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BySteeljawscribe

Re: “The History of Naval Aviation Timeline” To Whom it May Concern: When I discovered through the website of a fellow retired Naval Aviator (www.neptunuslex.com) that your organization had posted a timeline covering the 100 years of naval aviation, with great anticipation I immediately jumped over to see for myself — and frankly, was sorely…

History Lessons

BySteeljawscribe

Let’s see: – Political leaders supporting rapid growth of new lending institutions issuing mortgages for municipal and residential construction? Check – Mortgages easier than ever to obtain with comensurate building boom? Check – Skyrocketing land values with exponential speculation? Check – Borrowers assuming more credit with deceasing ability to pay it off? Check – Appearance…

Independence Day

BySteeljawscribe

Breathes there a soul so dead that these words don’t send a chill through the spine? When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to…

Book Review: AMERICAN GUN: A History of the U.S. in Ten Firearms
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Book Review: AMERICAN GUN: A History of the U.S. in Ten Firearms

BySteeljawscribe

In every battle there is a moment when the combatants, and the world, seem to catch their breath. It is a fleeting moment, lost in the blink of an eye. But in that same blink, everything changes. Such moments are borne of desperation, of courage, of plain dumb luck. But they are pivotal – for…

Is the F-35 the Next DDG-1000? – UPDATED

BySteeljawscribe

UPDATED 13 Oct 08 – see below the “More” line… – SJS No military service currently demonstrates that it has leaders that can create affordable procurement programs. Every service has, to some extent, mortgaged its future by failing to contain equipment costs, and by trading existing equipment and force elements for developing new system that…

3 Comments

  1. That bombing saved millions of lives. Had Truman not given the orders to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a million American men and ten million Japanese civilians would have died in the invasion. Sometimes the most merciful option is the one which seems the most brutal.

  2. Agreed and on two fronts. On the one hand, the research I have conducted on just the naval side of the planned invasion of the Japanese homeland affirms this with the lives saved on both sides from not having to deal with a kamikaze counterassualt that would have made the acion at Okinawa pale in comparison.

    A second, and more subtle point, is that in the post-war years, whenever one wanted to highlight the potential cost of nuclear war, the images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were always at the ready. The destruction of manequins and occupant-less buildings in a remote desert location, or even the vaporization of part of an island in the Pacific fail to convey the potential human toll as exemplified by those two cities. And that, perhaps, is their enduring legacy.

    -SJS

  3. I feel sorta sheepish posting this after two serious comments, but…What The Hell, eh?

    The last company I worked at was a small IT start-up in SFO, staffed primarily by stereotypical flaming, politically-correct SFO liberals, and I do NOT jest. By my count there were three conservatives in the whole company, which, at its high-water mark, had a total of 300+ folks. Anyway… We got the usual complement of Federal and State holidays, five sick days, and one “Diversity Day,” which one could use to celebrate an occasion of personal importance. But you had to designate the day in advance. I informed my superiors that I intended to take August 6th as my “DD.” When asked what the occasion was… I replied “Hiroshima Day. It’s a celebration of American Power.” And I did take it, too, to the delight of the company’s other two conservatives and the shock of the PC Brigade.

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