Army division that did nothing other than reestablish civil government as our front lines passed through. The Dubya and Rumsfeld geniuses thought that they knew better and so disposed of that entirely, guaranteeing that there would be chaos behind the front line. Which of course there was.
But even if we had used a civil affairs division we wouldn’t have known how to deal with the intractable Sunni-Shia split among the population. Of course among Dubya’s neocons such concerns were inconsequential- it was only in the real world that such things matter.
Ted “Swimmer” Kennedy’s grave in Arlington is well guarded. Not from those with full bladders & reason to hate him but from the homeless, because Scotch fumes continue to rise from his grave to this day, which they find irresistible.
Sometimes old tools are still the best tools to get a job done right.
...
Like 60 year old B-52’s. The B-26’s were less than half that age when the were used in Vietnam.
>>In WWII we had an entire Army division that did nothing other than reestablish civil government as our front lines passed through. The Dubya and Rumsfeld geniuses thought that they knew better and so disposed of that entirely, guaranteeing that there would be chaos behind the front line. Which of course there was.
In WWII we had military proconsuls like Lucius Clay and Douglas MacArthur running things in the defeated countries, men with some sense who understood the military and what a militarily-defeated country looked like. Post Saddam, Dubya had Paul Bremer, a clueless striped-pants State Department type. This very poor decision by Dubya did not help our cause.
“. Post Saddam, Dubya had Paul Bremer, a clueless striped-pants State Department type. This very poor decision by Dubya did not help our cause.”
Yep, one more brilliant decision by the ever crafty Dubya. In the wake of a war you needed someone who could guarantee that anarchy and gangs didn’t seize power. Instead Dubya chose Bremer.
Restoring order was easier in Europe and Japan which by culture were more orderly than Iraq’s society of mutually hating Islamic factions.
I saw some C-119s that had a small jet mounted on top, looked like the same kind as the C-123s had two of. A J-47, maybe? I guess they made gunships of of those, too, but I never saw any of those.
I liked the Caribou. De Havilland made some tough birds. They used to drop off mail and parts out front of our work area. Sometimes replacement troops. Kind of like a city bus. One would come along every hour or two. Those pilots would run the engines up and let the brakes off while pulling back on the yoke and the front tires were off the ground instantly. Talk about STOL. Amazingly agile but an easy target, too. Interesting about your Dad. Did he fly them?
The Kuwait war didn’t stop at the Iraq border. Look at any desert storm map.
This is a secret???
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