Comments by "Colonel K" (@Paladin1873) on "Ed Nash's Military Matters"
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I have a couple books on the Thompson that mention this aircraft and include a few photos, but your information about the plane is more detailed. In the 1920s the Thompson Model 1921 sold for $200 - $225, so fitting out a Junkers with 30 of them would have cost well over $6000, or the equivalent of $112,000 today. This does not include the necessary modifications required or the cost of the 100 round C-drums. These drums were far less common than the 50 round L-drums because of the weight and bulk issue (8.25 lbs loaded). So equipped, a fully loaded Thompson would have weighed 19 lbs. Since the butt stocks were removed from at least 28 of the guns, the weight would be a little less, but the rigging necessary to hold them in place would bring that weight back up. The total load-out for 30 guns would be about 570 lbs. Sixty spare drums, fully loaded, would be an additional 495 pounds, bringing the total weapons load to 1065 lbs, a not insignificant sum in those early days of aviation.
I don't see how 28 drum magazines could be swapped in four minutes even if the plane was stationary on the ground. This would equate to 8 1/2 seconds per gun. Assuming you had a container holding four drums (total weight at least 33 lbs), in 34 seconds you would need to grab the first box of drums from their storage rack, move to a row of guns, pull back the actuator knob on four guns, engage their magazine releases and slide out four empty drums, insert four loaded drums, stack the empty drums in the container, return it to the storage rack, and begin the process again. Now try doing this while the plane is bouncing around in the air.
Swapping magazines would have been the least of your problems. The experiment failed due to a number of factors. Aiming was highly problematic, and the muzzle velocity of the 45 ACP round out of a Thompson barrel was only 920 fps. Compare this with the 2800 fps of a typical 30'06 bullet fired from a Browning machine gun. This meant the aircraft would have to fly danger close to its intended target if there was to be any hope of hitting a target, much less inducing a ballistically significant wound on the intended victims. I believe the Soviets attempted something similar and in typical Soviet fashion, went to even greater extremes.
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If your country does end up with Chinese aircraft, I believe you will suffer from buyer's remorse in the long run. This has been the case with Russian aircraft in the past because the technical support packages that came with them were not sufficient to maintain the fleets. This has much to do with Russia's logistics philosophy which dictates the return of aircraft to the factory for both intermediate and depot level maintenance and upgrade. I don't know if the Chinese follow this same practice, but I do know their production standards and ability to deliver in a timely manner are questionable. Also, the CCP will use any opportunity, including favorable loans, gifts, and bribery, to worm their way into a country so they can establish a base of operation from which to exploit the host country. One way to tell if this is their plan is to look at their technical package. Does it include a lot of spare parts, test equipment, tools, and on-site training for your Air Force technicians? Will they provide you with data packages that allow you to repair and fabricate your own components? The Chinese play the long game and have suckered a number of countries in recent years. I know the Philippines has had their fill of them. Caveat emptor!
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For those members of your audience who may not be aware of it, Charles Lindbergh was not pro-Nazi. He actually spied on the Nazis for Roosevelt prior to the war, but when he saw how the major European powers were rearming for another war, he informed Roosevelt that we were both technologically and quantitatively behind them in air power and stated it would be wise of us to stay out of the coming conflict. This did not sit well with FDR, but when Lindy joined the isolationist movement, it angered Roosevelt, who retaliated against him with a smear campaign and an income tax investigation. The latter backfired as it was revealed Lindbergh had been overpaying his income tax for years and was owed a refund. When we entered WWII, Roosevelt refused Lindbergh's request to be recalled to active duty, so he went to work for Lockheed and Vought as a technical advisor. He ended up in the Pacific Theater demonstrating techniques to greatly extend the range of the P-38 by leaning out the fuel-air mixture, and doubling the bomb load of the Corsair. In the process he managed to shoot down a couple of Japanese planes. This was all done as a civilian. When FDR found out, he had him sent home, probably a wise decision, given his fame as the greatest living aviator in the world. Where there's a Lindbergh, there's a way.
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That's a very interesting story, but I see no evidence the attack was anything other than an accident caused by the fog of war. I can understand why some historians might think otherwise, though it is quite a stretch of the imagination. MacArthur and Truman did not like each, and MacArthur was not above bending orders, policies, and suggestions to fit his own world view or current desires. From what I've read I do not think MacArthur exactly refused an order from his Commander-in-Chief to return to the USA for a briefing. His rationale that he could not in good conscience leave his Far East Command in time of active war was plausible, even if his true motives were obtuse. He was responsive to the suggestion he meet informally with the President at Wake Island. Truman, realizing how popular the general was among the American people, saw it as an opportunity to tie his political fortunes to MacArthur's recent military successes. One thing that is obvious is that the men had limited respect for each other. MacArthur viewed Truman as an uneducated and temperamental political hack who lacked good family connections and breeding. Of course, Truman returned the favor with equal contempt, privately complaining that MacArthur was a pompous, arrogant, pampered ass who was not so subtly defying him. I think both views have merit. Such is usually the case with great men.
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Two decades ago while I was at the Pentagon I wrote a short paper about where drone technology might lead. Though I have not seen much written about it since, I envisioned the development of micro drones, perhaps the size of insects, which could be used for close surveillance and targeted assassination. As such technology matures, it is conceivable that someday it will be expanded and made publicly available to any individual for use as a nonlethal defensive tool against robbery or assault. Imagine tiny stinger drones embedded in your clothing or carried in a pouch that can deploy instantly to deal with an immediate threat or shield you from attack. Perhaps micro drones also will be used to deliver nanobots into an unsuspecting terrorist. What will these nanobots be capable of doing? Perhaps they will kill him while making his death appear natural. Or maybe they will be used for psychological operations, and instead of killing the host, will enter his brain to manipulate his behavior in imaginative ways. This could include spying on his own associates, committing sabotage, or behaving in such a bizarre manner that his own people will think he's gone nuts and kill him. Of course, the possibilities are endless, meaning one day such technology may be unleashed on an unsuspecting public in an effort to make us all compliant automatons. And to think it all began as a toy.
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The A/B/A-26 Invader/Counterinvader was my favorite twin engine warbird when I was a kid. The USAF retired the last one a year before I entered college ROTC, so a lot of old-timers were still around through much of my career. Indeed, even after 911, when my staff was augmented by both Reserve members and Air Guardsmen, one of the old Chief Master Sergeants loaned to us turned out to be from the Alabama Air Guard. He had started his career as an 18 year-old Airman in the unit from which the CIA had recruited many of the Bay Of Pigs crew and support personnel. He joined it shortly after the infamous invasion and filled me with stories about the acrimony these men long felt toward President Kennedy and his decision not to back them up as originally planned. Regarding the Congo incursion of 1964, one of my NCOs in the late 1970s was a black Master Sergeant who had been a C-130 loadmaster during the rescue operation at Stanleyville. He related to me that as they landed, a fellow airman who was white, asked him what he was going to do if, when they lowered the tail ramp, rebels confronted them instead of Belgian paratroopers. He replied, "That's easy; I'm going to grab you and yell 'I got mine, I got mine.'" Military humor is priceless.
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@Beorninki Pray tell, which country is better? The world keeps trying to move here, so we must be doing something right. I've yet to see anyone cling to the landing gear of a flight leaving the USA. 325,00 Americans died to free the slaves, another 100,000 died to end the First World War, 400,000 died to help save the world from another dark age, and 100,000 more died to keep the Cold War from going hot. As for the American Indian, you talk as though the many tribes lived in peaceful harmony with one another. Nothing could be further from the truth. Most were nomadic warriors who raided each other's camps and polluted the land, migrating only after they had taken all it had to give them. You don't believe in nationalism and see no reason for it. It was the lack of a national identity and the cohesiveness it creates that led to the native's downfall. As for our prisons, we don't put people in them because of their color. We put them in there because of their crimes, most of which are committed against members of their own ethnicity. Before you criticize a country, it would serve you well to study the history and the facts rather than the rantings of modern revisionists who either don't know the truth or are determined to pervert it for their own political ends. Stop spouting their garbage and open your eyes to the truth, even if it temporarily blinds you.
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At 8:15 you show the SPAD fitted with three Colt Browning 1895 "Potato Digger" machine guns. That is a very odd choice for an airplane because of the way the Digger operates. It is based on the old Winchester lever action rifle, but with the lever hinged under the barrel and connected to the bolt by a linkage system. When the gun fires, gas escapes through a small hole in the barrel, striking a cup at the front of the lever. This forces the lever arm to swing down 90 degrees. A heavy spring then swings it back up. As with a lever action rifle, the linkage to the bolt forces the bolt to slide back and forth, during which movement it chambers, fires, and ejects cartridges in rapid succession.
I've shot a Digger before. It requires a good deal of room for the arm to swing freely. The gun earned its nickname because the original tripod mounted ground gun had a tendency to settle into soft dirt while firing. As a result the lever sometimes scooped up dirt and tossed it about, leaving a trough in the soil.
During WWI the Digger was used mainly for training by the US Army, but the Marlin-Rockwell Corporation developed an aircraft variant (Model 1917) that replaced the swinging lever with a more conventional gas tube and spring-loaded piston (as in the BAR). This eliminated the problem. However, the photo you show appears to be the original swinging lever gun. I was never aware these were ever put on an airplane. Necessity truly is the mother of invention.
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@danbenson7587 I'm both a pilot and former bird hunter. You are making a great number of assumptions. What are you going to see from a 1000 feet up? If you are directly over the enemy line of trenches, you will be subjected to both observation and ground fire. If you are ahead of or behind the trenches, you must employ slant range, which restricts your observation of enemy troops.
The best way to strafe a trench is with enfilade fire, meaning you must fly parallel to and above the trench. You are not heading in the direction of your on lines; you are flying along the same basic course as the trenches, so you remain over enemy lines at all times.
If you attempt to attack from behind and perpendicular to the trenches, you have placed yourself behind enemy lines and are now firing into defilade where your enemy is better protected from you.
Not all of your adversaries machine guns are placed in forward firing positions. Some guns will be arranged to provide protective overwatch, interdicting crossfire, and aerial interception.
The German M18i machine pistol saw limited use in the very late stages of the war as an individual weapon primarily in trench raiding. The Thompson SMG was never used in WWI. Gen Thompson called it a trench broom because he envisioned it being carried by individual soldiers to clear trenches with massed fire. He later coined the more popular term submachine gun.
Massed fire is not the same thing as sustained fire. A soldier on foot cannot keep up a steady stream of fire as he slowly advances across no-man's land. He must pause to reload and his number of reloads are limited. He must coordinate his advance with other soldiers so that one or more of them is placing suppressive fire on the same enemy strong point at all times until they can enter the trench and begin working their way through it. If the trenches are more than 100 yards apart, the supporting fire from any SMG will be inaccurate and very dispersed. The Russians tried this tactic in WWII and found it worked at close range and during urban fighting, but in open terrain or against a well entrenched enemy it was next to useless.
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@theangrycheeto You completely misinterpreted my comments. As for 400 years of systematic racism, how do you explain the fact that we freed the slaves in the bloodiest conflict in American history, along with later saving the world from Nazism, Japanese imperialism, and Soviet communist enslavement? You'd think if Americans were so beastly and racists, we'd have joined with these latter monsters instead of destroying them.
By the way, if we're supposed to constantly dwell on past sins then why aren't we berating the Japanese, Germans, and Russians? For that matter, what people or nation on this planet should escape our constant berating? Do you really believe the average American today is a racist? If so, how did Obama get elected? Why were any Blacks ever allowed to served on the Supreme Court or become captains of industry, military leaders, and successful actors? Even before our founding as a nation there was ongoing debate over the wisdom and morality of slavery. Most Americans opposed it, including many in the South. We could not remain a free people while it existed. As an example, draconian laws were passed in some slave states to punish people who spoke out against it, thus curtailing First Amendment rights. The century following the Civil War was a uphill battle for Blacks, but they had a lot of help from Whites. Today the idea of systemic racism has become a bad joke. We have laws against it which are vigorously enforced. We bend over backwards to accommodate anyone who is seen as different or oppressed or a minority. It's not limited to race. If anyone of these group members fails to measure up to the commonly accepted standards, we lower the standards just for them. We don't dare criticize them or treat them as we would a WASP. So in a way, you are right. There is a systemic problem, but it isn't anti-black racism. It's the ever changing values of our society, a society less and less willing to judge a man by his merits when skin color or some other arbitrary measure can be substituted instead. We have returned to the thinking of the past with vigor and a new twist on what constitutes prejudice.
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The USA is not pulling out of Europe, but we are pulling back. Trump plays hardball, expecting some push-back before both sides make concessions. As for who spent the most in support of Ukraine, this is an accounting question. Trump may be looking at the sunk cost of old equipment and munitions we are providing, plus their replacement cost. To be fair, the latter should not be considered, but he is operating in the world of politics and human emotion, not the world of dry economics and bean counting. The same argument applies to Europe's political leaders. If all NATO members start paying their fair share for defense, and if the EU will stop its unfair trade practices with the USA, we will respond in kind (I hope). Until then, the general mood in my country is no longer supportive of a Europe first policy. And before you try to collectively match or surpass the USA in economic power, you might try repopulating and ridding yourselves of your EU overlords and their feckless rules.
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This could be a great force multiplier, but we need to supply them and other weapons in secret, not blab to the world about our plans. What the Ukraines need most are antiaircraft missiles and antimissile systems, from MANPADs to something along the lines of Iron Dome, as well as mobile artillery for counter-battery fire, sophisticated mobile secure C4I, drones, antitank weapons, small arms, and munitions. If they can force the Russians into a stalemate, they will have time to train and equip an air and armor force capable of outmaneuvering the Russians and cutting them off from outside support. This will take quite a while and require a lot of money. It also may require a massive buildup of the Ukraine military from 200K to possibly a million men. In the interim they should create a huge militia which can focus on insurgency warfare to hamper the Russians at every point. They did this very effectively against the Germans in WWII.
At present our military role in the West should be supplying them with free training and equipment, while they do their own fighting. They certainly seem quite capable and united on this point. This war could turn into Afghanistan on steroids for Putin, but it also may mean he will turn to desperate strategies involving NBC. We shall see.
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@danbenson7587 I cannot find any source indicating such 45 ACP ammo existed in the 1920s, but I believe it was theoretically possible to have developed it. All it would have required was a hard penetrator and a muzzle velocity much higher than that of the standard 45 ACP round (achievable by using a lighter projectile and more powder). Some specialty 45 ACP ammo did exist at the time, but was limited to blanks, tracers, and shot cartridges. Because of the lackluster performance of the 45 ACP and 38 Special, the 38 Super was introduced in the late 1920s, followed by 38 Special Hi-Speed (aka 38/44) in 1931, and the 357 Magnum in 1935. All three were marketed as being capable of penetrating a car body and body armor. As an experiment at least one Thompson was chambered for 38 Super, and another was chambered for the stretched 45 Remington-Thompson cartridge, which possessed true 44 Magnum level performance, but neither setup proved commercially successful. A version chamber for 351 WSL was tested by the French but failed miserably. These conversions might have proven effective at penetrating body armor, helmets, and light cover, but only if the velocity was kept high enough, which means getting the plane very close to the intended target.
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@danbenson7587 Then we are roughly the same vintage. Grandpa served in the Navy in WWI aboard a mine sweeper. Granddaddy avoided war service due to a heart issue, which is just as well since he was in Germany. His brother-in-law did serve and earned an Iron Cross and a war wound badge. My Dad served in the Air Force during the Korean War as a B-29 mechanic in Alaska. I spent 30 years in the USAF. I learned to use a slide rule in high school, and my aviation and war knowledge came from books and mentors who were there, not from YT or Wiki sites whihc did not exist then, though I sometimes check them for accuracy. My knowledge of Richthofen's death comes from two primary sources, a book written by a friend of my Dad's named Dale Titler and a documentary that recreated the events right down to firing live ammo from a Vickers to verify the ballistics required to make the kill. Granddaddy used to say that history was an agreed upon error, and our debating bears this out. I try to go where the most reliable and plausible data lead me, but nothing is 100% guaranteed. Unfortunately, I have learned over time that many eyewitness accounts, though as faithfully and honestly reported as the years and memory allow, are often filled with mistakes and false impressions. But I hope I would never tell a man who was there and shed his blood, sweat, and tears, that he was wrong about a certain gun, plane, tank, or event. I'd chalk it up to the fog of war and sometimes even false memories born of postwar lore and commonly repeated tales (don't get me started on the Sherman tank and German Panthers and Tigers).
I sympathize with you about bird hunting, which for me mainly involved dove and the odd quail. My wife successfully hunted ducks, but that was before I met her. My Great Uncle Ralph who served in WWI told me tales of doves blackening the sky in the years prior to The Big One. He and his brothers would bring home a hundred or more birds after a single day's shooting. I think on my best day I got no more than six. Even so, it was the most fun I ever had hunting, including one trip to Africa which was fun in itself, but I never derived much satisfaction from killing mammals, small or large. Now I'm rambling, a sure sign of senioritis, so I'll stop.
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