Comments by "Colonel K" (@Paladin1873) on "The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered" channel.

  1. His son, Philip, did not fare so well. He was murdered by Congressman Daniel Sickles of NY in 1859 for having an affair with the congressman's wife. Sickles pleaded temporary insanity and walked. This was the first time such a plea was used in a US court.
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  2. He had the potential to be a great artist, but he squandered his talent. Few of his works impress me because a child with a crayon could have created them. That doesn't stop investors from paying ridiculously obscene prices for them, but their goal is not sensual reward, it is profit on a future sale. The old devil must be laughing in his grave. His victims . . . not so much.
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  3. He was one of the great heroes of the Air Force research community.
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  4. You mentioned the 1994 B-52 crash at Fairchild AFB. This was a particularly tragic event because it was completely avoidable. The week had begun ominously enough when a former serviceman entered the base hospital and killed five people before being shot by Security Policemen. Preoccupied with the investigation, the wing commander overlooked or dismissed repeated complaints regarding the dangerous flight behavior one of his senior pilots. The failure of the wing commander and his deputies to ground this individual would result in the death of four men, including one squadron commander who refused to allow any other members of squadron to fly with this pilot. Numerous serious safety violations were well documented, but nothing more than verbal reprimands had ever been issued. The safety officer on the flight was a colonel who was about to retire, and this was to be his last mission. As a result, his family had gathered at the field to greet him upon landing. Instead, they witnessed the crash, which was recorded on videotape. It is a sickening thing to watch. The findings of the accident investigation uncovered a serious pattern of abuse and failure of leadership which led to the court-martial of the Wing Commander and his conviction for dereliction of duty. Small solace for those left behind.
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  5. Thanks for retelling this extraordinary story. I have never heard of this American hero, but his adventures are worthy of a movie.
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  6. Always a pleasure to hear from Tommy Atkins. I once had the satisfaction of briefly working with the Household Cavalry during an exercise in Egypt. Fortunately, one of my junior offices had liaised with the British before, so he advised that we arrive at suppertime because "They lay out the silver". After six weeks of Army field rations (I was Air Force), the chance of receiving a proper meal proved most enticing. We were not disappointed!
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  7. My grandmother's next-door neighbor bought the first color television in our town. I remember watching "Bonanza" on it in 1959 , complete with pink horses and a purple sky.
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  8. Another amazing David vs. Goliath adventure at sea.
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  9. Ronald, I'm a former fuels officer myself, but by the time I went through the Supply Officer and Fuels course, it was being taught at Lackland AFB (Medina Annex) where I started my career. As an aside, the Supply, Transportation, and Logistics Planning Officer career fields are now a single merged career field called 21RX Logistics Readiness. However, their enlisted equivalents remain separated, so the 2F0XX (fuelies) still enjoy their semi-independence, living at the far end of the field where they can host BBQs and beach parties without interference from Group or Wing leadership.
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  10. "They will live a long time, these men of broadcast television. They had an American quality. They, like their innovations, will be remembered as long as our generation lives. After that, like the men of early radio, they will become strangers. Longer and longer shadows will obscure them, until the terms CBS, NBC, and ABC sound distant on the ear, like roll film and LP." - With apologies to James Michener
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  11. History is never boring when The History Guy tells it.
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  12. Hey, Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat. Again?
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  13. I'm from a flying family and was in my senior year of high school when this happened. I remember my Dad discussing the disappearance with several other pilots, one of whom commented that Don Jonz had once written a dismissive article about the dangers of airplane icing. Another mentioned that Hale Boggs was a heavy drinker, so perhaps everyone aboard had imbibed before takeoff. All of this is pure speculation and may not contain an ounce of truth, but I'd sooner believe weather and incompetence were the culprits before I would accept a Mafia conspiracy theory.
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  14. My brother was a navigator on a C-141 Starlifter at the time and participated in the mass evacuation of US military personnel and their dependents from the Philippines (Operation Fiery Vigil). Very little could be taken, a couple of suitcases per person. In the end we abandoned both Clark Air Base and Subic Bay Naval Base. Since 1988 the US government had been in difficult negotiations with the Philippine government over a treaty involving lease renewals for both bases. Between the acrimonious talks and the devastation wrought by the volcano, the US military decided to permanently abandon Clark. When the US refused to agree to massive increases in basing right leases, the Philippine Senate voted down the treaty, thus forcing the US Navy to leave Subic Bay by the end of 1992. Clark later became an international airport, a special economic zone, and home to the Philippine Air Force. Subic Bay is now a large industrial and commercial complex, but the recent bankruptcy of a major South Korean shipbuilding company there has left Filipino bankers owed over 400 million dollars. Two Chinese firms have offered to take over the shipyard, sparking fears within the Philippine government of what that could portend in the long run. The Philippine Navy also wants to take over the yard for military construction. As an aside, in recent years both the US Navy and Air Force have made frequent stopovers and conducted limited joint operations with the Philippine military. These acts of goodwill serve as a counterbalance to the looming Chinese juggernaut. Will history repeat itself?
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  15.  @AndyFromBeaverton  There was an old joke in the AAF that the Mustang could beat the P-38 at every task except returning home with one engine out.
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  16. I'm glad I never had to learn English history in depth. If wars were won by feasting, Or victory by song, Or safety found in sleeping sound, How England would be strong! - Rudyard Kipling
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  17.  @fernandoi3389  Dr. No Mayo, I presume.
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  18. Did I hear you mention Hadrian was the successor to Trajan? Would that be same the Hadrian of Hadrian's Wall fame in Britain?
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  19. So the birds were on an acid trip. How Californian of them.
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  20.  @maynardcarmer3148  Yep. It made me shake my head and laugh out loud at the same time.
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  21. There's no way canned beer tastes better than bottled beer.
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  22. Don't screw with South Africans.
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  23. I recall the movie "Malta Story" contained a scene of the Ohio limping into Grand Harbour in Malta. It was an amazing feat and a very close thing, deserving of a movie by itself.
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  24.  @solarnaut  Sol, I can actually top that. When my wife and I were first married we lived in a small house on my tree farm. All we got was UHF and VHF reception, and it was poor even with the aluminum foil I added to the rabbit ears (it didn't work on the UHF loop antenna). Even though this was in the mid to late 90s, I couldn't afford to add cable or satellite TV, so when we built a larger house, I installed a roof antenna for better reception. I had "cleverly" mounted it to a pole which itself was held in place by two extended brackets that I'd bolted to the outside wall of our second floor bedroom. We soon discovered that the best reception could only be achieved by "tuning" the antenna for each channel. The only way to do this was for me to rotate the antenna, but the only way to rotate it was for me to climb out the rear bedroom window onto the back deck roof, walk to the edge of the house, and carefully lean around the corner so I could just barely grab the pole and twist it. Meanwhile, my wife, who was in our downstairs living room checking the reception, had to repeatedly run up the stairs and shout to me the result of each minor twist. When a major change in antenna direction was required, my only option was to take a short ladder onto the deck roof and use it to climb onto the main roof of the house, then move to the edge of the roof where I could get a good grip on the antenna and rotate it as much as needed. In these situations my wife had to run up the stairs and into the bedroom, lean out the back window, shout the results to me, then dash back downstairs to check the progress before running back up again for the next report. Mind you, this feat was normally performed at night. Rainy nights were particularly challenging.
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  25. I wonder if we'll have a repeal day for lock-downs.
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  26. Hercules and Cato - sounds like a pair of superheroes. I wish you'd do a story on that most foul character, Provost Marshall William Cunningham. I suspect he was more hated in America than Benedict Arnold and Banastre Tarleton. A fictionalized account of his death at the gallows in 1791 for forgery attests to how deep this sentiment ran.
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  27. In the role of blocking the attacker, yes, the security team failed. In their other roles they succeeded. We studied the photos and video footage of the shooting when I went through protective service training in the USAF a year later. Our instructor pointed out that a police officer assigned to screen the crowd was looking at Reagan instead of the public, thus providing Hinckley an opportunity to penetrate security. As Hinckley opened fire, Secret Service Agent Tim McCarthy spread his body in front of President Reagan and was shot in the abdomen. Meanwhile, the agent in charge, Jerry Parr, quickly shoved Reagan into the limo. As he was doing so, the President was hit by Hinckley's last bullet, which had ricocheted off the armored body of the limousine. According to forensic evidence, had Parr not pushed Reagan so violently into the car, the President would have been struck in the head instead of the arm and abdomen. While racing toward the White House, Reagan's only complaint was of a broken rib which he assumed was caused by Parr's action. But when Parr noticed blood frothing on Reagan's lips, he instantly realized the President had likely been hit in the lung, so he diverted the limo to George Washington Hospital. Collectively, the actions of the Secret Service that day saved Reagan's life. As an interesting aside, Parr first considered becoming a Secret Service agent while still a boy, after watching Ronald Reagan in the 1939 movie "Code of the Secret Service". How's that for coincidence or providence?
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  28.  @K1ddkanuck  If you had ever served in the military you would know that the services ribbing each other is a time honored tradition.
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  29. I suspect Poon Lim and Eddie Rickenbacker would have gotten along famously.
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  30. The movie, Wake Island, does a credible job of reflecting the intensity of the fighting, though it has been reported that the Chinese extras employed to play Japanese soldiers kept falling down "dead" en masse every time the director yelled action and the guns started firing. He had a hard time convincing them that not all of the enemy could die. Some of them had to survive in order to capture the island. Apparently, this displeased them (small wonder). It's also worth remembering that, despite the implication of the movie's last battle scene, most of the men and their leaders did in fact survive the war. Of course, a valiant Alamo style death tends to stir the hearts and minds of Americans more effectively than the banal truth. Anger and revenge have their usefulness in wartime.
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  31. You're a real Poe-t.
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  32. Kingfisher, if you're thanking me, I'm not sure I've done anything to deserve it, but on behalf of everyone who has ever served this country in peace or war, I'll accept it.
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  33. The Medal of Honor is not won; it is earned. This isn't the Olympic Games. It is life and death.
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  34. We studied the Pantelleria operation as part of our AFROTC progam in college, but you went into far more detail in your presentation. Many air power advocates still believe victory can be achieved from air and space without resorting to nukes or guided asteroids. This theory will only become reality when the enemy cannot hide far enough underground to avoid destruction. Perhaps the answer rests in tiny programmable drones that can selectivity target and kill their victims, rather than weapons of mass destruction that ravage entire populations.
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  35. Coastal defense and the coastal artillery so vital to that defense are long overlooked topics of American military history. A visit to any one of these historic sites quickly conjures up images of what life behind those thick walls must have been like for the soldiers stationed there, be they Spanish, English, French, or American.
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  36. Is there a subtle warning in The History Guy's Christmas message that though the current times seem dark, there was a much darker time 81 years ago? Yet the world survived, so there is hope for our future as well. Merry Christmas to all and pray for a better tomorrow.
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  37. My home county remained dry until the early 1970s.
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  38. I never visited Chanute, but my Dad went through the aircraft engine maintenance course there in the late 40s. He told me he and one other airman had already earned their A&E ratings before enlisting in the Air Force, so the instructors told them to just sit in back and remain quiet while they taught the rest of the students. Lots of bases are shuttered now, and others have since merged. For example, Lackland started out in WWII as an annex to Kelly. They were later split into two bases. Now, what remains of Kelly has become part of Lackland. The only constant is change.
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  39. Thanks for clarifying that point. has anyone ever done a retrospective on the Soviet incident?
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  40.  @ryandavis7593  If you don't want it to happen again, you'd better take a stand against what is taking place before our very eyes as many of our indoctrinated youth are hellbent to erase the very history we are talking about. We don't need another remake of the new Soviet Man, the Red Guard, the Master Race, or any other totalitarian ideal.
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  41. As goes the great library of Alexandria, so goes the Mark Twain Branch of the Detroit Public Library.
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  42. I know from firsthand experience during the Katrina disaster that the leadership of the city in 2005 paled in comparison to that exhibited in 1788. Thanks for reminding us of this nearly forgotten history.
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  43. Death Hunt was pure fiction and painted the heroes as villains and the villain as a hero.
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  44. When I'm dictator of the world, all hats will have brims or bills.
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  45.  @jiveturkey9993  I think many Americans were largely indifferent, but not anymore. Now they're mad. I believe the CCP has a very rocky future, what with the entire world pissed at them. Some countries will kowtow, others will resist. Soft power only gets you so far. It's hard to bribe or coerce a man when your actions have resulted in the death of a loved one or the loss of his livelihood.
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  46. In the 1980s I stopped at a service station in Houston, TX where the attendant proudly displayed a coin, letter, and photo of then Vice-President George Bush. The letter thanked him for repairing his limo during a visit to that city. I suspect they have protocols for everything. It certainly is good PR.
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  47. "Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.” Winston Churchill, 1948 “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” George Santayana, 1905 I know a number of people who have had innocuous programs and comments blocked by YouTube, Amazon, and Facebook. They too are flummoxed by the opaque nature of these hosts. Personally, I suspect the wonks who run these companies haven't a clue either, nor do they care. Most likely it's bean counters trying to fill their daily quota of rejections. The Gulag mentality is strong in these organization, Obi-wan. Do not despair. When enough people become frustrated, they will either change their wicked ways or succumb to the economic forces of replacement upstarts eager to garner a disenfranchised audience.
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  48.  @tundralou  The USA did not ratify the 1925 Geneva Gas Protical until 1975. At the time of its signing, several major powers, including the United Kingdom, France, and the Soviet Union, explicitly reserved the right to use the forbidden weapons for retaliatory purposes. Also, the 1925 document failed to address the production, storage, testing, and transfer of the forbidden weapons, a failure that allowed countries such as the Soviet Union and the United States to amass large supplies of chemical and bacteriological agents.
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  49. Your Dad was a true mustang. I'm sure ADM Byrd appreciated this and recognized the potential in him. I thank your Dad for his service to this country in three wars.
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  50. So many older men died. It amazes me how much life had to be lost before decisive corrective action was taken. As for the fine, it equated to $9 per man killed, such is the value placed on them.
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