A Travel and vacations forum. TravelBanter

If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Go Back   Home » TravelBanter forum » Travel Regions » Europe
Site Map Home Authors List Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read Web Partners

"..on December 30, 1972, after eleven days of those B-52 attacks onthe Hanoi area, you had won the war. It was over..."



 
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
  #11  
Old March 27th, 2013, 07:39 PM posted to soc.retirement,alt.politics.socialism.trotsky,alt.horror,alt.politics.socialism,rec.travel.europe
chatnoir
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 27
Default "..on December 30, 1972, after eleven days of those B-52 attack...

On Mar 27, 11:21*am, Planet Visitor II wrote:
On Wed, 27 Mar 2013 08:02:48 -0700 (PDT), David Walters wrote:
The person posting this doesn't even know what a "military victory"
means. It is, in the final analysis, the ability of one side to
*completely overwhelm* the opponent OR to force the opponent to make
the *political* choice that the loses are to great to continue do to
resources (both military and human), capital destruction, national
dismemberment, etc etc.


Basically the argument that the US did "not lose" is the same one
Hitler used to explain Germany's defeat at the end of WWI. It's a non-
argument.


Umm... The non-argument is that Hitler was even alive to "explain"
Germany's defeat at the end of WW II.

30 April 1945 -- Hitler commits suicide in Berlin bunker.
7 May 1945 -- 02:41 Germany signs instrument of surrender in Reims, France.
8 May 1945 -- 23:01 All forces under German control cease active operations.

It is true that had the US continued the bombing the Vietnamese would
of been forced to the table once again. General Giap notes this in his
interviews on the Christmas Bombings (while Nixon was in Beijing, as
it happens) But wars are not fought as "what ifs". That is they are
fought "as is". The US *was militarily defeated* by Vietnam.''


Pardon me, but General Giap would hardly be the one to admit that
the U.S. did not lose militarily. *It's like asking a Muslim if he believes
in Allah.

The US was *militarily defeated* because it's loses of B-52,


Could we have that in English? *Obviously your views must be seen
as slanted since you're not an American.

(12 in one day!) was too great to bear and *appeared* to have no
effect.


From 1942 onward the U.S. lost an AVERAGE of 170 planes a day. *Did
we lose WW II because of those losses?

Thye question to really ask is how many B-52s managed to complete
their mission and destroy North Vietnam? *In fact, on 29 September,
1972, after all U.S. ground combat forces had already left South Vietnam,
a heavy U.S. *air strike destroyed 10% of all of North Vietnam's Air
Force in one single day.

The stupid Air Force generals, meeting such little resistance coming out
of Thai air bases, were *stupid* to keep flying the same patterns
toward Hanoi. So the Vietnamese simply "lined up their remaining" SAMs
and shot them down like using a .22 at a county fair.


No proof offered. *Your claim fails.


Proof:

http://www.historynet.com/the-11-day-war.htm

excerpt:

There was worse news—the attack tactics themselves. All bombers were
to depart from the same initial point (IP), make the same bomb run in
single-file formation, fly exactly the same airspeeds, operate in
exactly the same altitude blocks and maintain exactly the same spacing
between each of the three-ship cells (one minute) and between each
aircraft within the cells (15 seconds).

A B-52 copilot who flew Linebacker II sorties from Andersen, then-
Captain Don Craig, wrote me that "We knew there were big planning
flaws, starting with the long lines of bombers coming in the same
route…and it was straight down Thud Ridge, for God's sake….It looked
very much like ducks in a shooting gallery." B-52 radar navigator
Captain Wilton Strickland, operating from the other B-52 base, at U-
Tapao airfield in Thailand, concurred: "[The spacing] gave enemy air
de*fenses plenty of time to track and fire on each aircraft as it came
within range….Long before we entered the target area, they knew our
precise altitude, spacing and approach route…."

Another concern was the bomb run no-evasion order issued by an
Andersen wing commander (apparently on his own authority, on penalty
of court-martial), despite previous evidence that if the B-52 was
brought back straight and level prior to release, accuracy was not
degraded. After aircrews repeatedly ignored the order on Days One and
Two, without affecting bombing results, it was quietly rescinded.

Most egregious, SAC planners mandated a "combat break" to the right
after bomb release (post-target turn, or PTT), a nuclear-release
procedure carried over into Arc Light (where it had been just as
pointless; the PTT was designed solely for better survivability
against a nuclear blast). During Arc Light, the PTT had rendered no
harm. Over heavily defended Hanoi, however, it turned lethal. Not only
were criti*cal electronic countermeasures degraded, the 120-knot-plus
jet stream tailwind that B-52s enjoyed on the bomb run became a 120-
knot-plus headwind after the turn, resulting in a combined groundspeed
reduction of nearly 250 knots.

Later, during the Day Two pre-mission briefing, a disgusted Captain
Strickland, who was destined to fly six of the 11 Linebacker missions,
could no longer keep silent: "Who is planning such stupid tactics," he
asked the briefers, "and why?" Their response: "The planning is being
done at Omaha's SAC HQ, and the common routes, altitudes and trail
formations are used for ease of planning."

"Well," Strickland shot back, "the enemy is using your plan, along
with the after-release turn and our slow withdrawal, for ease of
tracking and shootdown!"

U-Tapao's 17th Air Division commander, Brig. Gen. Glenn Sulli*van, who
was present during Strickland's comments, was thinking along similar
lines. Sullivan and his wing commanders had been carefully listening
to aircrew feedback, though their requests for tactics changes had so
far fallen on deaf ears. Sullivan was most upset about the PTT; after
the battle he wrote a friend, "The post-target turn was the murder
point."

Nevertheless, good tactics or bad, the 300 BUFF in-theater aircrews
still had to fly the missions in the 206 Stratofortresses available
(Andersen had 53 B-52Ds and 99 B-52Gs on station; U-Tapao had 54
B-52Ds). On Day One, 129 B-52s launched from Andersen and U-Tapao in
three massive waves spaced at four-hour intervals. Shortly after dark,
the first wave (33 B-52Ds and 15 B-52Gs) arrived at their Laotian IP
and wheeled southeast toward seven Hanoi targets—setting the stage for
the biggest air battle since World War II. Although the BUFFs were the
attack's centerpiece, more than 100 additional U.S. Air Force, Navy
and Marine recon, radar jammer and fighter-bomber aircraft flew in
support of the heavies or delivered their own assigned blows. ....



  #12  
Old March 28th, 2013, 05:14 AM posted to soc.retirement,alt.politics.socialism.trotsky,alt.horror,alt.politics.socialism,rec.travel.europe
Planet Visitor II[_3_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 103
Default "..on December 30, 1972, after eleven days of those B-52 attack...

On Wed, 27 Mar 2013 11:39:39 -0700 (PDT), chatnoir wrote:

On Mar 27, 11:21*am, Planet Visitor II wrote:
On Wed, 27 Mar 2013 08:02:48 -0700 (PDT), David Walters wrote:
The person posting this doesn't even know what a "military victory"
means. It is, in the final analysis, the ability of one side to
*completely overwhelm* the opponent OR to force the opponent to make
the *political* choice that the loses are to great to continue do to
resources (both military and human), capital destruction, national
dismemberment, etc etc.


Basically the argument that the US did "not lose" is the same one
Hitler used to explain Germany's defeat at the end of WWI. It's a non-
argument.


Umm... The non-argument is that Hitler was even alive to "explain"
Germany's defeat at the end of WW II.

30 April 1945 -- Hitler commits suicide in Berlin bunker.
7 May 1945 -- 02:41 Germany signs instrument of surrender in Reims, France.
8 May 1945 -- 23:01 All forces under German control cease active operations.

It is true that had the US continued the bombing the Vietnamese would
of been forced to the table once again. General Giap notes this in his
interviews on the Christmas Bombings (while Nixon was in Beijing, as
it happens) But wars are not fought as "what ifs". That is they are
fought "as is". The US *was militarily defeated* by Vietnam.''


Pardon me, but General Giap would hardly be the one to admit that
the U.S. did not lose militarily. *It's like asking a Muslim if he believes
in Allah.

The US was *militarily defeated* because it's loses of B-52,


Could we have that in English? *Obviously your views must be seen
as slanted since you're not an American.

(12 in one day!) was too great to bear and *appeared* to have no
effect.


From 1942 onward the U.S. lost an AVERAGE of 170 planes a day. *Did
we lose WW II because of those losses?

Thye question to really ask is how many B-52s managed to complete
their mission and destroy North Vietnam? *In fact, on 29 September,
1972, after all U.S. ground combat forces had already left South Vietnam,
a heavy U.S. *air strike destroyed 10% of all of North Vietnam's Air
Force in one single day.

The stupid Air Force generals, meeting such little resistance coming out
of Thai air bases, were *stupid* to keep flying the same patterns
toward Hanoi. So the Vietnamese simply "lined up their remaining" SAMs
and shot them down like using a .22 at a county fair.


No proof offered. *Your claim fails.


Proof:

http://www.historynet.com/the-11-day-war.htm


That's hardly any proof that the U.S. military "lost the war in Vietnam." As I
pointed out, the U.S. lost an AVERAGE of 170 aircraft each and every day of
WW II, and I don't recall anyone claiming the U.S. lost that war.

In the Schweinfurt-Regensburg bombing mission in WW II, the U.S. lost
SIXTY B-17s in one single mission, only to fly a second mission losing
ANOTHER SIXTY B-17s, with another 17 being too damaged to return
to flying, and were scrapped, with yet another 161 having various
degrees of battle damage. See --
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Raid_on_Schweinfurt

Then we have the ill-fated raid on the Ploiesti oil fields of Romania, which
took place on 1 August, 1943, in which five Medals of Honor (3 posthumously),
and numerous DSCs were awarded to pilots on a single day. 178 B-24
aircraft flew into a fiery hell that would be called "Black Sunday." 53
aircraft were lost of those 178. See --
http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/ploesti.htm

Then we have the battle of Midway in which virtually all U.S. aircraft were
destroyed in the first few waves they were used to attack. But the
Japanese were caught flat-footed during aircraft carrier refueling operations
and Midway turned into an ugly defeat of Yamamoto's naval fleet in
subsequent attacks.

Guess who won that war? It cannot be said about Vietnam that "victory"
consisted of _winning one particular battle_, even when there was certainly
no "victory" by North Vietnam in Linebacker II.

excerpt:

There was worse news—the attack tactics themselves. All bombers were
to depart from the same initial point (IP), make the same bomb run in
single-file formation, fly exactly the same airspeeds, operate in
exactly the same altitude blocks and maintain exactly the same spacing
between each of the three-ship cells (one minute) and between each
aircraft within the cells (15 seconds).

A B-52 copilot who flew Linebacker II sorties from Andersen, then-
Captain Don Craig, wrote me that "We knew there were big planning
flaws, starting with the long lines of bombers coming in the same
route…and it was straight down Thud Ridge, for God's sake….It looked
very much like ducks in a shooting gallery." B-52 radar navigator
Captain Wilton Strickland, operating from the other B-52 base, at U-
Tapao airfield in Thailand, concurred: "[The spacing] gave enemy air
de*fenses plenty of time to track and fire on each aircraft as it came
within range….Long before we entered the target area, they knew our
precise altitude, spacing and approach route…."

Another concern was the bomb run no-evasion order issued by an
Andersen wing commander (apparently on his own authority, on penalty
of court-martial), despite previous evidence that if the B-52 was
brought back straight and level prior to release, accuracy was not
degraded. After aircrews repeatedly ignored the order on Days One and
Two, without affecting bombing results, it was quietly rescinded.

Most egregious, SAC planners mandated a "combat break" to the right
after bomb release (post-target turn, or PTT), a nuclear-release
procedure carried over into Arc Light (where it had been just as
pointless; the PTT was designed solely for better survivability
against a nuclear blast). During Arc Light, the PTT had rendered no
harm. Over heavily defended Hanoi, however, it turned lethal. Not only
were criti*cal electronic countermeasures degraded, the 120-knot-plus
jet stream tailwind that B-52s enjoyed on the bomb run became a 120-
knot-plus headwind after the turn, resulting in a combined groundspeed
reduction of nearly 250 knots.

Later, during the Day Two pre-mission briefing, a disgusted Captain
Strickland, who was destined to fly six of the 11 Linebacker missions,
could no longer keep silent: "Who is planning such stupid tactics," he
asked the briefers, "and why?" Their response: "The planning is being
done at Omaha's SAC HQ, and the common routes, altitudes and trail
formations are used for ease of planning."

"Well," Strickland shot back, "the enemy is using your plan, along
with the after-release turn and our slow withdrawal, for ease of
tracking and shootdown!"

U-Tapao's 17th Air Division commander, Brig. Gen. Glenn Sulli*van, who
was present during Strickland's comments, was thinking along similar
lines. Sullivan and his wing commanders had been carefully listening
to aircrew feedback, though their requests for tactics changes had so
far fallen on deaf ears. Sullivan was most upset about the PTT; after
the battle he wrote a friend, "The post-target turn was the murder
point."

Nevertheless, good tactics or bad, the 300 BUFF in-theater aircrews
still had to fly the missions in the 206 Stratofortresses available
(Andersen had 53 B-52Ds and 99 B-52Gs on station; U-Tapao had 54
B-52Ds). On Day One, 129 B-52s launched from Andersen and U-Tapao in
three massive waves spaced at four-hour intervals. Shortly after dark,
the first wave (33 B-52Ds and 15 B-52Gs) arrived at their Laotian IP
and wheeled southeast toward seven Hanoi targets—setting the stage for
the biggest air battle since World War II. Although the BUFFs were the
attack's centerpiece, more than 100 additional U.S. Air Force, Navy
and Marine recon, radar jammer and fighter-bomber aircraft flew in
support of the heavies or delivered their own assigned blows. ....


People have ****ed and moaned about how a battle was conducted,
or how they feel they were shafted into taken part in an action they
learned to later hate since Achilles slew Hector. What's new about
that??

None of that disputes the fact that U.S. Air Power continued well after
all U.S. combat forces had been removed from Vietnam. Thus it is hardly
possible that the loss of a number of B-52s means the U.S. military
"lost the war in Vietnam." Since there were no U.S. military boots on
the ground to lose that war. And it is a fact that North Vietnam violated
the terms they had agreed to in the peace accords. It is also a fact that
Linebacker II brought North Vietnam hastily back to the peace table that they
had so confidently decided to leave. Further it was the political arm of
the U.S. rather than the military that gave the military only 72 hours to
launch Linebacker II, hardly sufficient time to adequately prepare for
a major air assault on what was known to be a well-defended target.

And these losses only happened during the third wave giving the NVA
the ability to anticipate the strike patterns and deploy 34 SAMs into
the target area. In the first wave 129 bombers were sent, and 3 were
shot down. In the second wave 93 bombers were used, and although
20 SAMs were launched, not one B-52 was shot down. In that fatal
third wave, 99 bombers were launched and seven more B-52s were
shot down. Hardly a "defeat," in terms of targets destroyed, when
compared to the loss of aircraft the U.S. sustained in various bombing
runs during WW II.


Planet Visitor II
  #13  
Old March 28th, 2013, 01:40 PM posted to soc.retirement,alt.politics.socialism.trotsky,alt.horror,alt.politics.socialism,rec.travel.europe
chatnoir
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 27
Default "..on December 30, 1972, after eleven days of those B-52 attack...

On Mar 27, 10:14*pm, Planet Visitor II wrote:
On Wed, 27 Mar 2013 11:39:39 -0700 (PDT), chatnoir wrote:
On Mar 27, 11:21*am, Planet Visitor II wrote:
On Wed, 27 Mar 2013 08:02:48 -0700 (PDT), David Walters wrote:
The person posting this doesn't even know what a "military victory"
means. It is, in the final analysis, the ability of one side to
*completely overwhelm* the opponent OR to force the opponent to make
the *political* choice that the loses are to great to continue do to
resources (both military and human), capital destruction, national
dismemberment, etc etc.


Basically the argument that the US did "not lose" is the same one
Hitler used to explain Germany's defeat at the end of WWI. It's a non-
argument.


Umm... The non-argument is that Hitler was even alive to "explain"
Germany's defeat at the end of WW II.


30 April 1945 -- Hitler commits suicide in Berlin bunker.
7 May 1945 -- 02:41 Germany signs instrument of surrender in Reims, France.
8 May 1945 -- 23:01 All forces under German control cease active operations.


It is true that had the US continued the bombing the Vietnamese would
of been forced to the table once again. General Giap notes this in his
interviews on the Christmas Bombings (while Nixon was in Beijing, as
it happens) But wars are not fought as "what ifs". That is they are
fought "as is". The US *was militarily defeated* by Vietnam.''


Pardon me, but General Giap would hardly be the one to admit that
the U.S. did not lose militarily. *It's like asking a Muslim if he believes
in Allah.


The US was *militarily defeated* because it's loses of B-52,


Could we have that in English? *Obviously your views must be seen
as slanted since you're not an American.


(12 in one day!) was too great to bear and *appeared* to have no
effect.


From 1942 onward the U.S. lost an AVERAGE of 170 planes a day. *Did
we lose WW II because of those losses?


Thye question to really ask is how many B-52s managed to complete
their mission and destroy North Vietnam? *In fact, on 29 September,
1972, after all U.S. ground combat forces had already left South Vietnam,
a heavy U.S. *air strike destroyed 10% of all of North Vietnam's Air
Force in one single day.


The stupid Air Force generals, meeting such little resistance coming out
of Thai air bases, were *stupid* to keep flying the same patterns
toward Hanoi. So the Vietnamese simply "lined up their remaining" SAMs
and shot them down like using a .22 at a county fair.


No proof offered. *Your claim fails.


Proof:


http://www.historynet.com/the-11-day-war.htm


That's hardly any proof that the U.S. military "lost the war in Vietnam." *As I
pointed out, the U.S. lost an AVERAGE of 170 aircraft each and every day of
WW II, and I don't recall anyone claiming the U.S. lost that war.

In the Schweinfurt-Regensburg bombing mission in WW II, the U.S. lost
SIXTY B-17s in one single mission, only to fly a second mission losing
ANOTHER SIXTY B-17s, with another 17 being too damaged to return
to flying, and were scrapped, with yet another 161 having various
degrees of battle damage. *See --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Raid_on_Schweinfurt

Then we have the ill-fated raid on the Ploiesti oil fields of Romania, which
took place on 1 August, 1943, in which five Medals of Honor (3 posthumously),
and numerous DSCs were awarded to pilots on a single day. *178 B-24
aircraft flew into a fiery hell that would be called "Black Sunday." *53
aircraft were lost of those 178. *See --http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/ploesti.htm

Then we have the battle of Midway in which virtually all U.S. aircraft were
destroyed in the first few waves they were used to attack. *But the
Japanese were caught flat-footed during aircraft carrier refueling operations
and Midway turned into an ugly defeat of Yamamoto's naval fleet in
subsequent attacks.

Guess who won that war? *It cannot be said about Vietnam that "victory"
consisted of _winning one particular battle_, even when there was certainly
no "victory" by North Vietnam in Linebacker II.





excerpt:


There was worse news—the attack tactics themselves. All bombers were
to depart from the same initial point (IP), make the same bomb run in
single-file formation, fly exactly the same airspeeds, operate in
exactly the same altitude blocks and maintain exactly the same spacing
between each of the three-ship cells (one minute) and between each
aircraft within the cells (15 seconds).


A B-52 copilot who flew Linebacker II sorties from Andersen, then-
Captain Don Craig, wrote me that "We knew there were big planning
flaws, starting with the long lines of bombers coming in the same
route…and it was straight down Thud Ridge, for God's sake….It looked
very much like ducks in a shooting gallery." B-52 radar navigator
Captain Wilton Strickland, operating from the other B-52 base, at U-
Tapao airfield in Thailand, concurred: "[The spacing] gave enemy air
de*fenses plenty of time to track and fire on each aircraft as it came
within range….Long before we entered the target area, they knew our
precise altitude, spacing and approach route…."


Another concern was the bomb run no-evasion order issued by an
Andersen wing commander (apparently on his own authority, on penalty
of court-martial), despite previous evidence that if the B-52 was
brought back straight and level prior to release, accuracy was not
degraded. After aircrews repeatedly ignored the order on Days One and
Two, without affecting bombing results, it was quietly rescinded.


Most egregious, SAC planners mandated a "combat break" to the right
after bomb release (post-target turn, or PTT), a nuclear-release
procedure carried over into Arc Light (where it had been just as
pointless; the PTT was designed solely for better survivability
against a nuclear blast). During Arc Light, the PTT had rendered no
harm. Over heavily defended Hanoi, however, it turned lethal. Not only
were criti*cal electronic countermeasures degraded, the 120-knot-plus
jet stream tailwind that B-52s enjoyed on the bomb run became a 120-
knot-plus headwind after the turn, resulting in a combined groundspeed
reduction of nearly 250 knots.


Later, during the Day Two pre-mission briefing, a disgusted Captain
Strickland, who was destined to fly six of the 11 Linebacker missions,
could no longer keep silent: "Who is planning such stupid tactics," he
asked the briefers, "and why?" Their response: "The planning is being
done at Omaha's SAC HQ, and the common routes, altitudes and trail
formations are used for ease of planning."


"Well," Strickland shot back, "the enemy is using your plan, along
with the after-release turn and our slow withdrawal, for ease of
tracking and shootdown!"


U-Tapao's 17th Air Division commander, Brig. Gen. Glenn Sulli*van, who
was present during Strickland's comments, was thinking along similar
lines. Sullivan and his wing commanders had been carefully listening
to aircrew feedback, though their requests for tactics changes had so
far fallen on deaf ears. Sullivan was most upset about the PTT; after
the battle he wrote a friend, "The post-target turn was the murder
point."


Nevertheless, good tactics or bad, the 300 BUFF in-theater aircrews
still had to fly the missions in the 206 Stratofortresses available
(Andersen had 53 B-52Ds and 99 B-52Gs on station; U-Tapao had 54
B-52Ds). On Day One, 129 B-52s launched from Andersen and U-Tapao in
three massive waves spaced at four-hour intervals. Shortly after dark,
the first wave (33 B-52Ds and 15 B-52Gs) arrived at their Laotian IP
and wheeled southeast toward seven Hanoi targets—setting the stage for
the biggest air battle since World War II. Although the BUFFs were the
attack's centerpiece, more than 100 additional U.S. Air Force, Navy
and Marine recon, radar jammer and fighter-bomber aircraft flew in
support of the heavies or delivered their own assigned blows. ....


People have ****ed and moaned about how a battle was conducted,
or how they feel they were shafted into taken part in an action they
learned to later hate since Achilles slew Hector. *What's new about
that??

None of that disputes the fact that U.S. Air Power continued well after
all U.S. combat forces had been removed from Vietnam. *Thus it is hardly
possible that the loss of a number of B-52s means the U.S. military
"lost the war in Vietnam." *Since there were no U.S. military boots on
the ground to lose that war. *And it is a fact that North Vietnam violated
the terms they had agreed to in the peace accords. *It is also a fact that
Linebacker II brought North Vietnam hastily back to the peace table that they
had so confidently decided to leave. *Further it was the political arm of
the U.S. rather than the military that gave the military only 72 hours to
launch Linebacker II, hardly sufficient time to adequately prepare for
a major air assault on what was known to be a well-defended target.

And these losses only happened during the third wave giving the NVA
the ability to anticipate the strike patterns and deploy 34 SAMs into
the target area. *In the first wave 129 bombers were sent, and 3 were
shot down. *In the second wave 93 bombers were used, and although
20 SAMs were launched, not one B-52 was shot down. *In that fatal
third wave, 99 bombers were launched and seven more B-52s were
shot down. *Hardly a "defeat," in terms of targets destroyed, when
compared to the loss of aircraft the U.S. sustained in various bombing
runs during WW II.

Planet Visitor II- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -


Who was talking about defeat, which I view as irrelevant, the line of
talk was about B-52s lining up to come into bombing Hanoi so that they
could easily be shot down!
  #14  
Old March 28th, 2013, 02:58 PM posted to soc.retirement,alt.politics.socialism.trotsky,alt.horror,alt.politics.socialism,rec.travel.europe
Planet Visitor II[_3_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 103
Default "..on December 30, 1972, after eleven days of those B-52 attack...

On Thu, 28 Mar 2013 05:40:50 -0700 (PDT), chatnoir wrote:

On Mar 27, 10:14*pm, Planet Visitor II wrote:
On Wed, 27 Mar 2013 11:39:39 -0700 (PDT), chatnoir wrote:
On Mar 27, 11:21*am, Planet Visitor II wrote:
On Wed, 27 Mar 2013 08:02:48 -0700 (PDT), David Walters wrote:
The person posting this doesn't even know what a "military victory"
means. It is, in the final analysis, the ability of one side to
*completely overwhelm* the opponent OR to force the opponent to make
the *political* choice that the loses are to great to continue do to
resources (both military and human), capital destruction, national
dismemberment, etc etc.


Basically the argument that the US did "not lose" is the same one
Hitler used to explain Germany's defeat at the end of WWI. It's a non-
argument.


Umm... The non-argument is that Hitler was even alive to "explain"
Germany's defeat at the end of WW II.


30 April 1945 -- Hitler commits suicide in Berlin bunker.
7 May 1945 -- 02:41 Germany signs instrument of surrender in Reims, France.
8 May 1945 -- 23:01 All forces under German control cease active operations.


It is true that had the US continued the bombing the Vietnamese would
of been forced to the table once again. General Giap notes this in his
interviews on the Christmas Bombings (while Nixon was in Beijing, as
it happens) But wars are not fought as "what ifs". That is they are
fought "as is". The US *was militarily defeated* by Vietnam.''


Pardon me, but General Giap would hardly be the one to admit that
the U.S. did not lose militarily. *It's like asking a Muslim if he believes
in Allah.


The US was *militarily defeated* because it's loses of B-52,


Could we have that in English? *Obviously your views must be seen
as slanted since you're not an American.


(12 in one day!) was too great to bear and *appeared* to have no
effect.


From 1942 onward the U.S. lost an AVERAGE of 170 planes a day. *Did
we lose WW II because of those losses?


Thye question to really ask is how many B-52s managed to complete
their mission and destroy North Vietnam? *In fact, on 29 September,
1972, after all U.S. ground combat forces had already left South Vietnam,
a heavy U.S. *air strike destroyed 10% of all of North Vietnam's Air
Force in one single day.


The stupid Air Force generals, meeting such little resistance coming out
of Thai air bases, were *stupid* to keep flying the same patterns
toward Hanoi. So the Vietnamese simply "lined up their remaining" SAMs
and shot them down like using a .22 at a county fair.


No proof offered. *Your claim fails.


Proof:


http://www.historynet.com/the-11-day-war.htm


That's hardly any proof that the U.S. military "lost the war in Vietnam." *As I
pointed out, the U.S. lost an AVERAGE of 170 aircraft each and every day of
WW II, and I don't recall anyone claiming the U.S. lost that war.

In the Schweinfurt-Regensburg bombing mission in WW II, the U.S. lost
SIXTY B-17s in one single mission, only to fly a second mission losing
ANOTHER SIXTY B-17s, with another 17 being too damaged to return
to flying, and were scrapped, with yet another 161 having various
degrees of battle damage. *See --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Raid_on_Schweinfurt

Then we have the ill-fated raid on the Ploiesti oil fields of Romania, which
took place on 1 August, 1943, in which five Medals of Honor (3 posthumously),
and numerous DSCs were awarded to pilots on a single day. *178 B-24
aircraft flew into a fiery hell that would be called "Black Sunday." *53
aircraft were lost of those 178. *See --http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/ploesti.htm

Then we have the battle of Midway in which virtually all U.S. aircraft were
destroyed in the first few waves they were used to attack. *But the
Japanese were caught flat-footed during aircraft carrier refueling operations
and Midway turned into an ugly defeat of Yamamoto's naval fleet in
subsequent attacks.

Guess who won that war? *It cannot be said about Vietnam that "victory"
consisted of _winning one particular battle_, even when there was certainly
no "victory" by North Vietnam in Linebacker II.





excerpt:


There was worse news—the attack tactics themselves. All bombers were
to depart from the same initial point (IP), make the same bomb run in
single-file formation, fly exactly the same airspeeds, operate in
exactly the same altitude blocks and maintain exactly the same spacing
between each of the three-ship cells (one minute) and between each
aircraft within the cells (15 seconds).


A B-52 copilot who flew Linebacker II sorties from Andersen, then-
Captain Don Craig, wrote me that "We knew there were big planning
flaws, starting with the long lines of bombers coming in the same
route…and it was straight down Thud Ridge, for God's sake….It looked
very much like ducks in a shooting gallery." B-52 radar navigator
Captain Wilton Strickland, operating from the other B-52 base, at U-
Tapao airfield in Thailand, concurred: "[The spacing] gave enemy air
de*fenses plenty of time to track and fire on each aircraft as it came
within range….Long before we entered the target area, they knew our
precise altitude, spacing and approach route…."


Another concern was the bomb run no-evasion order issued by an
Andersen wing commander (apparently on his own authority, on penalty
of court-martial), despite previous evidence that if the B-52 was
brought back straight and level prior to release, accuracy was not
degraded. After aircrews repeatedly ignored the order on Days One and
Two, without affecting bombing results, it was quietly rescinded.


Most egregious, SAC planners mandated a "combat break" to the right
after bomb release (post-target turn, or PTT), a nuclear-release
procedure carried over into Arc Light (where it had been just as
pointless; the PTT was designed solely for better survivability
against a nuclear blast). During Arc Light, the PTT had rendered no
harm. Over heavily defended Hanoi, however, it turned lethal. Not only
were criti*cal electronic countermeasures degraded, the 120-knot-plus
jet stream tailwind that B-52s enjoyed on the bomb run became a 120-
knot-plus headwind after the turn, resulting in a combined groundspeed
reduction of nearly 250 knots.


Later, during the Day Two pre-mission briefing, a disgusted Captain
Strickland, who was destined to fly six of the 11 Linebacker missions,
could no longer keep silent: "Who is planning such stupid tactics," he
asked the briefers, "and why?" Their response: "The planning is being
done at Omaha's SAC HQ, and the common routes, altitudes and trail
formations are used for ease of planning."


"Well," Strickland shot back, "the enemy is using your plan, along
with the after-release turn and our slow withdrawal, for ease of
tracking and shootdown!"


U-Tapao's 17th Air Division commander, Brig. Gen. Glenn Sulli*van, who
was present during Strickland's comments, was thinking along similar
lines. Sullivan and his wing commanders had been carefully listening
to aircrew feedback, though their requests for tactics changes had so
far fallen on deaf ears. Sullivan was most upset about the PTT; after
the battle he wrote a friend, "The post-target turn was the murder
point."


Nevertheless, good tactics or bad, the 300 BUFF in-theater aircrews
still had to fly the missions in the 206 Stratofortresses available
(Andersen had 53 B-52Ds and 99 B-52Gs on station; U-Tapao had 54
B-52Ds). On Day One, 129 B-52s launched from Andersen and U-Tapao in
three massive waves spaced at four-hour intervals. Shortly after dark,
the first wave (33 B-52Ds and 15 B-52Gs) arrived at their Laotian IP
and wheeled southeast toward seven Hanoi targets—setting the stage for
the biggest air battle since World War II. Although the BUFFs were the
attack's centerpiece, more than 100 additional U.S. Air Force, Navy
and Marine recon, radar jammer and fighter-bomber aircraft flew in
support of the heavies or delivered their own assigned blows. ....


People have ****ed and moaned about how a battle was conducted,
or how they feel they were shafted into taken part in an action they
learned to later hate since Achilles slew Hector. *What's new about
that??

None of that disputes the fact that U.S. Air Power continued well after
all U.S. combat forces had been removed from Vietnam. *Thus it is hardly
possible that the loss of a number of B-52s means the U.S. military
"lost the war in Vietnam." *Since there were no U.S. military boots on
the ground to lose that war. *And it is a fact that North Vietnam violated
the terms they had agreed to in the peace accords. *It is also a fact that
Linebacker II brought North Vietnam hastily back to the peace table that they
had so confidently decided to leave. *Further it was the political arm of
the U.S. rather than the military that gave the military only 72 hours to
launch Linebacker II, hardly sufficient time to adequately prepare for
a major air assault on what was known to be a well-defended target.

And these losses only happened during the third wave giving the NVA
the ability to anticipate the strike patterns and deploy 34 SAMs into
the target area. *In the first wave 129 bombers were sent, and 3 were
shot down. *In the second wave 93 bombers were used, and although
20 SAMs were launched, not one B-52 was shot down. *In that fatal
third wave, 99 bombers were launched and seven more B-52s were
shot down. *Hardly a "defeat," in terms of targets destroyed, when
compared to the loss of aircraft the U.S. sustained in various bombing
runs during WW II.

Planet Visitor II- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -


Who was talking about defeat, which I view as irrelevant, the line of
talk was about B-52s lining up to come into bombing Hanoi so that they
could easily be shot down!


And my "No proof offer. Your claim fails," was in response to the comment
from the original poster that "The US was *militarily defeated* because it's
loses of B-52." The loss of those B-52s in Linebacker II did not signal a
"military defeat" for the U.S. military in Vietnam. I was certainly not questioning
or attempting to deny that loss; but insisting that the loss itself did not
represent the *military defeat" of the U.S. in Vietnam. No war is fought
without some tactical or strategic mistake being made. Certainly the Viet
Cong and the NVA made their share of tactical and strategic mistakes,
as shown by the much greater number who died than the 58,000 plus
U.S. military deaths.


Planet Visitor II
  #15  
Old March 28th, 2013, 03:11 PM posted to soc.retirement,alt.politics.socialism.trotsky,alt.horror,alt.politics.socialism,rec.travel.europe
chatnoir
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 27
Default "..on December 30, 1972, after eleven days of those B-52 attack...

On Mar 28, 7:58*am, Planet Visitor II wrote:
On Thu, 28 Mar 2013 05:40:50 -0700 (PDT), chatnoir wrote:
On Mar 27, 10:14*pm, Planet Visitor II wrote:
On Wed, 27 Mar 2013 11:39:39 -0700 (PDT), chatnoir wrote:
On Mar 27, 11:21*am, Planet Visitor II wrote:
On Wed, 27 Mar 2013 08:02:48 -0700 (PDT), David Walters wrote:
The person posting this doesn't even know what a "military victory"
means. It is, in the final analysis, the ability of one side to
*completely overwhelm* the opponent OR to force the opponent to make
the *political* choice that the loses are to great to continue do to
resources (both military and human), capital destruction, national
dismemberment, etc etc.


Basically the argument that the US did "not lose" is the same one
Hitler used to explain Germany's defeat at the end of WWI. It's a non-
argument.


Umm... The non-argument is that Hitler was even alive to "explain"
Germany's defeat at the end of WW II.


30 April 1945 -- Hitler commits suicide in Berlin bunker.
7 May 1945 -- 02:41 Germany signs instrument of surrender in Reims, France.
8 May 1945 -- 23:01 All forces under German control cease active operations.


It is true that had the US continued the bombing the Vietnamese would
of been forced to the table once again. General Giap notes this in his
interviews on the Christmas Bombings (while Nixon was in Beijing, as
it happens) But wars are not fought as "what ifs". That is they are
fought "as is". The US *was militarily defeated* by Vietnam.''


Pardon me, but General Giap would hardly be the one to admit that
the U.S. did not lose militarily. *It's like asking a Muslim if he believes
in Allah.


The US was *militarily defeated* because it's loses of B-52,


Could we have that in English? *Obviously your views must be seen
as slanted since you're not an American.


(12 in one day!) was too great to bear and *appeared* to have no
effect.


From 1942 onward the U.S. lost an AVERAGE of 170 planes a day. *Did
we lose WW II because of those losses?


Thye question to really ask is how many B-52s managed to complete
their mission and destroy North Vietnam? *In fact, on 29 September,
1972, after all U.S. ground combat forces had already left South Vietnam,
a heavy U.S. *air strike destroyed 10% of all of North Vietnam's Air
Force in one single day.


The stupid Air Force generals, meeting such little resistance coming out
of Thai air bases, were *stupid* to keep flying the same patterns
toward Hanoi. So the Vietnamese simply "lined up their remaining" SAMs
and shot them down like using a .22 at a county fair.


No proof offered. *Your claim fails.


Proof:


http://www.historynet.com/the-11-day-war.htm


That's hardly any proof that the U.S. military "lost the war in Vietnam." *As I
pointed out, the U.S. lost an AVERAGE of 170 aircraft each and every day of
WW II, and I don't recall anyone claiming the U.S. lost that war.


In the Schweinfurt-Regensburg bombing mission in WW II, the U.S. lost
SIXTY B-17s in one single mission, only to fly a second mission losing
ANOTHER SIXTY B-17s, with another 17 being too damaged to return
to flying, and were scrapped, with yet another 161 having various
degrees of battle damage. *See --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Raid_on_Schweinfurt


Then we have the ill-fated raid on the Ploiesti oil fields of Romania, which
took place on 1 August, 1943, in which five Medals of Honor (3 posthumously),
and numerous DSCs were awarded to pilots on a single day. *178 B-24
aircraft flew into a fiery hell that would be called "Black Sunday." *53
aircraft were lost of those 178. *See --http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/ploesti.htm


Then we have the battle of Midway in which virtually all U.S. aircraft were
destroyed in the first few waves they were used to attack. *But the
Japanese were caught flat-footed during aircraft carrier refueling operations
and Midway turned into an ugly defeat of Yamamoto's naval fleet in
subsequent attacks.


Guess who won that war? *It cannot be said about Vietnam that "victory"
consisted of _winning one particular battle_, even when there was certainly
no "victory" by North Vietnam in Linebacker II.


excerpt:


There was worse news—the attack tactics themselves. All bombers were
to depart from the same initial point (IP), make the same bomb run in
single-file formation, fly exactly the same airspeeds, operate in
exactly the same altitude blocks and maintain exactly the same spacing
between each of the three-ship cells (one minute) and between each
aircraft within the cells (15 seconds).


A B-52 copilot who flew Linebacker II sorties from Andersen, then-
Captain Don Craig, wrote me that "We knew there were big planning
flaws, starting with the long lines of bombers coming in the same
route…and it was straight down Thud Ridge, for God's sake….It looked
very much like ducks in a shooting gallery." B-52 radar navigator
Captain Wilton Strickland, operating from the other B-52 base, at U-
Tapao airfield in Thailand, concurred: "[The spacing] gave enemy air
de*fenses plenty of time to track and fire on each aircraft as it came
within range….Long before we entered the target area, they knew our
precise altitude, spacing and approach route…."


Another concern was the bomb run no-evasion order issued by an
Andersen wing commander (apparently on his own authority, on penalty
of court-martial), despite previous evidence that if the B-52 was
brought back straight and level prior to release, accuracy was not
degraded. After aircrews repeatedly ignored the order on Days One and
Two, without affecting bombing results, it was quietly rescinded.


Most egregious, SAC planners mandated a "combat break" to the right
after bomb release (post-target turn, or PTT), a nuclear-release
procedure carried over into Arc Light (where it had been just as
pointless; the PTT was designed solely for better survivability
against a nuclear blast). During Arc Light, the PTT had rendered no
harm. Over heavily defended Hanoi, however, it turned lethal. Not only
were criti*cal electronic countermeasures degraded, the 120-knot-plus
jet stream tailwind that B-52s enjoyed on the bomb run became a 120-
knot-plus headwind after the turn, resulting in a combined groundspeed
reduction of nearly 250 knots.


Later, during the Day Two pre-mission briefing, a disgusted Captain
Strickland, who was destined to fly six of the 11 Linebacker missions,
could no longer keep silent: "Who is planning such stupid tactics," he
asked the briefers, "and why?" Their response: "The planning is being
done at Omaha's SAC HQ, and the common routes, altitudes and trail
formations are used for ease of planning."


"Well," Strickland shot back, "the enemy is using your plan, along
with the after-release turn and our slow withdrawal, for ease of
tracking and shootdown!"


U-Tapao's 17th Air Division commander, Brig. Gen. Glenn Sulli*van, who
was present during Strickland's comments, was thinking along similar
lines. Sullivan and his wing commanders had been carefully listening
to aircrew feedback, though their requests for tactics changes had so
far fallen on deaf ears. Sullivan was most upset about the PTT; after
the battle he wrote a friend, "The post-target turn was the murder
point."


Nevertheless, good tactics or bad, the 300 BUFF in-theater aircrews
still had to fly the missions in the 206 Stratofortresses available
(Andersen had 53 B-52Ds and 99 B-52Gs on station; U-Tapao had 54
B-52Ds). On Day One, 129 B-52s launched from Andersen and U-Tapao in
three massive waves spaced at four-hour intervals. Shortly after dark,
the first wave (33 B-52Ds and 15 B-52Gs) arrived at their Laotian IP
and wheeled southeast toward seven Hanoi targets—setting the stage for
the biggest air battle since World War II. Although the BUFFs were the
attack's centerpiece, more than 100 additional U.S. Air Force, Navy
and Marine recon, radar jammer and fighter-bomber aircraft flew in
support of the heavies or delivered their own assigned blows. ....


People have ****ed and moaned about how a battle was conducted,
or how they feel they were shafted into taken part in an action they
learned to later hate since Achilles slew Hector. *What's new about
that??


None of that disputes the fact that U.S. Air Power continued well after
all U.S. combat forces had been removed from Vietnam. *Thus it is hardly
possible that the loss of a number of B-52s means the U.S. military
"lost the war in Vietnam." *Since there were no U.S. military boots on
the ground to lose that war. *And it is a fact that North Vietnam violated
the terms they had agreed to in the peace accords. *It is also a fact that
Linebacker II brought North Vietnam hastily back to the peace table that they
had so confidently decided to leave. *Further it was the political arm of
the U.S. rather than the military that gave the military only 72 hours to
launch Linebacker II, hardly sufficient time to adequately prepare for
a major air assault on what was known to be a well-defended target.


And these losses only happened during the third wave giving the NVA
the ability to anticipate the strike patterns and deploy 34 SAMs into
the target area. *In the first wave 129 bombers were sent, and 3 were
shot down. *In the second wave 93 bombers were used, and although
20 SAMs were launched, not one B-52 was shot down. *In that fatal
third wave, 99 bombers were launched and seven more B-52s were
shot down. *Hardly a "defeat," in terms of targets destroyed, when
compared to the loss of aircraft the U.S. sustained in various bombing
runs during WW II.


Planet Visitor II- Hide quoted text -


- Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -


- Show quoted text -


Who was talking about defeat, which I view as irrelevant, *the line of
talk was about B-52s lining up to come into bombing Hanoi so that they
could easily be shot down!


And my "No proof offer. *Your claim fails," was in response to the comment
from the original poster that "The US was *militarily defeated* because it's
loses of B-52." *The loss of those B-52s in Linebacker II did not signal a
"military defeat" for the U.S. military in Vietnam. *I was certainly not questioning
or attempting to deny that loss; but insisting that the loss itself did not
represent the *military defeat" of the U.S. in Vietnam. *No war is fought
without some tactical or strategic mistake being made. *Certainly the Viet
Cong and the NVA made their share of tactical and strategic mistakes,
as shown by the much greater number who died than the 58,000 plus
U.S. military deaths.

Planet Visitor II


They did not have massive numbers of Jets, ships and bombers. They
did not have the mobilbity and fire power of the US = of course they
suffered higher number of dead!
  #16  
Old March 28th, 2013, 03:28 PM posted to soc.retirement,alt.politics.socialism.trotsky,alt.horror,alt.politics.socialism,rec.travel.europe
:ПеаБраин
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 101
Default "..on December 30, 1972, after eleven days of those B-52 attack...

"Our purpose is, through a
progression of all-out attacks, to cause many U.S. casualties and so
erode the U.S. will that the antiwar influences will gain decisive
political strength," said Pham Van Dong, former prime minister of
North Vietnam. Moreover, Ho Chi Minh famously predicted, "For
everyone
of yours we kill, you will kill 10 of ours. But in the end, it is you
who will grow tired."

See www.vietnam.war.info/casualties and you will learn that Ho Chi
Minh figures of 10 Vietnamese casualties would be needed to effect a
single US casualty was grossly conservative in accordance with figues
estimated by the North Vietnamese themselves after the conflict.
Since the US tragically experienced 58000 combat casualties, their
Vietnamese combatants experienced in excess of 1,000,000 combat
casualties in the process to inflict those US Army combat casualties.
In other words it took more than 17 Vietnamese combatant casualties
to
effect a single US casualty in accordance with the link estimating
combat casualties for both sides of the conflict.

Anyone construing those figures to spin that America got its "arsed
kicked in Vietnam" is either living in a mythological fantasy world
or
is desperately in need of a course in remedial arithmetic.





On Mar 28, 10:11*am, chatnoir wrote:
On Mar 28, 7:58*am, Planet Visitor II wrote:

On Thu, 28 Mar 2013 05:40:50 -0700 (PDT), chatnoir wrote:
On Mar 27, 10:14*pm, Planet Visitor II wrote:
On Wed, 27 Mar 2013 11:39:39 -0700 (PDT), chatnoir wrote:
On Mar 27, 11:21*am, Planet Visitor II wrote:
On Wed, 27 Mar 2013 08:02:48 -0700 (PDT), David Walters wrote:
The person posting this doesn't even know what a "military victory"
means. It is, in the final analysis, the ability of one side to
*completely overwhelm* the opponent OR to force the opponent to make
the *political* choice that the loses are to great to continue do to
resources (both military and human), capital destruction, national
dismemberment, etc etc.


Basically the argument that the US did "not lose" is the same one
Hitler used to explain Germany's defeat at the end of WWI. It's a non-
argument.


Umm... The non-argument is that Hitler was even alive to "explain"
Germany's defeat at the end of WW II.


30 April 1945 -- Hitler commits suicide in Berlin bunker.
7 May 1945 -- 02:41 Germany signs instrument of surrender in Reims, France.
8 May 1945 -- 23:01 All forces under German control cease active operations.


It is true that had the US continued the bombing the Vietnamese would
of been forced to the table once again. General Giap notes this in his
interviews on the Christmas Bombings (while Nixon was in Beijing, as
it happens) But wars are not fought as "what ifs". That is they are
fought "as is". The US *was militarily defeated* by Vietnam.''


Pardon me, but General Giap would hardly be the one to admit that
the U.S. did not lose militarily. *It's like asking a Muslim if he believes
in Allah.


The US was *militarily defeated* because it's loses of B-52,


Could we have that in English? *Obviously your views must be seen
as slanted since you're not an American.


(12 in one day!) was too great to bear and *appeared* to have no
effect.


From 1942 onward the U.S. lost an AVERAGE of 170 planes a day. *Did
we lose WW II because of those losses?


Thye question to really ask is how many B-52s managed to complete
their mission and destroy North Vietnam? *In fact, on 29 September,
1972, after all U.S. ground combat forces had already left South Vietnam,
a heavy U.S. *air strike destroyed 10% of all of North Vietnam's Air
Force in one single day.


The stupid Air Force generals, meeting such little resistance coming out
of Thai air bases, were *stupid* to keep flying the same patterns
toward Hanoi. So the Vietnamese simply "lined up their remaining" SAMs
and shot them down like using a .22 at a county fair.


No proof offered. *Your claim fails.


Proof:


http://www.historynet.com/the-11-day-war.htm


That's hardly any proof that the U.S. military "lost the war in Vietnam." *As I
pointed out, the U.S. lost an AVERAGE of 170 aircraft each and every day of
WW II, and I don't recall anyone claiming the U.S. lost that war.


In the Schweinfurt-Regensburg bombing mission in WW II, the U.S. lost
SIXTY B-17s in one single mission, only to fly a second mission losing
ANOTHER SIXTY B-17s, with another 17 being too damaged to return
to flying, and were scrapped, with yet another 161 having various
degrees of battle damage. *See --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Raid_on_Schweinfurt


Then we have the ill-fated raid on the Ploiesti oil fields of Romania, which
took place on 1 August, 1943, in which five Medals of Honor (3 posthumously),
and numerous DSCs were awarded to pilots on a single day. *178 B-24
aircraft flew into a fiery hell that would be called "Black Sunday." *53
aircraft were lost of those 178. *See --http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/ploesti.htm


Then we have the battle of Midway in which virtually all U.S. aircraft were
destroyed in the first few waves they were used to attack. *But the
Japanese were caught flat-footed during aircraft carrier refueling operations
and Midway turned into an ugly defeat of Yamamoto's naval fleet in
subsequent attacks.


Guess who won that war? *It cannot be said about Vietnam that "victory"
consisted of _winning one particular battle_, even when there was certainly
no "victory" by North Vietnam in Linebacker II.


excerpt:


There was worse news—the attack tactics themselves. All bombers were
to depart from the same initial point (IP), make the same bomb run in
single-file formation, fly exactly the same airspeeds, operate in
exactly the same altitude blocks and maintain exactly the same spacing
between each of the three-ship cells (one minute) and between each
aircraft within the cells (15 seconds).


A B-52 copilot who flew Linebacker II sorties from Andersen, then-
Captain Don Craig, wrote me that "We knew there were big planning
flaws, starting with the long lines of bombers coming in the same
route…and it was straight down Thud Ridge, for God's sake….It looked
very much like ducks in a shooting gallery." B-52 radar navigator
Captain Wilton Strickland, operating from the other B-52 base, at U-
Tapao airfield in Thailand, concurred: "[The spacing] gave enemy air
de*fenses plenty of time to track and fire on each aircraft as it came
within range….Long before we entered the target area, they knew our
precise altitude, spacing and approach route…."


Another concern was the bomb run no-evasion order issued by an
Andersen wing commander (apparently on his own authority, on penalty
of court-martial), despite previous evidence that if the B-52 was
brought back straight and level prior to release, accuracy was not
degraded. After aircrews repeatedly ignored the order on Days One and
Two, without affecting bombing results, it was quietly rescinded.


Most egregious, SAC planners mandated a "combat break" to the right
after bomb release (post-target turn, or PTT), a nuclear-release
procedure carried over into Arc Light (where it had been just as
pointless; the PTT was designed solely for better survivability
against a nuclear blast). During Arc Light, the PTT had rendered no
harm. Over heavily defended Hanoi, however, it turned lethal. Not only
were criti*cal electronic countermeasures degraded, the 120-knot-plus
jet stream tailwind that B-52s enjoyed on the bomb run became a 120-
knot-plus headwind after the turn, resulting in a combined groundspeed
reduction of nearly 250 knots.


Later, during the Day Two pre-mission briefing, a disgusted Captain
Strickland, who was destined to fly six of the 11 Linebacker missions,
could no longer keep silent: "Who is planning such stupid tactics," he
asked the briefers, "and why?" Their response: "The planning is being
done at Omaha's SAC HQ, and the common routes, altitudes and trail
formations are used for ease of planning."


"Well," Strickland shot back, "the enemy is using your plan, along
with the after-release turn and our slow withdrawal, for ease of
tracking and shootdown!"


U-Tapao's 17th Air Division commander, Brig. Gen. Glenn Sulli*van, who
was present during Strickland's comments, was thinking along similar
lines. Sullivan and his wing commanders had been carefully listening
to aircrew feedback, though their requests for tactics changes had so
far fallen on deaf ears. Sullivan was most upset about the PTT; after
the battle he wrote a friend, "The post-target turn was the murder
point."


Nevertheless, good tactics or bad, the 300 BUFF in-theater aircrews
still had to fly the missions in the 206 Stratofortresses available
(Andersen had 53 B-52Ds and 99 B-52Gs on station; U-Tapao had 54
B-52Ds). On Day One, 129 B-52s launched from Andersen and U-Tapao in
three massive waves spaced at four-hour intervals. Shortly after dark,
the first wave (33 B-52Ds and 15 B-52Gs) arrived at their Laotian IP
and wheeled southeast toward seven Hanoi targets—setting the stage for
the biggest air battle since World War II. Although the BUFFs were the
attack's centerpiece, more than 100 additional U.S. Air Force, Navy
and Marine recon, radar jammer and fighter-bomber aircraft flew in
support of the heavies or delivered their own assigned blows. ....


People have ****ed and moaned about how a battle was conducted,
or how they feel they were shafted into taken part in an action they
learned to later hate since Achilles slew Hector. *What's new about
that??


None of that disputes the fact that U.S. Air Power continued well after
all U.S. combat forces had been removed from Vietnam. *Thus it is hardly
possible that the loss of a number of B-52s means the U.S. military
"lost the war in Vietnam." *Since there were no U.S. military boots on
the ground to lose that war. *And it is a fact that North Vietnam violated
the terms they had agreed to in the peace accords. *It is also a fact that
Linebacker II brought North Vietnam hastily back to the peace table that they
had so confidently decided to leave. *Further it was the political arm of
the U.S. rather than the military that gave the military only 72 hours to
launch Linebacker II, hardly sufficient time to adequately prepare for
a major air assault on what was known to be a well-defended target.


And these losses only happened during the third wave giving the NVA
the ability to anticipate the strike patterns and deploy 34 SAMs into
the target area. *In the first wave 129 bombers were sent, and 3 were
shot down. *In the second wave 93 bombers were used, and although
20 SAMs were launched, not one B-52 was shot down. *In that fatal
third wave, 99 bombers were launched and seven more B-52s were
shot down. *Hardly a "defeat," in terms of targets destroyed, when
compared to the loss of aircraft the U.S. sustained in various bombing
runs during WW II.


Planet Visitor II- Hide quoted text -


- Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -


- Show quoted text -


Who was talking about defeat, which I view as irrelevant, *the line of
talk was about B-52s lining up to come into bombing Hanoi so that they
could easily be shot down!


And my "No proof offer. *Your claim fails," was in response to the comment
from the original poster that "The US was *militarily defeated* because it's
loses of B-52." *The loss of those B-52s in Linebacker II did not signal a
"military defeat" for the U.S. military in Vietnam. *I was certainly not questioning
or attempting to deny that loss; but insisting that the loss itself did not
represent the *military defeat" of the U.S. in Vietnam. *No war is fought
without some tactical or strategic mistake being made. *Certainly the Viet
Cong and the NVA made their share of tactical and strategic mistakes,
as shown by the much greater number who died than the 58,000 plus
U.S. military deaths.


Planet Visitor II


They did not have massive numbers of Jets, ships and bombers. * They
did not have the mobilbity and fire power of the US = of course they
suffered higher number of dead!


  #17  
Old March 28th, 2013, 03:31 PM posted to soc.retirement,alt.politics.socialism.trotsky,alt.horror,alt.politics.socialism,rec.travel.europe
Planet Visitor II[_3_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 103
Default "..on December 30, 1972, after eleven days of those B-52 attack...

On Thu, 28 Mar 2013 07:11:17 -0700 (PDT), chatnoir wrote:

On Mar 28, 7:58*am, Planet Visitor II wrote:
On Thu, 28 Mar 2013 05:40:50 -0700 (PDT), chatnoir wrote:
On Mar 27, 10:14*pm, Planet Visitor II wrote:
On Wed, 27 Mar 2013 11:39:39 -0700 (PDT), chatnoir wrote:
On Mar 27, 11:21*am, Planet Visitor II wrote:
On Wed, 27 Mar 2013 08:02:48 -0700 (PDT), David Walters wrote:
The person posting this doesn't even know what a "military victory"
means. It is, in the final analysis, the ability of one side to
*completely overwhelm* the opponent OR to force the opponent to make
the *political* choice that the loses are to great to continue do to
resources (both military and human), capital destruction, national
dismemberment, etc etc.


Basically the argument that the US did "not lose" is the same one
Hitler used to explain Germany's defeat at the end of WWI. It's a non-
argument.


Umm... The non-argument is that Hitler was even alive to "explain"
Germany's defeat at the end of WW II.


30 April 1945 -- Hitler commits suicide in Berlin bunker.
7 May 1945 -- 02:41 Germany signs instrument of surrender in Reims, France.
8 May 1945 -- 23:01 All forces under German control cease active operations.


It is true that had the US continued the bombing the Vietnamese would
of been forced to the table once again. General Giap notes this in his
interviews on the Christmas Bombings (while Nixon was in Beijing, as
it happens) But wars are not fought as "what ifs". That is they are
fought "as is". The US *was militarily defeated* by Vietnam.''


Pardon me, but General Giap would hardly be the one to admit that
the U.S. did not lose militarily. *It's like asking a Muslim if he believes
in Allah.


The US was *militarily defeated* because it's loses of B-52,


Could we have that in English? *Obviously your views must be seen
as slanted since you're not an American.


(12 in one day!) was too great to bear and *appeared* to have no
effect.


From 1942 onward the U.S. lost an AVERAGE of 170 planes a day. *Did
we lose WW II because of those losses?


Thye question to really ask is how many B-52s managed to complete
their mission and destroy North Vietnam? *In fact, on 29 September,
1972, after all U.S. ground combat forces had already left South Vietnam,
a heavy U.S. *air strike destroyed 10% of all of North Vietnam's Air
Force in one single day.


The stupid Air Force generals, meeting such little resistance coming out
of Thai air bases, were *stupid* to keep flying the same patterns
toward Hanoi. So the Vietnamese simply "lined up their remaining" SAMs
and shot them down like using a .22 at a county fair.


No proof offered. *Your claim fails.


Proof:


http://www.historynet.com/the-11-day-war.htm


That's hardly any proof that the U.S. military "lost the war in Vietnam." *As I
pointed out, the U.S. lost an AVERAGE of 170 aircraft each and every day of
WW II, and I don't recall anyone claiming the U.S. lost that war.


In the Schweinfurt-Regensburg bombing mission in WW II, the U.S. lost
SIXTY B-17s in one single mission, only to fly a second mission losing
ANOTHER SIXTY B-17s, with another 17 being too damaged to return
to flying, and were scrapped, with yet another 161 having various
degrees of battle damage. *See --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Raid_on_Schweinfurt


Then we have the ill-fated raid on the Ploiesti oil fields of Romania, which
took place on 1 August, 1943, in which five Medals of Honor (3 posthumously),
and numerous DSCs were awarded to pilots on a single day. *178 B-24
aircraft flew into a fiery hell that would be called "Black Sunday." *53
aircraft were lost of those 178. *See --http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/ploesti.htm


Then we have the battle of Midway in which virtually all U.S. aircraft were
destroyed in the first few waves they were used to attack. *But the
Japanese were caught flat-footed during aircraft carrier refueling operations
and Midway turned into an ugly defeat of Yamamoto's naval fleet in
subsequent attacks.


Guess who won that war? *It cannot be said about Vietnam that "victory"
consisted of _winning one particular battle_, even when there was certainly
no "victory" by North Vietnam in Linebacker II.


excerpt:


There was worse news—the attack tactics themselves. All bombers were
to depart from the same initial point (IP), make the same bomb run in
single-file formation, fly exactly the same airspeeds, operate in
exactly the same altitude blocks and maintain exactly the same spacing
between each of the three-ship cells (one minute) and between each
aircraft within the cells (15 seconds).


A B-52 copilot who flew Linebacker II sorties from Andersen, then-
Captain Don Craig, wrote me that "We knew there were big planning
flaws, starting with the long lines of bombers coming in the same
route…and it was straight down Thud Ridge, for God's sake….It looked
very much like ducks in a shooting gallery." B-52 radar navigator
Captain Wilton Strickland, operating from the other B-52 base, at U-
Tapao airfield in Thailand, concurred: "[The spacing] gave enemy air
de*fenses plenty of time to track and fire on each aircraft as it came
within range….Long before we entered the target area, they knew our
precise altitude, spacing and approach route…."


Another concern was the bomb run no-evasion order issued by an
Andersen wing commander (apparently on his own authority, on penalty
of court-martial), despite previous evidence that if the B-52 was
brought back straight and level prior to release, accuracy was not
degraded. After aircrews repeatedly ignored the order on Days One and
Two, without affecting bombing results, it was quietly rescinded.


Most egregious, SAC planners mandated a "combat break" to the right
after bomb release (post-target turn, or PTT), a nuclear-release
procedure carried over into Arc Light (where it had been just as
pointless; the PTT was designed solely for better survivability
against a nuclear blast). During Arc Light, the PTT had rendered no
harm. Over heavily defended Hanoi, however, it turned lethal. Not only
were criti*cal electronic countermeasures degraded, the 120-knot-plus
jet stream tailwind that B-52s enjoyed on the bomb run became a 120-
knot-plus headwind after the turn, resulting in a combined groundspeed
reduction of nearly 250 knots.


Later, during the Day Two pre-mission briefing, a disgusted Captain
Strickland, who was destined to fly six of the 11 Linebacker missions,
could no longer keep silent: "Who is planning such stupid tactics," he
asked the briefers, "and why?" Their response: "The planning is being
done at Omaha's SAC HQ, and the common routes, altitudes and trail
formations are used for ease of planning."


"Well," Strickland shot back, "the enemy is using your plan, along
with the after-release turn and our slow withdrawal, for ease of
tracking and shootdown!"


U-Tapao's 17th Air Division commander, Brig. Gen. Glenn Sulli*van, who
was present during Strickland's comments, was thinking along similar
lines. Sullivan and his wing commanders had been carefully listening
to aircrew feedback, though their requests for tactics changes had so
far fallen on deaf ears. Sullivan was most upset about the PTT; after
the battle he wrote a friend, "The post-target turn was the murder
point."


Nevertheless, good tactics or bad, the 300 BUFF in-theater aircrews
still had to fly the missions in the 206 Stratofortresses available
(Andersen had 53 B-52Ds and 99 B-52Gs on station; U-Tapao had 54
B-52Ds). On Day One, 129 B-52s launched from Andersen and U-Tapao in
three massive waves spaced at four-hour intervals. Shortly after dark,
the first wave (33 B-52Ds and 15 B-52Gs) arrived at their Laotian IP
and wheeled southeast toward seven Hanoi targets—setting the stage for
the biggest air battle since World War II. Although the BUFFs were the
attack's centerpiece, more than 100 additional U.S. Air Force, Navy
and Marine recon, radar jammer and fighter-bomber aircraft flew in
support of the heavies or delivered their own assigned blows. ....


People have ****ed and moaned about how a battle was conducted,
or how they feel they were shafted into taken part in an action they
learned to later hate since Achilles slew Hector. *What's new about
that??


None of that disputes the fact that U.S. Air Power continued well after
all U.S. combat forces had been removed from Vietnam. *Thus it is hardly
possible that the loss of a number of B-52s means the U.S. military
"lost the war in Vietnam." *Since there were no U.S. military boots on
the ground to lose that war. *And it is a fact that North Vietnam violated
the terms they had agreed to in the peace accords. *It is also a fact that
Linebacker II brought North Vietnam hastily back to the peace table that they
had so confidently decided to leave. *Further it was the political arm of
the U.S. rather than the military that gave the military only 72 hours to
launch Linebacker II, hardly sufficient time to adequately prepare for
a major air assault on what was known to be a well-defended target.


And these losses only happened during the third wave giving the NVA
the ability to anticipate the strike patterns and deploy 34 SAMs into
the target area. *In the first wave 129 bombers were sent, and 3 were
shot down. *In the second wave 93 bombers were used, and although
20 SAMs were launched, not one B-52 was shot down. *In that fatal
third wave, 99 bombers were launched and seven more B-52s were
shot down. *Hardly a "defeat," in terms of targets destroyed, when
compared to the loss of aircraft the U.S. sustained in various bombing
runs during WW II.


Planet Visitor II- Hide quoted text -


- Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -


- Show quoted text -


Who was talking about defeat, which I view as irrelevant, *the line of
talk was about B-52s lining up to come into bombing Hanoi so that they
could easily be shot down!


And my "No proof offer. *Your claim fails," was in response to the comment
from the original poster that "The US was *militarily defeated* because it's
loses of B-52." *The loss of those B-52s in Linebacker II did not signal a
"military defeat" for the U.S. military in Vietnam. *I was certainly not questioning
or attempting to deny that loss; but insisting that the loss itself did not
represent the *military defeat" of the U.S. in Vietnam. *No war is fought
without some tactical or strategic mistake being made. *Certainly the Viet
Cong and the NVA made their share of tactical and strategic mistakes,
as shown by the much greater number who died than the 58,000 plus
U.S. military deaths.

Planet Visitor II


They did not have massive numbers of Jets, ships and bombers. They
did not have the mobilbity and fire power of the US = of course they
suffered higher number of dead!


My point exactly.


Planet Visitor II
  #18  
Old March 28th, 2013, 06:23 PM posted to soc.retirement,alt.politics.socialism.trotsky,alt.horror,alt.politics.socialism,rec.travel.europe
David Walters
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 5
Default "..on December 30, 1972, after eleven days of those B-52 attack...

The problem is that there is rarely a pure military victory. I was
quite alive during this period and watch, as *an American* seeing the
US getting it's ass kicked. The Vietnam War was fought like all wars
as enxtension of politics. And like all "victories" and "defeats" the
military actions have political consequences. The US lost 10 times the
number of troops during WWII. It losts hundred of more planes. Yet the
US, and ONLY because of Russian RED ARMY involvement, was able to
participate in an Allied victory in that war.

[I base point about the brilliant General Giap on an interview he gave
for a Military Channel series on Vietnam]

As 10s of thousands of GIs were killed with 6 times that number
injured (or more) the *politics* of this war, without clear
*political* goals, go the American people ****ed off enough to make it
impossible for the US to win...militarily.

The goal for Vietnam was to liberate their country from US *military*
occupation.

The Vietnamese WON (thank the gods).

David

  #19  
Old March 29th, 2013, 02:36 AM posted to soc.retirement,alt.politics.socialism.trotsky,alt.horror,alt.politics.socialism,rec.travel.europe
dusty
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 11
Default "..on December 30, 1972, after eleven days of those B-52 attackson the Hanoi area, you had won the war. It was over..."

On Mar 27, 4:09*pm, Planet Visitor II wrote:
On Tue, 26 Mar 2013 17:58:41 -0700 (PDT), chatnoir wrote:
On Mar 26, 3:11*pm, :???????? wrote:
"..on December 30, 1972, after eleven days of those B-52 attacks on
the Hanoi area, * you had won the war. *It was over..."


"-A Better War
Lewis Sorley's A Better War challenges the accepted view of Vietnam,
does so with great authority, and will hopefully thereby foster a
significant re-examination of this sorest spot in the national psyche.
The basic premise of the book is that late in 1970 or early in 1971
the United States had essentially won the Vietnam War. *That is to
say, we had defeated the Viet Cong in the field, returned effective
control of most of the population to the South Vietnamese and created
a situation where the South Vietnamese armed forces could continue the
war on their own, so long as we provided them with adequate supplies
and intelligence, and carried through on our promise to bomb the North
if they violated peace agreements.
Sorley cites Sir Robert Thompson's assessment that :


* * In my view, on December 30, 1972, after eleven days of those B-52
attacks on the Hanoi area,
* * you had won the war. *It was over.


At that point, the Viet Cong had been destroyed, we had definitely won
the insurgency phase of the War. *Additionally, the North had been
defeated in the initial phase of conventional warfare, and had finally
had the War brought home to them in a significant way. *Though the
overall War was certainly not over, it was sitting there, just waiting
to be won.


So what happened ? ..."


...One book can not change peoples' minds about a matter as
contentious as the Vietnam War. *In fact, the intellectual classes and
the Baby Boom Generation have so much of themselves invested in the
idea that the War was wrong and unwinnable that it's unlikely that any
number of books could change their minds. *But as the years go by and
as new generations take a fresh look at the War, it is important that
they approach it with an open mind...."


google any part to read more


Looks like it was lost in the end! * Only the removal of the crook
Nixon stopped the bombing!


Anyone with half a brain knows that the U.S. did NOT lose the MILITARY
WAR in Vietnam. *Only half-brain anti-American idiots who never saw
a day in Vietnam during the war like to pander the silly notion that the
Viet Cong and the North Vietnam rag-tag military mastered the U.S. military.

It was Kissinger who lost that war for the U.S., and he never served a day
in the military. *If there had been no "Peace" accord, our military leaders
would have simply continued to murder innocent people along with our own
military being killed and we would have remained there until at least1980..
Because we were a society sick at our moral core by ever contending there
was any need whatsoever to consider that tiny piece of land to have any
military significance in the U.S. defensive posture.

Eventually, North Vietnam would have run out of resources, since we were
far from running a "guns or butter" economy along with running that war.
Our Peace Wall would now have 200,000 names at least, but North Vietnam's
wall would have been ten times as large. *And no matter what, a few
years after we left, with North Vietnam totally defeated militarily, South
Vietnam would have internally collapsed politically, because it was held
together with nothing but American guns, glue and money... making
some very bad people very rich. *And we would be right where we are
today, except for the million of humans that would probably have been
slaughtered.

But this claim about the U.S. losing the military war in Vietnam should
not be the issue. *There NEVER should have been such a war!! *We should
NEVER have slaughtered so many innocent human beings under false
pretenses!!! *The immorality of the U.S. in even engaging in such a war
dwarfs any implied immorality in our engaging in war in Iraq. *Not one
American life was in danger from forces in Vietnam if we had never
ventured in. *It was a war with no reason whatsoever. *Proven by the
fact that today Vietnam is in the same political position it would be
in if we had never set a single military foot in Vietnam.

It has to be said that most of our military LEADERS, agreed completely
with the belief that we needed to kill opponents of the very civilian leaders
of South Vietnam that WE kept in power. *And if they had been permitted
they would have killed ten times as many as they led American troops
to kill. *Thus the loss of innocent lives in Vietnam has to be seen as nothing
but mass murder on their part. *Further... *in that act of horrendous
deceit and knavery we most certainly did more than lose our presumed
"innocence." * We turned an ideological and moral corner... and still
have not found our way back again.

Planet Visitor II



"Only half-brain anti-American idiots who never saw a day in Vietnam
during the war like to pander the silly notion that the Viet Cong and
the North Vietnam rag-tag military mastered the U.S. military."

Who's the anti-American:

"If there had been no "Peace" accord, our military leaders would have
simply continued to murder innocent people along with our own military
being killed and we would have remained there until at least
1980. ...a society sick at our moral core"


The mass opposition to the war, already apparent in the early
seventies would have exploded had the war continued "...until at least
1980" as the body bags carrying the precious corpses were flown in in
increasing numbers and the American economy got into deeper and deeper
crisis as the costs of the war spiralled. That mass opposition of
Americans is given no credit by you at all. You prefer to blame the
war on "Americans" rather than nail the banker-capitalists as its root
cause. That makes you a fake patriotic hiding the crimes of the ruling
class.


PS: your fantasy of the fighting ability and organisation of the
Vietnamese bears no resemblance to reports by Australians who fought
in Vietnam.

  #20  
Old March 29th, 2013, 05:12 PM posted to soc.retirement,alt.politics.socialism.trotsky,alt.horror,alt.politics.socialism,rec.travel.europe
Planet Visitor II[_3_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 103
Default "..on December 30, 1972, after eleven days of those B-52 attacks on the Hanoi area, you had won the war. It was over..."

On Thu, 28 Mar 2013 18:36:54 -0700 (PDT), dusty wrote:

On Mar 27, 4:09*pm, Planet Visitor II wrote:
On Tue, 26 Mar 2013 17:58:41 -0700 (PDT), chatnoir wrote:
On Mar 26, 3:11*pm, :???????? wrote:
"..on December 30, 1972, after eleven days of those B-52 attacks on
the Hanoi area, * you had won the war. *It was over..."


"-A Better War
Lewis Sorley's A Better War challenges the accepted view of Vietnam,
does so with great authority, and will hopefully thereby foster a
significant re-examination of this sorest spot in the national psyche.
The basic premise of the book is that late in 1970 or early in 1971
the United States had essentially won the Vietnam War. *That is to
say, we had defeated the Viet Cong in the field, returned effective
control of most of the population to the South Vietnamese and created
a situation where the South Vietnamese armed forces could continue the
war on their own, so long as we provided them with adequate supplies
and intelligence, and carried through on our promise to bomb the North
if they violated peace agreements.
Sorley cites Sir Robert Thompson's assessment that :


* * In my view, on December 30, 1972, after eleven days of those B-52
attacks on the Hanoi area,
* * you had won the war. *It was over.


At that point, the Viet Cong had been destroyed, we had definitely won
the insurgency phase of the War. *Additionally, the North had been
defeated in the initial phase of conventional warfare, and had finally
had the War brought home to them in a significant way. *Though the
overall War was certainly not over, it was sitting there, just waiting
to be won.


So what happened ? ..."


...One book can not change peoples' minds about a matter as
contentious as the Vietnam War. *In fact, the intellectual classes and
the Baby Boom Generation have so much of themselves invested in the
idea that the War was wrong and unwinnable that it's unlikely that any
number of books could change their minds. *But as the years go by and
as new generations take a fresh look at the War, it is important that
they approach it with an open mind...."


google any part to read more


Looks like it was lost in the end! * Only the removal of the crook
Nixon stopped the bombing!


Anyone with half a brain knows that the U.S. did NOT lose the MILITARY
WAR in Vietnam. *Only half-brain anti-American idiots who never saw
a day in Vietnam during the war like to pander the silly notion that the
Viet Cong and the North Vietnam rag-tag military mastered the U.S. military.

It was Kissinger who lost that war for the U.S., and he never served a day
in the military. *If there had been no "Peace" accord, our military leaders
would have simply continued to murder innocent people along with our own
military being killed and we would have remained there until at least1980.
Because we were a society sick at our moral core by ever contending there
was any need whatsoever to consider that tiny piece of land to have any
military significance in the U.S. defensive posture.

Eventually, North Vietnam would have run out of resources, since we were
far from running a "guns or butter" economy along with running that war.
Our Peace Wall would now have 200,000 names at least, but North Vietnam's
wall would have been ten times as large. *And no matter what, a few
years after we left, with North Vietnam totally defeated militarily, South
Vietnam would have internally collapsed politically, because it was held
together with nothing but American guns, glue and money... making
some very bad people very rich. *And we would be right where we are
today, except for the million of humans that would probably have been
slaughtered.

But this claim about the U.S. losing the military war in Vietnam should
not be the issue. *There NEVER should have been such a war!! *We should
NEVER have slaughtered so many innocent human beings under false
pretenses!!! *The immorality of the U.S. in even engaging in such a war
dwarfs any implied immorality in our engaging in war in Iraq. *Not one
American life was in danger from forces in Vietnam if we had never
ventured in. *It was a war with no reason whatsoever. *Proven by the
fact that today Vietnam is in the same political position it would be
in if we had never set a single military foot in Vietnam.

It has to be said that most of our military LEADERS, agreed completely
with the belief that we needed to kill opponents of the very civilian leaders
of South Vietnam that WE kept in power. *And if they had been permitted
they would have killed ten times as many as they led American troops
to kill. *Thus the loss of innocent lives in Vietnam has to be seen as nothing
but mass murder on their part. *Further... *in that act of horrendous
deceit and knavery we most certainly did more than lose our presumed
"innocence." * We turned an ideological and moral corner... and still
have not found our way back again.

Planet Visitor II



"Only half-brain anti-American idiots who never saw a day in Vietnam
during the war like to pander the silly notion that the Viet Cong and
the North Vietnam rag-tag military mastered the U.S. military."


Ah.. the old "thump-my-chest" claim of superiority. Chum... I was serving
in Vietnam while you were still trying to get Susie to pull down her knickers
in the third grade. I served 20 years in the military, and can prove it. I
served the prerequisite year in Vietnam at DaNang AB, on good ol' Monkey
Mountain; I served another year in Thailand at Korat RTAB, with thuds
taking off every morning, and sometimes a few less coming back in the
evening; and I served another two years at Drake AB in Tokyo, where the
major military hospital in Japan was located, and the seriously injured military
were treated, with kids as young as 19 and 20, in wheelchairs, with clamps
on their heads so they could not move their heads because of traumatic
spinal cord injuries.

And I still have the orders and my retirement certificate from 1 April 1973 to
prove it.

Who's the anti-American:


Well, that would be you.

"If there had been no "Peace" accord, our military leaders would have
simply continued to murder innocent people along with our own military
being killed and we would have remained there until at least
1980. ...a society sick at our moral core"


The truth doesn't make my anti-American. In fact, I am more patriotic
because I see the truth, and accept that it does not make me anti-American
to recognize the warts and all in a country I love and honor.

The mass opposition to the war, already apparent in the early
seventies would have exploded had the war continued "...until at least
1980" as the body bags carrying the precious corpses were flown in in
increasing numbers and the American economy got into deeper and deeper
crisis as the costs of the war spiralled. That mass opposition of
Americans is given no credit by you at all. You prefer to blame the
war on "Americans" rather than nail the banker-capitalists as its root
cause. That makes you a fake patriotic hiding the crimes of the ruling
class.


That's because you are a fanatic socialist, obsessed with a failed political
system which treats humans like pawns. The problem we had with
Vietnam was our political and military leaders were filled with personal
hubris, and gave no thought to geopolitical or long-term considerations
about the far-east. The very fact that there was this deep objection from
citizens to that war, points out clearly what there is to love about the
deep-rooted morality of so many Americans. My only argument is that
we should never have even entered into that war. But once in we
certainly never LOST that war. There is not a single instance of any
document of surrender by any U.S. combat force in any engagement
against the Viet Cong or the NVA. Nor would any such instance show
that the U.S. military LOST the war in Vietnam, when considering the
numerous defeats of the Viet Cong and the NVA in various military
engagements.

PS: your fantasy of the fighting ability and organisation of the
Vietnamese bears no resemblance to reports by Australians who fought
in Vietnam.


ROTFLMAO. When cowards argue they generally try to latch onto others
who were not. Are you claiming that Australians who fought in Vietnam
felt they were outfought by the Viet Cong, and they admit that the Viet
Cong were better fighters man-for-man, than they were?

The argument is a claim that the U.S. military, with all it's military might
LOST the military war in Vietnam. And that argument is a total crock of
****! The Viet Cong admitted that the most frightening part of that war
was the B-52, and the fact that they could be walking through the jungle
and suddenly find the ground around them exploding with ordnance from
the sky. Unannounced, and with no place to hide. How many B-52s did
the Viet Cong or the NVA have?

During the course of that war how many bombings did North Vietnam
receive from the U.S. Air Force? During the course of that war how many
bombings did the U.S. receive from the North Vietnam Air Force??

For the U.S. military to have lost that war would have required the U.S.
military to have combat boots on the ground present to announce a
surrender to the NVA. That's how one defines the MILITARY LOSS OF A
WAR! There was not a single U.S. combat boot on the ground when the
NVA invaded South Vietnam and entered Saigon.



Planet Visitor II
 




Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

vB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is Off
HTML code is Off
Forum Jump

Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
DC rally by conservatives: "tens of thousands?" "three hundredthousand?" "five hundred thousand?" "A million people came?" The only thingagreed upon was that it was a "vast crowd" and it spells big tr O'Donovan, PJ, Himself Europe 16 August 31st, 2010 04:16 AM
"President" B. Hussein Obama "likely" to speak about attempted Xmas09 Muslim terror attack in "next few days" PJ O'Donovan[_3_] Europe 0 December 28th, 2009 01:05 PM
The First 100 days: Will Barack Hussein Obama Say "Ich bin einMuslimer " oder "Ich bin ein Dhimmi ?" PJ O'Donovan Europe 7 January 28th, 2009 10:25 PM
"liberalism" to "socialism" to "communism": The "end" justifies the "means" in America PJ O'Donovan[_1_] Europe 5 February 24th, 2007 05:57 PM


All times are GMT +1. The time now is 03:23 PM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.6.4
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Copyright ©2004-2024 TravelBanter.
The comments are property of their posters.