The Secret History of Artillery in the Vietnam War

The creator of these presentations doesn't always spell correctly or have high-end whiz-bang multi-media, but the message (like his other efforts about the Stryker) is very informative.

Enjoy this 3 part presentation: "The Secret History of Artillery in the Vietnam War".


Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Air power

This is an interesting piece on air power in-general and some mentions of strategic bombing in WWII.

The author doesn't mention a few important points.

WWII strategic bombing of Germany:

1.It was in effect yet another front (just like the Soviet Union, Italy and France). The German people and logistics tied up in various facilities, flak batteries and fighters tasked for home defense helped even more, to bleed them white.

2.Bombing Germany was instructive to the German populace of what happens when you put a murder in charge of your country. Retaliation. And, a good object lesson for future generations. You want war? Fine. Here it is. Eat it.

3.These were still early days of combat aviation. Man was still learning technology that was appearing faster than their ability to know how to use it.

3. In 1944, with all that bombing, Germany had a high production year for fighter aircraft. The huge problem (which was the same for Japan) was Germany's lack of understanding of the pilot pipeline. By 1944 Germany had low hour rookies and a small number of highly excperience aces. Where the ace said, "we flew until we got the iron cross or the wooden cross."

The U.S. for example, by this time, could get a huge number of low-to-average pilots to the front who may have had a few hundred flight hours before they even saw combat. A big difference from a German 20-hour (or less) wonder. Pilots with experience--in large quantity--went home to teach rookies. The mismatch by 44 was large.

Air power is not everything in war. Not having it in a peer-to-peer fight means you risk losing.

Badly.

JAST blast from the past

Today, along with some future posts, we will look at historical thinking and compare it against what we are now paying for with the F-35 program.

We will start out with the commentary in the PDF below.

"Yet our community has again embarked upon an expensive design and construction exercise focused on 'form,' which historically breeds powerful technology-business coalitions and political constituencies that become virtually unstoppable."

C.E. Myers, Jr.
November 1995

F-100 Website

F-100.

Look at all the photo albums on the left-side links of the site. Impressive capture of days gone by.

Personal account of USAF Cold War MiG squadron

Bill Sweetman has a great story of a recent personal account from a former USAF guy that was part of the Cold War program flying Soviet-made (or similar) MiG aircraft in Nevada.

Those days were secret, dangerous yet eye-opening.

That proved to be a very important test. "In 1987 we had the AIM-9P, which was designed to reject flares, and when we used US flares against it would ignore them and go straight for the target. We had the Soviet flares – they were dirty, and none of them looked the same – and the AIM-9P said 'I love that flare'.

"Why’d that happen? We had designed it to reject American flares. The Soviet flares had different burn time, intensity and separation. The same way, every time we tried to build a SAM simulator, when we got the real thing it wasn’t the same.

"I use the AIM-9P because it is out of the system and I can talk about it. The same thing happened to a lot of things that are still in the system and that I can’t talk about."

Bomber exchange 20 years later

Hard to believe it has been 20 year. The photo below was taken by a co-worker in 1992. It shows the Barksdale AFB flight line with some unusual visitors.

I have a montage of prints from photos I took of the Tu-95 arrivals at Barksdale. Interesting sound. The Russian crews were good people.

They are going to do it again next year.

New York's last Vietnam War helicopter pilot honored

The Army and National Guard got top value for the dollar out of this guy...

H/T-Michael

Keeping interest in a zombie defense program

I suppose one could comment on this latest edition to the story of taxpayer theft by trick or device but if anyone cares, just compare it to some of this material.

For some entertainment value, take a look at these October 1998 JSF assumptions that helped convince Congress to hand over the money for this Ponzi scheme.

WVR

Friday.

Been a busy week so I haven't posted as much. One of Lexs' viewers found this interesting bit of history from the days of the old "Joint Strike Fighter": the F-4 Phantom.

Operation Pharos Cocos Islands 1944 - 1945

(Oblique aerial photograph showing bombs exploding among transshipment sheds and jetties on Chatham Island, during a raid by Consolidated Liberators of No. 231 Group on Port Blair in the Andaman Islands.)


Nice photo essay with captions of allied air ops in the Cocos Islands.

A little known aspect of the history of Australia's Cocos (Keeling) Islands offshore territory in the Indian Ocean was the prominent role intended for it during the planned Operation Zipper, the joint invasion of South East Asia planned to retake Malaya, Singapore and the Dutch East Indies.

Lead up to the JORD

Just a slide from one of my all-time favorite JSF briefs (PDF). Note they keep putting the word "affordable" in there. Imagine that.

Gettysburg

It has been a year since I have seen my old friends who I have never met. Just a short pause to reminisce.

Video--ME-109G

Pretty impressive. And showing the skill needed to bring in an aircraft like this with a notoriously difficult landing gear configuration.

Some good used books that I just bought...

Went to a sale at the library where they get rid of old books. Here are some interesting things.

Ships of the Royal Navies, Oscar Parkes, 1936, with photos and a description of various classes.

American Civil War Navies: A bibliography, 1972.

Born in Battle, Israel’s Air Force, David Eshel, 1978.

Proud Waters, Ewart Brookes, 1954; this is the story of Royal Navy minesweeping efforts in WWII. I found this quote from the book interesting.

“The Germans laid 126,00 mines in European waters; sweeping them cost us 327 minesweepers and 4600 men and officers.”

The ghosts of TFX

Here is some more thoughts on history repeating itself with the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program.

With the early plans of the TFX program failing to work with the fleet, the USAF ended up holding the bag. The F-111 eventually proved itself in USAF combat operations, but the procurement method was a mess. It was not the way to field a combat jet.

The distance from what the TFX program was supposed to give the U.S. military and what they eventually got is large. The result was a third of the original number of TFX aircraft at five times the cost.(1)

What ended up being the real joint service fighter in that era? The F-4 Phantom.

Those that sold the Joint Strike Fighter program to a gullible Congress are guilty of the same over-optimism. They claim they learned from past acquisition programs but that just does not show as being true.

With the severe budget problems now facing all parts of the Federal government, could the Super Hornet be the Phantom of our era? With the USAF painted into a corner of its own making and where budget is policy, I think it is possible.

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(1)MICHAEL E. GANTT, "STRAPPING IN AND BAILING OUT:NAVY AND AIR FORCE JOINT ACQUISITION OF AIRCRAFT", SCHOOL OF ADVANCED AIRPOWER STUDIES, AIR UNIVERSITY, MAXWELL AIR FORCE BASE, ALABAMA, JUNE 2002

Joint command attitudes have improved, but how much?

How much duplication of effort in missions can we afford within the services? What should each service really be doing? How much realignment of the services and trimming of duplication of roles and missions should be done?

Here is some interesting history that points to duplication of effort.

Interestingly in the great unpleasantness that was the Vietnam War, U.S. Navy aircrew had a try with the OV-10 in the Mekong Delta region. Read all of that story here. It was a time when “Jointness” was still a theory. The services were territorial to the extreme.

We shared a good working relationship with an Air Force tactical air support squadron (TASS) flying the infamous Pushme-Pullyou (O-2). They made no attempt to control us. However, they were often able to give us good targets while they waited for their tactical aircraft. This cooperation ended when a TASS FAC told a very tardy flight of F-100s, "Jettison your bombs here. The Navy has already hit my target." From somewhere on high came a directive that Air Force FACs would no longer work Navy air. About a month later, as a TASS FAC tried to steer my flight of OV-10s into a night action involving U.S. advisors in an overrun South Vietnamese Army outpost, an authoritative voice over the radio forbade the FAC's involvement. Ever the professional, he remained on station "inadvertently jettisoning" flares until we could arrive overhead. That such a "my war, my glory" attitude could get in the way of supporting those poor SOBs on the ground was deeply disillusioning. In time, the policy was rescinded.

Maybe in some ways, it still like that.

"C-12 early flight of the Army's CEASAR EW capability. CEASAR is designed to conduct electronic warfare from above the battlefield. CEASAR will give the Army an organic beyond line of sight electronic attack capability designed specifically to address the concerns of the land forces.

Was the USAF ever consulted on a need for a capability "designed specifically to address the concerns of the land forces?" And if if not, why?

If this and other small war missions--like tactical airborne ISR and close air support--are being effectively done by the Army, why is the USAF involved other than to be a air bridge logistics enabler? And even that is being contracted out.

I fully understand big anti-access war needs but if Army Aviation is capable of "addressing the concerns of land forces" in a small war environment, are we at the juncture where service duties have to be looked at with a greater scrutiny of who should do what?