Had Rutan designed the B-17...

[Ollie]

Oh nice!  Sometimes it gets dicey!

I remember my first 5 hours in a 22, right before I was able to control it somehow in a hover...  My, was it interesting!!

22 is lots of fun, but you have to watch the power, as there's not plenty of it, even alone in it.  Stay in the green, and try to stay below 24", because above 25" you have to tell the mecanic about it.

The 44 on the other hand is another story.  Two on board, it climbs at a brisk 1 200'/m in a hover.  He he he...

 B)  

Fort Bragg?  I flew over that a couple of times in a Navajo, might do so again next winter in a 208...      

[Gary]

Geeze Frank.
On so many levels, thank you. And not just for the models either.

Ya know, when you think about it, Guns a Go Go is really a WIF in 1 to 1 scale. Who'd a thunk of using great big chopper as a great big chopper. (besides Alvis) The bigger question on my mind however is a bit more solem. I wonder how many guys, thanks to Guns a Go-Go, have the chance to die peacefully in their beds. Have heard the laughter of their grandchildren. Have seen the sun set on April 21st 1984, not that there was anything important on April 21st 1984, but they got to see it anyway.  

[OldHooker]

The bigger question on my mind however is a bit more solem. I wonder how many guys, thanks to Guns a Go-Go, have the chance to die peacefully in their beds. Have heard the laughter of their grandchildren. Have seen the sun set on April 21st 1984, not that there was anything important on April 21st 1984, but they got to see it anyway.

First of all, thank you!  

Some of the MOST heart warming events associated with the entire reorganization experience, are the unknown faces that show up at our Reunions... hesitant about mixing in, but after being approached, tell the tale of a day they'll NEVER forget!    Some to the point of a trembling breakdown, when we can ID some of the crew that were actually involved, and have them shake hands personally!     Their stories are frightening... their scars are real... and the utter RELEASE of so many demons they've accumulated over the years, just by being able to say "Thank you", and do it from the heart!

One in particular comes to mind.... Mr. Hank Calonkey, who was a Grunt with D-1-12 at Tam Quan....  after their squad was ambushed and ran out of ammo, they were laying behind some shallow rice paddy berms listening to the NVA soldiers taunt them, throwing rocks and saying; "We're coming, GI, (laughter), we're going to get you GI"!     He said he remembers looking at the blades of grass beside his face and 'sqenching' his eyes, remembering how he use to imagine them as jungle vegetation when he was a child back at home.

Two of the ACH-47's were returning from an LZ Prep when they intercepted the desperate call from the Squad Leader... "They've got us pinned down, we can't move, somebody please help us!"     After establishing a grid, the Go-Go'ers swept in on long gun-runs. {Hank said they could hear rounds impacting before they heard the helicopters coming}    In what was obviously a confusing moment, the two big Gunships settled into a hover directly over the troopers, doing pedal turns, firing everything they had into the NVA who was less than 40yds away!

He pulled up his pants leg and showed the large burn scars, where the scalding brass from one of the 20mm's piled up on him.... "As if Hell itself had entered the battlefield", he said, then they were gone as quickly as they came.     Hank said that nothing short of being physically re-born could amaze him any more than the turn of events that day.

At the first Reunion... I watched the Pilot and four Gunners, who were on "Easy Money" that particular day, break down and cry like babies when Hank carried his little granddaughter to them, and holding out her little hand, said "Thank you"!     Sometimes it difficult to see any rhyme or reason to things, at the time.... until you witness  something like this, and it all just kinda falls into place!

There are many other such accounts that have made their way to us.... an aspect of the process no one really expected, but turned out to be a great motivating factor.      Yes, many were ridiculed and spit on when they returned home... they were called Baby Killers and all sorts of vile names by those who've never had to leave the comforts of their living room!     Then to see EACH former Go-Go member take their turn hugging the old Grunts neck.... people they didn't even know before, and to see how the Grunts face changed right before our very eyes!
He could finally breath easy it seems.... in fact, everyone could!  

Here's to the Grunts!  

Take care,
Frank

[nev]

when a 7.62 round came through the right side cockpit window and hit Barry in the face. The impact tore his nose off and evacuated his left eyeball

Y'know, this is one of the things that I often ponder.  In war the difference between life and death is often so marginal that I wonder where chance ends and providence begins.

A fraction of a mm difference in the aim of the gun that fired that round and he would have been killed instantly.  His head being in a slightly different position would have given the same result, as would a thousand other variables.

"There but for the grace of God go I" seems appropriate.

BTW, moving story above OldHooker.

[Gary]

I remind my students whenever I have the opportunity that politicians decide and soldiers are duty bound to follow those decisions regardless of the issues we in our comfy living rooms wish to debate. Your war, if for nothing else taught people here something, but it seemed to take twenty years for the lesson to take hold.

The present conflict the US and the UK are involved in can be debated as to it's moral correctness till the cows come home. But when the boys come home at least thay come home to a people, while divided on the issue, stand united in greeting them with open arms.

I think it's groups like yours who have made the public realize the horrible injustice they painted on the Veitnam Vets. It's groups like yours that are making those guys comming home now, heros, not villians.

[OldHooker]

Only by grace...


Ed Zaber's windshield.
Ed was copilot for Carl Vertrees answering a call to go to Soc Trang for troops to help defend Can Tho during the first wave of ground attacks of the 1968 Tet Offensive. Ed was leaning slightly to the left to monitor engine starting, when a bullet came through the center of the windshield. In his normal position, it would have got him between the eyebrows!

~


Ed Zaber, 31 Jan 68.
   Here is a man who is happy to be alive, and a little lucky too!    Note the bullet hole in his helmet and the blood just right of his mouth.    A piece of plexiglass from the windshield made a small cut.     Photo taken in the Hillclimber Can Tho Ops.

That helmet sits on Ed's fireplace mantel today, with the pencil still in it.  


If My Wife Finds Out:
When one finds themself in the middle of a hostile land, knowing that if the wrong person sees you, it's all over... you concentrate on how to get out of all this in one piece!      Politics/Negotiating Power/Special Interest/News Media/Popular Opinion.... none of that means a thing when there are [strike]well trained soldiers[/strike] 'people' out there wanting to kill you!      

The Soldiers in Iraq deserve our support and admiration, because like you said, they are HERO's ALL!  

Thanks, and take care,
Frank

[Ollie]

Good show OldHooker.

My salute to soldiers everywhere, 'save for blood thirsty SS!

     

[lancer]

Good show OldHooker.

My salute to soldiers everywhere, 'save for blood thirsty SS!

   

Don't forget the NKVD;Gestapo;and the majority of the Red Army

[Ollie]

Frontoviks weren't that bad in the Red Army.  The second rate troops were pretty evil though.

And NKVD and Gestapo are not soldiers, they are murderes.

 

[Gary]

I wonder Lee how you regard the Japanese and their actions during the war years before and during WW2? You are quite blunt about the SS and I find myself in total agreement. Those bastards were aquanted with the Genevia Convention and the matters of honour expected from any Western power. What they did by their own standards counted as attrocities. And lets not forget what happend to the Jewish people.
But myself, I am at kind of a loss as to my feelings regarding the Japanese. Their code of conduct, the way they were trained and raised and their traditions of Bushido that were reborn during the expansionist period didn't recognise their enemies as anything other than something far less than human once they surrendered. The average Japanese had little western knowledge and certainly were not trained in the edicate of Western military conduct. In fact many during the war crimes trials argued that they fought honourably by the standards they were accustomed to. Our western standards being different caused considereable difficulties.
Japanese rarely surrendered, their honour didn't allow it. Nor did they understand their enemie's surrender. They saw it as dishonouring themselves and thus giving up their human and personal rights. Civilians didn't fare well either. But there again, the Japanese perspective dictates that they are not much more than a nusance and well enough to kill them to make room for a nice Japanese family to move into their home.
Still I am at a loss. The brutality is simply that, brutality. They slaughtered entire cities and on a scale that would make an SS trooper cringe. I don't know where to place my thoughts on this one simply because while bushido give rules and conduct, the age of the samurai warrior pretty much died in the 1600's.  

[The Rat]

Good points about the Japanese, I've often thought the same thing. I also think that the benefit of dropping the A-bombs was not that they ended the war quickly, it was a foregone conclusion and Japan would have quit soon anyway. But the impact of those two bombs sent cultural shock waves throughout Japanese society, forcing them to immediately examine, and drop, the bushido philosophy which helped get them into it.

And since the subject has been so obviously broached, let me say that I am confused by the philosophy, from both the 'hawks' and the 'doves', which says that if one opposes a war you therefore also oppose the troops. I was against the war in Viet Nam, and I am against the current conflict in Iraq, but I will never speak out against the people in the front lines who are simply doing their duty. One day there may be a war I agree with, and I certainly would expect them to be out there saving my sorry arse. I spent ten years with an infantry regiment in the Canadian Armed Forces Reserve, and although I never saw combat I can appreciate what it means. I have drank, caroused, and womanized with veterans from WWI onwards, Dieppe soldiers who still carried physical and emotional scars, Korean war participants who were serving there when I was born, and I feel honoured and privileged to have known each and every one of them. My thoughts are with those serving now, and I hope they come home soon and safely.

I raise a glass to them all!    

[Ollie]

Amen brother!

 

[Madoc]

Wooksta,

...the Americans were quite frankly incompetent at pursuing the Japanese war criminals...

...the Japanese got off lightly...

Really?  So, you would say that our killing almost six million Japanese (5,964,000 est. by R.J. Rummel) of which "only" 1.5M were Japanese troops therefore equates to getting off lightly, right?

As to the Japanese war criminals, they weren't prosecuted (or not prosecuted) solely by the US.  The International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE) was set up in Tokyo by the _Allies_ and it included judges from eleven Allied nations: Australia, Canada, China, France, Great Britain, India, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the Philippines, the Soviet Union and the US.  The IMTFE ran for two and a half years and tried all the "Class A" war criminals.  If there's blame to be handed out over the "incompetent" pursuit of Japanese war criminals than Britain gets as equally tarred with that brush as does the US.

The fact is, the _Allies_ determined just how intensively to pursue and prosecute Japan's war criminals.  Also, that sour taste left in many an Allied mouth that Japan's crimes "went unpunished" is largely due to how the Japanese have acted since the war ended.  The Germans have done their level best to acknowledge their crimes and make what amends they can.

The Japanese have most decidedly not.  They've done everything they can to ignore, dismiss, evade, shirk, belittle, and deny their crimes.  Some of this is a cultural thing relating to the much touted Asian desire to "save face." But the majority of it is a lasting national failing on their part.  Nor is it anything accidental.  From the moment the Japanese finally decided to call it quits they also decided to do everything in their power to try and deny their crimes while playing their "victim" status as a result of the USAAF's firebombing and nuking.  This was an official, if covert, policy of every post-war Japanese government and it runs to this very day.

Wooksta, if you've sour grapes to press about Japanese War Crimes, then don't blame the US for it.  There's enough blame to go 'round to _all_ the Allies but the majority of the blame rests squarely with the Japanese themselves.

Madoc

[Gary]

Kind of a follow on to Madoc's statement, when the emperor was forced to speak to the Japanese people he refused to say the words defeat, give up toss in the towel etc. Instead his words were a tad cryptic. He said something to the effect, that Japan was a willow bending under the burden of the snows (white western occupation) but that eventually spring would come. (Japan would rise again) Not the words of someone who truely feels defeated.  

[NARSES2]

The thing I find strange about Japanese attrocities in WWII (read the "Rape of Nanking" or "The Good German" {May be "The Good Nazi" in some countries} for some indication of what they were capable of) is that prior to about 1932 they behaved entirely differently. In both the Russo-Japanese war and WWI they treated their prisoners with respect and with full regard to the Geneva and Hague conventions. The "cult" of Bushido didn't really raise it's head until the late 20's, and was merely a blind to hide the growing militarisation of the goverment. If you were PM in Japan in the 20/30's you stood a fair chance of getting yourself assasinated by some right-wing junior military officer group. I personally think this was another outcome of the mess that was the Treaty of Versailles - in that the Japanese didn't get what they felt they'd earn't during WWI (same as the Italian's) and this was compounded by their treatment at the Washington Naval Treaties, or at least the sleight's they felt.

I know/knew 3 ex Japanese POW's (two are sadly dead) and they all commented that the real b*****rd's were the Korean's the Japanese used as prison guards - Korea was Japanese from 1910/11.

For a good read on how Japan descended into the militarilistic govermental mess it got it'self into look at the Japanese chapters in "The Dark Valley". Great book on the period 1920/1040.

As for the comment's on Hirohito's speech by IMWFO, exactly right , I've never seen it put so elegently in English before - I for one am in total agreement with the current crop of Chinese demonstration's even though they may not be truely spontaneous.

Chris