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History Thread

Postby NAN » Tue Apr 14, 2015 2:02 pm

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/ap-was ... ar-AAaWsmS

150 years ago tonight, Lincoln was shot.

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Postby MalkinIsMyHomeboy » Tue Apr 14, 2015 2:27 pm

second comment:
Too bad booth didn't do this earlier in the reign of Lincoln, the man that violated the right of the southern people to leave the Union. How many lives could have been saved if Lincoln hadn't forced his will on the freedom wanting of the South. The issue for the Civil War was state's rights and Lincoln used slavery in his 2nd term because the northerners were telling Lincoln to let them go, the death and carnage wasn't worth it, so he used slavery to rebuild support.
lol

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Postby Silentom » Tue Apr 14, 2015 2:33 pm

second comment:
Too bad booth didn't do this earlier in the reign of Lincoln, the man that violated the right of the southern people to leave the Union. How many lives could have been saved if Lincoln hadn't forced his will on the freedom wanting of the South. The issue for the Civil War was state's rights and Lincoln used slavery in his 2nd term because the northerners were telling Lincoln to let them go, the death and carnage wasn't worth it, so he used slavery to rebuild support.
lol
:face:

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History Thread

Postby NAN » Tue Apr 14, 2015 2:38 pm

second comment:
Too bad booth didn't do this earlier in the reign of Lincoln, the man that violated the right of the southern people to leave the Union. How many lives could have been saved if Lincoln hadn't forced his will on the freedom wanting of the South. The issue for the Civil War was state's rights and Lincoln used slavery in his 2nd term because the northerners were telling Lincoln to let them go, the death and carnage wasn't worth it, so he used slavery to rebuild support.
lol
Oh my. Didn't see that.

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History Thread

Postby NAN » Tue Apr 14, 2015 2:39 pm

BTW, I think Lincoln would have went down as a great president regardless, but do you think his assassination made him more "iconic" than if he lived a full life and died and old man of natural causes?

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History Thread

Postby tifosi77 » Tue Apr 14, 2015 2:42 pm

The entire comment thread after that article is a cavalcade of butthurt southerners who somehow still see legitimacy in the CSA.

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History Thread

Postby tifosi77 » Tue Apr 14, 2015 2:46 pm

BTW, I think Lincoln would have went down as a great president regardless, but do you think his assassination made him more "iconic" than if he lived a full life and died and old man of natural causes?
Look at Kennedy. He was largely unproductive as a president, but he is absolutely lionized by many today. I think that maybe has more to do with the fact that he was killed in the TV age, and so people of the day actually saw his death (or at least the actions immediately thereafter) in their living rooms.

With Lincoln, the context of the times gives his death a somewhat heroic connotation. He quite literally died to preserve the Union. That undoubtedly plays a role in the way he's viewed through the lens of time. (Shyster, I'm sure, would disagree prolifically)

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Postby tifosi77 » Thu Apr 16, 2015 6:17 pm

We need a military hardware thread.
The talk in the PCE thread was getting a bit in the weeds. :wink:

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Postby dodint » Thu Apr 16, 2015 6:19 pm

When the discussion gets around to Command and Control Systems someone come get me.

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Postby tifosi77 » Thu Apr 16, 2015 6:24 pm

Hey dodint....... wanna talk about Command and Control Systems?

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Postby Shyster » Thu Apr 16, 2015 6:30 pm

The Marines are still carrying institutional memories of being effectively abandoned by the US Navy (and its aircraft carriers) for several months on Guadalcanal in 1942. Ever since then, it has been an integral part of their battle plan to take their own air support with them over the beach, which is why they are so into Harriers and helos. That, in and of itself isn't a problem if they can have their own dedicated fixed-wing platform like the Harrier. But knowing that the DoD was going to force the JSF on them and then still being so insistent on VTOL, yeah, that's a recipe for suck.
Historically speaking, I don't think that's really a fair accusation by the Marines. Sure, they ended up with a tough row to hoe on Guadalcanal, but I don't think the Navy "abandoned" them. The Navy lost the Lexington at Coral Sea and the Yorktown took serious damage, and the Saratoga and Enterprise were both heavily mangled at the Battle of the Eastern Solomons. I can remember one of the books I've read describing how the Enterprise was trailing a huge oil slick everywhere it went. The Hornet was sunk shortly thereafter at the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands. For a while IIRC the Saratoga was essentially the only operational fleet carrier the US Navy had in the entire Pacific. Meanwhile, the IJN was operating much closer to its major bases (like Truk and Rabaul), generally had better cover from land-based aircraft and submarines, and after the Battle of the Eastern Solomons still had 9 of the 10 carriers of the Kidō Butai. If the US Navy had committed to another major carrier battle in the Guadalcanal Campaign, it probably would have ended badly for the US and perhaps left the Navy without the strength necessary to prevail at Midway.

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Postby dodint » Thu Apr 16, 2015 6:33 pm

It's tough to make it interesting. Here's a tidbit.

The F-14 if equipped with a MIDS terminal can be controlled on the ground by Link4C tactical data links. Meaning a person on the ground can change the heading by keying in a 1 to 365 new directional heading. The rub is that the system doesn't slew to the new heading, it snaps to it immediately. If the controller isn't careful the force of the turn is strong enough to kill the pilot due to the sudden change of direction. I only know one person ever to do this in real world (control from the ground, not kill).

So, yeah, there's that.

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Postby Shyster » Thu Apr 16, 2015 6:36 pm

Are there any F-14s left anywhere? My understanding was that the Navy was pretty thorough in scrapping them because they didn't want even the remotest chance of any spare parts making their way to the Shah-era F-14s purchased by Iran.

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Postby dodint » Thu Apr 16, 2015 6:38 pm

It's a history thread. Does this stuff have to be relevant? The officer I knew that did it was a major and that was 5 years ago so it had been a while.

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Postby Shyster » Thu Apr 16, 2015 6:41 pm

It's a history thread. Does this stuff have to be relevant? The officer I knew that did it was a major and that was 5 years ago so it had been a while.
Oh, sorry, I wasn't questioning the relevancy of your post. I was honestly just wondering if any F-14s (other than the Iranian ones) were still around.

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Postby dodint » Thu Apr 16, 2015 6:44 pm

No worries. I probably came off as douchey. I had to think really hard to find something in the C2 world tif might care about. ;)

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Postby tifosi77 » Thu Apr 16, 2015 6:45 pm

The F-14 was retired from US service in 2006. Iran still operates a few of the 79 they got in '79, but I think only the D-model Turkey had that datalink.
It is exceedingly rare to find an A-model Tomcat at a museum that still has the Pratt & Whitney TF30 engines intact or the AWG-9 radar and related electronics, for the specific reason Shyster mentioned. But there is a pokey little museum at the Torrance airport (Zamperini Field) that has an F-14A with engines and radar, a YF-17 Cobra (one of two prototypes, entered to compete for - and ultimately lose - the Lightweight Fighter Aircraft contract that eventually became the F-16), and a YF-23 Black Widow (one one of two prototypes, entered to compete for - and ultimately lose - the Advanced Tactical Fighter contract that eventually became the F-22A). So that's a really rare collection, probably owing to the proximity of the Northrop/Grumman (nee Northrop) plant in El Segundo.

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Postby tifosi77 » Thu Apr 16, 2015 6:46 pm

No worries. I probably came off as douchey. I had to think really hard to find something in the C2 world tif might care about. ;)
You used the magic word 'F-14' in your first post on the subject. Tif's participation level: Guaranteed.

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Postby dodint » Thu Apr 16, 2015 6:49 pm

My undergrad was in history and I did my thesis when I was in Iraq in 2009. I had a great Captain that I befriended who had a similar love for history. We got in a pretty good argument that got ugly once because I had a study that posited that Iwo Jima had very little strategic significance and the justification for it was written after the fact. The Marine part of his brain wouldn't allow him to accept that the iconic battle was for no good reason. I'm looking through my archives for the article.

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Postby columbia » Thu Apr 16, 2015 6:51 pm

My father worked on the environment control system for one of F fighters.
That's all I got on the hardware front.

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Postby tifosi77 » Thu Apr 16, 2015 6:54 pm

My undergrad was in history and I did my thesis when I was in Iraq in 2009. I had a great Captain that I befriended who had a similar love for history. We got in a pretty good argument that got ugly once because I had a study that posited that Iwo Jima had very little strategic significance and the justification for it was written after the fact. The Marine part of his brain wouldn't allow him to accept that the iconic battle was for no good reason. I'm looking through my archives for the article.
I know the initial battle plan for Iwo was that the same Marine divisions were scheduled to take part in the invasion of Okinawa, which, prior to Iwo, was only supposed to be like five or six weeks later.

Wasn't it something like a pssing contest between the Marines and MacArthur about getting to the Home Islands first?

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Postby dodint » Thu Apr 16, 2015 6:56 pm

My vague recollection is that they wanted it for refueling bombers, but the escorts didn't have the range to accompany the bombers from Iwo Jima so it was kind of moot and no one noticed until after the fact. I don't have it for some reason, checking JSTOR.

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Postby tifosi77 » Thu Apr 16, 2015 7:06 pm

The Superforts were already operating over Japan un-escorted, tho. Flying out of the Marianas; both of the a-bomb missions were launched out of Tinian, and were un-escorted.

That article would be an interesting read. Almost like a counterfactual.

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Postby dodint » Thu Apr 16, 2015 7:12 pm

Title: Breaking the Cycle of Iwo Jima Mythology: A Strategic Study of Operation Detachment
Author(s): Robert S. Burrell
Source: The Journal of Military History, Vol. 68, No. 4 (Oct., 2004), pp. 1143-1186
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3396966
The American struggle to capture the Pacific Island of Iwo Jima from the Japanese in 1945 proved to be the bloodiest fight in Marine Corps history. Yet, ironically, the justifications for seizing the island have undergone little critical analysis. A detailed look into the planning for Iwo Jima demonstrates that the service rivalry resulting from the competing agendas of the Navy, Army and Army Air Forces in the Pacific negatively influenced the decision to initiate Operation Detachment. The Marine Corps, which paid the heaviest price, remained com- pletely excluded from the decision making process. When fighter escort operations from Iwo Jima, the original reason given for seizing the island, failed to produce the anticipated results, the military sought additional reasons to justify the costly battle. Historians, unfortunately, have perpetuated these illusions.
Justifications:

1. Provide fighter escort for bombing raids over Japan - August 1945
2. Deny the Bonin's use to the enemy. - August 1945
3. Reduce enemy air attacks on the Marianas - August 1945
4. Provide airfields for staging heavy bombers against Japan - August 1945
5. Precipitate a decisive naval engagement - August 1945
6. Deprive the enemy of an early warning system - Unknown
7. Improve the morale of B-29 pilots - September 1945
8. Provide for air-sea rescue operations - September 1945
9. Stop Japanese fighter interception of B-29 flights over Iwo Jima. - Unknown
10. Use as an emergency landing field - September 1945

I have the article and a counter-point article w/rebuttal if you want them. PM an e-mail address (anyone).

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Postby DigitalGypsy66 » Thu Apr 16, 2015 8:28 pm

I've always been under the impression that Iwo Jima was captured primarily as an emergency runway for B-29s on their way to/from Japan. A fighter wing or three was stationed there as well. Cool story: My sister dated a Navy Corpsmen, attached to a MEU that rotated from Lejeune to Okinawa for training. While there, he got the opportunity to go to Iwo Jima for a few hours. He took a ton of pictures and brought back some of the black sand for me. Really frickin' cool.

The bigger useless assault was on Peleliu. It was deemed necessary as a fighter base, and a lot of Marines, soldiers, and Corpsmen died there. Not a single fighter plane took off from that airfield, IIRC. The island campaign moved too quickly for it to be of value.

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