Comments on: Celebrating WWII and Korean War Aircraft Nose Art

By: Women at the Forefront « feigning interest

Women at the Forefront « feigning interest — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 03:50:08 +0000

[...] In World War II, images of women adorned the fighter planes and bombers piloted by the brave men who defended freedom far away from the women they loved. With a picture of his gal in his pocket (and one of Betty Grable above his bunk), pilots went into battle with images of strong women on the nose of their planes. [...]

By: Nose Art « AUCOTI

Nose Art « AUCOTI — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 03:32:32 +0000

[...] more of this collection over at The Web Urbanist that chronicles the origins and life of this art [...]

By: Women at the Forefront - How Fast Are You?

Women at the Forefront - How Fast Are You? — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 23:57:35 +0000

By: uber

uber — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 18:04:22 +0000

yes, Waggin’….it’s better now that people like you are slowly dying off…..good riddance sir (don’t let the gates of hell hit you on the way in).

prick.

By: Ox-y-moron

Ox-y-moron — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 12:21:45 +0000

McNamara on american bombers and their “courage”:

“…The U.S. was just beginning to bomb. We were bombing by daylight. The loss rate was very, very high, so they commissioned a study. And what did we find? We found the abort rate was 20%. 20% of the planes that took off to bomb targets in Germany turned around before they got to their target. Well that was a hell of a mess? we lost 20% of our capability right there.

The form, I think it was form 1—A or something like that was a mission report. And if you aborted a mission you had to write down ‘why.’ So we get all these things and we analyze them, and we finally concluded it was baloney. They were aborting out of fear.

Because the loss rate was 4% per sortie, the combat tour was 25 sorties — it didn’t mean that 100% of them were going to be killed but a hell of a lot of them were going to be killed. They knew that and they found reasons to not go over the target. So we reported this.

One of the commanders was Curtis LeMay — Colonel in command of a B—24 group. He was the finest combat commander of any service I came across in war. But he was extraordinarily belligerent, many thought brutal. He got the report. He issued an order. He said, “I will be in the lead plane on every mission. Any plane that takes off will go over the target, or the crew will be court—marshaled.” The abort rate dropped over night.

…

In the meantime, down in the ground, hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed. Enjoy your “art work”. THIS IS NOT ART.