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Dogfight: Congress vs. the American Aviation Industry

Retired Lt. Gen. McInerney,a Fox News contributor who also runs his own consulting firm and has consulted for Northrop Grumman on the KC 45 program weighs in:

Snip:

"In terms of risk, Boeing management bears the responsibility for their poor score. The aircraft Boeing proposed to the Air Force-the KC-767AT -- is not the same jet it sold to Japan and Italy, which remain two and five years behind schedule respectively. The foreign KC-767s carry only 160K lbs of fuel, which is 20% less than the current KC-135. The proposed KC-767AT combines the wing, fuselage, and landing gear from different KC-767 models and has never been built, flown, tested, or certified. It uses a new engine never used on a B767 before. Boeing proposed integrating a digital cockpit with the old hydraulic flight control system, which historically has led to problems. Not to mention that they had not started boom development and continue to have problems with their drogue pods. The AF concluded that Boeing's proposed development plan posed greater risks in contrast to Boeing's assessment that their offering reflected "inherent manufacturing genius."

In contrast, Northrop had already built and tested the first Air Force tanker on its own nickel. That aircraft stands ready for final modification. Northrop's boom has been tested and passed fuel. The KC-45 Final Assembly Line (FAL) will be located in Mobile, Alabama. The KC-45 team has a core competency in designing, building, and operating FALs-and has conducted 12 successful FAL stand-ups to date. The Mobile FAL stand-up schedule is based on lead times experienced on these previous FALs and includes additional schedule margin. The warfighter will not be affected should any delays occur due to the availability of a duplicate aircraft production line. Northrop's plan was viewed by the Air Force-correctly in my opinion -- as less risky in terms of delivering warfighting capability on schedule.

Finally, Northrop came in cheaper than the Boeing design. Maybe the company was hungrier for the business and was willing to take a lower profit than Boeing. Basically, Northrop offered a more capable, lower cost system at lower risk than Boeing. That's why they won.
That's just not my view -- that's the view of men and women from five different air forces who decide what type of aircraft they want to take into combat. I'll defer to the warfighter's judgment."

End Snip.

Sure, he is biased, but it does make sense.

Posted @ March 31, 2008 02:18 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)

Why Do Iraq War Movies Suck?

Please take 15 minutes and view this scene from a film by Akira Kurosawa’s called “Dreams”. It's called “The Tunnel”. Go head, I’ll wait right here for you to come back, it wont take but 15 minutes and it will help illustrate my point.

Part 1.

Part 2.

Part 3.

To men that have fought in war and survived, there is a “Private Noguchi” in every shadow. As a genre of the film art form,"War Movies" almost always fail to capture this basic horror of corrosive fear that lives in the heart of any man or woman who has faced the horror of war.

Movies are unique as an art form, as they act more as a mirror of the people making the film rather than reflecting the views of the audience viewing the film. Today's Hollywood cannot make "war movies" because almost everyone in Hollywood has never served in uniform, rarely even met anyone who has served in uniform, have never known the horror of war as a civilian and hold in contempt nearly all who have come into any contact with any war.

The consequence of this is that the modern "War Movie" is actually a political movie, where the spirited arguments for and against the war are fought out on the screen, rather than the audience seeing a depiction of the various battles of the war itself.

Certainly there is never an example of 'heroism' shown on the screen and no hint of a victory is ever given or hinted to. To be sure, in Hollywood, heroism is reseved only to those who stayed home. In fact, this is the only war that the Hollywood culture knows, Not the "Iraq" war, but the war of politics, the war that was fought at the tables of Starbucks around all of the very best neighborhoods in Hollywood, Santa Monica and downtown Manhattan.

If an act of heroism in war is actually shown in a modern war flm, the act is always destroyed and denigrated by an uncaring government or the ignorant charactures known as "the folks back home". The enemy is always held in a place of honor and the people of this country who fight in the war are always treated with contempt, unless of course they act as a traitor or embrace the enemy in some small way. Killing the enemy, and winning a battle is never seen or depicted unless the enemy is shown as an honorable man killed by a blood thirsty American no-necked yokel.

There is no bravery, no honor, no respect in the modern war movie; There are only fools that are fooled to fighting a war for "corporate interests" and general betrayal by the so called leaders and the country. The people who fight on our side are always dupes, on their side they are always men of courage fighting against the odds.

In the example that started this post, you can see Akira Kurosawa capture the essential horror of war. He does not make a political statement because to do so would be false and it would be caught as a lie by the audience. His images state what needs to be stated; the fear, the guilt and the shame, not of the dead but of the living. He does not argue for or against the reasons for the war; a war in which his protagonsts in the film and a large part of his Japanese audience will have personally suffered. He is commenting on the war the way that all soldiers do, in the language of duty, honor and country.

This is language that Hollywood does not understand. This is why "All Iraq War Movies Suck", because they are all made in the wrong language.

Talk to any man or woman who has lived in combat, and if you look into their eyes you will see their "Private Noguchi" looking back at you. Be warned, no man or woman who has actually lived through war is likely to tell you much about war. You are a civilian, you arent in the "special club" made up of the suvivors of war. Because you are a civilian, you dont know and you don't really want to know what that 'fear of shadows' experiencd by veterans of war is really like.

You go to war movies because you think that going to a movie is your version of "doing your part", but nothing could be further from the truth. You react to that scene, not because you know what its like to order men to their deaths and the sense of doubt that forever scars your soul, but because you too feel the shame that the Captain feels, the shame of not dying while others you know, did die.

All you really need to know, is that to the veteran, the fear is always there and it is always real. You should also know that capturing that emotion of surviving war, is rarely, if ever done with the exacting artistic perfection, as it is in Kurosawas Dreams, so don't set your expectations so high.

This is why all Iraq war movies suck. They always fail to capture the essential truth of the event. Those of us who stayed home while it was being fought, only know about the war from the spittle of the people on the other side of the table at Starbucks. Those who actually fought it, dont have time to educate us on what the war was really like, because life is too short for such trival things. The people of Hollywood don't care to tell the story in the way their sacrifice deserves to be told with the language of "Duty, Honor and Country", because they dont know what that means.

Posted @ March 30, 2008 07:51 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Obama: At last, change even I can believe in!

From the folks at Rifftrax.

Posted @ March 29, 2008 10:19 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)

Dogfight: Congress vs. the American Aviation Industry

Theres a list of names to remember about "The Tanker Deal" that I am certain will come up over the next few months.

The most obvious one is Senator John McCain, who seems to have driven the Air Force and Boeing to the point of exhaustion over this deal.

Here is his statements from November 19, 2004, in regard to the original tanker deal. Very enlightening...

Here is the "document dump" on the Emails that Senator McCain mentions in his statement. This is from the Congressional Record: November 20, 2004 (Senate) Page S11776-S11789

Prominent names that fall out of those statements are as follows:

20th Secretary of The Air Force, James Roche
Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for acquisitions, Marvin Sambur
Darleen Druyan
Former CEO of Boeing, Phillip Condit
Former CFO of Boeing, Michael Sears.

Darleen Druyun has a nice description of her background, called "Rise and fall of a maverick". (ed: McCain must've laughed real hard when he read that one.)

From her plea agreement, we read the following:

- Acknowledged conflict of interest in negotiating employment for herself and others (daughter and future son-in-law) with Boeing while at the same time negotiating with Boeing on behalf of the Air Force.

- In negotiating with boeing concerning a lease agreement for 100 Boeing KC-767A tanker aircraft, she agreed to a higher price for the aircraft than she beleived was appropriate as a "parting gift" to Boeing prior to her leaving the Air Force Procurement Office.

Well, that's not good...

The Department of Justice published this document in regards to Michael Sear's Sentencing.

Quoted within:

United States Attorney Paul J. McNulty - "Mr. Sears had a clear choice. Instead of respecting the integrity of the governments procurement system, he chose the financial interests of his company over the best interest for America"

I think that about sums it up, both the previous "Tanker deal" and the current one as well. At a time when the Aviation industry was realing under the stress of an airline industry in collapse, Boeing was trying and was very nearly was successful at subverting the purchasing process inorder to secure billions of dollars on long term leases for these aircraft.

It was a scheme that very nearly worked and one which the taxpayers and the military in the long run, would have paid a great deal.

The fallout from the failure of this scheme cost many smart and I would even say patriotic people, their jobs and careers, all of those promises became tragedies. Worse, this was being done at a time of war, and I would make the argument that the money and man hours that were wasted in this process did little to help bring an end to the war or to help the sailors and airmen stationed overseas.

Senator McCain and Warner are to be thanked for their efforts.

As a corporate officer you have a responsibility to protect your shareholders but as a citizen you have a duty to respect the governmental processes that involve the use of taxpayer dollars.

All of the people you see mentioned above, were in some form of fashion removed from their responsibilities. Two of them, Druyun and Sears were convicted and jailed. After Condit was replaced, the next CEO was also replaced, Harry Stonecipher was also quickly removed from his position.

Now remember, Boeing is a private company, but in many ways it is also a strategic asset. It is very important to the country as a whole that Boeing be successful in its marketplace. While all of this activity was going on, Boeing was under extreme pressure with Airbus and the A380. In the end, what has saved Boeing and this strategic asset is not a new set of CEO's with special backhanded deals, but the men and women at Boeing who work as engineers, line foreman and test pilots at positions all through the company in the creation of the new Boeing 787.

As we have seen, Former CFO Michael Sears, Mrs. Druyuns boss at Boeing was also removed from his position at Boeing, but what about her boss at the Air Force? Well that was Dr. Martin Sambur. You might be interested to know that according to this site, Dr. Marvin Sambur, is now a contributor to the Clinton Campaign.

I have this feeling that we wont be seeing any contributions from these folks to the "McCain For President" campaign any time in the future.

More to follow...

Posted @ March 29, 2008 02:43 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Dogfight: Congress vs. the American Aviation Industry

Marine Sgt. Geoffrey Kohlmeyer (far right) poses with Sen. John McCain and an unidentified soldier in Al Asad, Iraq. They are standing on the loading ramp of a Boeing MV-22 in Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron VMM-263, known as "The Thunder Chickens".

From Forest Grove News-Times

Senator John McCain, a former Naval aviator who voted throughout the 1990's to continue funding for the MV-22 Osprey, often against Dick Cheneys wishes, just spent a week visting Iraq. During his time "in theatre", he was flow around in a Marine MV-22, a controversial aircraft that is now in its first time under combat conditions.

"Senator, while you were in Iraq, what was your general impression of the Boeing MV-22 Osprey. In your opinion, was the aircraft that you flew in worth the investment over the last two decades?..."

Wouldn't that make a set of interesting questions to pose to Senator McCain?

You should be aware that yesterday, the Defense Department awarded a 10.4 Billion dollar contract to Bell/Boeing to produce 167 new MV-22's.

Unlike the recent "Tanker Deal" that went badly for Boeing, there is no other aircraft in the world like the Osprey and as such, the vendor making it can be expected to get a little preference outside of the normal competitive needs of the marketplace. Detractors will say that there is no aircraft like the Osprey because its an awful idea. On the other hand, Boeing and the American Military might just have the right idea and this is an investment that may have paid off for our benefit.

My bias should be clear, Im not big on rotary wing aircraft since I prefer the confidence and mental calmness that a fixed wing pilot gets from having an actual glide ratio, but I have always wanted to see the MV-22 succeed.

Unlike a host of other candidates in the race for President, John McCain is someone who's opinion on the matter might be based on something other than who lives in his state or congressional district and who and who is not greasing his palm.

It might just be based on actually knowing how to fly and knowing what a combat aircraft must be capable of in that environment.

Posted @ March 29, 2008 11:02 AM | Current Affairs | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)

Pajamas Media: PJM-Political Podcast

Ed Driscoll, Host of PJM-Political on XM Radio Channel 130 and Uber-blogger from wayback, asked me to give a short breakdown on the Airbus vs. Boeing Tanker Controversy on this weeks Podcast.

Click here to listen in.

Tune in each Thursday to XM Channel #130, POTUS ‘08 at 6:00 PM Eastern/3:00 PM Pacific for Pajamas Media’s weekly PJM Political show! (And at 11:00 PM Eastern/8:00 Pacific for a rebroadcast) If you missed this week’s show, click here to get the podcast.

My thanks to Ed, Roger and all the folks at Pajamas for this opportunity.

Posted @ March 28, 2008 10:09 PM | Aviation | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Coming up next: The Yoyodyne AT-AT

As a technologist, I find this very interesting.
As a warm blodded mammal, I find it disturbing in a deep seated psycological way. Theres something just not right about it and I can't explain why.

Walking is easy, but as any 2 year old will tell you, balance is hard. This prototype is rather impressive and yet creepy all at the same time.

I'm sure that the fax machines at the legal offices of Skywalker Films are overheating now that this is out.

Posted @ March 28, 2008 02:28 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

True Confessions

Since we all seem to be doing some 'spring cleaning' with our souls, I will air mine out as well.

When I recently stated that back in the 1980's, I had a torrid love affair with Signorney Weaver that ended in tears for the both of us in a seedy Mexican seaside resort,I may have actually misspoke or you may have simply misinterpresed my meaning.

While I did have a torrid love affair with Signorney Weaver, I just neglected to mention that I never actually met her in person and that she has no idea who I am or that I exist. While I have been to a seedy Mexican seaside resort, I never visited it with Miss Weaver, while it is possible that she did visit it on her own at some time in her past. It is possible that I confused the details of my affair with Sigourney Weaver with a late TV night showing of "Night of the Iguana".

Aside from those tedious details, the story is completely true.

I think what matters here is the background narritive of the story, not the actual facts of the situation.

Oh, by the way, Howard Wolfson is a good friend of mine, with only three degrees of separation( I know Rich Galen, Rich Galen knows Howard Wolfson, see how easy that was?). This fact,and my ability to prevaricate with such ease practically makes me part of the Clinton Campaign.

Posted @ March 25, 2008 07:58 AM | Current Affairs | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)

Journey of a Dead Man: CDR Abbott, Journal Entry - March 23th 1945

Journey of a Dead Man: An alternate history of the end of World War II.

Previous entries for this 'blog-novel':
Introduction.
March 9th, 1945.
March 11th, 1945.
March 11th, 1945.

Log Entry, Bart Abbott's Personal Journal, March 23th 1945

I managed to secure leave and used it to head over to Elko for a chance to see Mom and the folks back at home in Elko. Elko isn’t San Francisco or New York and the fact is, it’s not some sort of place that you are going to go through on your way to somewhere else. It just happens that my current duty assignment puts me somewhat in the neighborhood, so it would be wrong to be this close and not take an opportunity to get over there if it is at all possible.

I caught a flight up to Wendover last Monday with "Kermit", and some of his crew. We ended up sharing a room at the BOQ as things at the base are a bit tight on space with all the activity we are causing. It wasn’t much a sacrifice for either of us, as I wouldn’t be there for the first week, so it works out well for both Kermit and myself. This place sits out on the edge of Utah’s Great Salt Lake at the base of the mountains that make up the border between Utah and Nevada. Wendover Field sits on top of what was surely a very nice beach a few thousand years ago, but now it’s a big, flat, blindingly white plain; a frozen sea made of salt with the occasional black rocky outcropping acting like its island counterpart to break of the monotony.

Wendover is in the middle of nowhere - literally. For example, to take the train to Elko from there, you need to ride all the way back towards the east to Salt Lake City on highway 40. if you go that distance in the other direction from Elko, you might as well just drive over to Elko on highway 40 in the other direction instead. So that’s what I did, signed a jeep out of the motor pool and filled up a couple of jerry cans with gas and took off. I could’ve had one of the pilots from the 509th hop me over to Elko but quite frankly; I wanted the time to myself, to help get my mind in the right frame before my return.

No matter where you go in the world today, there’s a reminder of the war everywhere you turn, from the gas ration stickers on the window of your car down to the blackout curtains in every building, the war creeps into everything you see and everything you do. But out here in the high desert, you can actually get away from it now and then. It’s a real luxury to just spend a few hours without any reminders of the war. If you stop for a bit, you can almost see the world as it was before it all went so crazy.

I got to Elko in the afternoon and did my best to be inconspicuous, not that it did any good. Not 10 seconds after I pulled the jeep in front of the house did I have half the street waiting there to shake my hand. It was damned embarrassing and not what I wanted at all.

The thing about the ‘folks back home’ is that any serviceman who passes through town is to the local folks the best way of making contact with the war and more importantly, with their men that are far away overseas. You stand at any train station in the US in uniform and people will say something like “ My sons in the Navy, he’s out on the Enterprise, do you know him?” You just smile and try to give them a sense of reality in your response; that there a millions of people in the armed services of the county out in the war somewhere in the world, and just because you both wear the same uniform doesn’t mean they are closer to their family member. Most of the time you take it in stride, but sometimes the folk will say something that makes you feel just awful, like back in New York recently, a lady stopped me and told me her son was in the Navy, and he was out on the USS Houston. When that happens, you just hang your head and say that you’re sorry to hear that, and sorry about her loss, and move on as best you can. That happens every now and then and I hate it when it does. It makes you pull your cap down low over your eyes to avoid contact whenever possible. The folks see the uniform and for just a moment they also see their kid out there in uniform and a part of their mind gets ahead of reality; that while you stand there on the train platform all resplendent in your uniform, you are just reminding them of what it was that they have lost. Their son will never stand on a railway platform; their son will never have that conversation and that unspoken word will remain forever unspoken between them. That lady in New York will never have her son and there’s nothing you can do to change that fact or to comfort them for their loss. You feel bad, but then you realize that with all the uniforms walking around these days, she probably goes through that at least once a week. Next week, it will be some other poor guy, who will be reminded as I am reminded when it happens to me, that while others keep dying in this war, here I sit safe at home doing my part, small that it is. It does make me feel a bit shameful at times, and I just hope that all this work we are doing on the gadget is going to be worth it in the end.

Returning home after having been gone so long is like a combination of Christmas, your birthday and New Years Eve all at once. All you want to do is to relax, but all the folks you went their to see want you out on “front center stage” to put on a show for hours on top of hours telling your travelers tale’s. Everyone talks at once, eats too much and tries to do too much. In the end everyone gets to be disappointed as your return isn’t quite what they expected it to be.

They are disappointed because you haven’t got any news of the war that they don’t have, because frankly you haven’t been in the war that they read about, because that war is always going on somewhere over the next hill, the next river or next continent from where you have been, so there’s a real let down right off the bat. Its worse for me because I’ve spent my war in far off exotic locales like “Washington D.C”. and half a dozen other places I can’t really talk about, but its not France, England or the Pacific or any of those places that fill the newspapers every day. I can’t even really talk about what I do, I just tell them I work for the Navy Ordinance department, and then talk about how big the guns are on the New Jersey or the Missouri and so on. They politely nod like they know what you mean and then find another subject to talk about.

Of course, if you tell them you’ve been to Washington a few times here and there, they all think you had lunch with the President himself and again, are somewhat disappointed when you tell them that all you did was meet with some of the eggheads of the ivy league.

Mom of course doesn’t really care about the stories about what I’ve been doing; she just holds my hand and hangs on every word, happy just to have me back for however long it will be. That’s the thing about moms, you could have actually had lunch with President and been a guest of the first lady herself and no matter how old you are, her first thought will be whether or not you used proper table manners, kept your elbows off the table and ate with your mouth closed. You can be a “captain of industry”, the chief of staff of the army or a dare I say even President of the United States and I guarantee, no matter who you are in life, your mother in completely and totally unimpressed with your accomplishments. That’s not to say that she’s not proud of you, but it is to say that she hold you in a context that other people cant really hold you. She’s seen you at your worst, watched you come up from crawling to walking to running, from washing once a week all the way up to shaving every day and no matter how old you get or what you accomplish in life or what station you achieve, there will always be a part of you that she sees as that little ‘crumb cruncher’ who kept her up late at night with a toothache; that kid who wouldn’t do his homework or ran away to join the circus and got halfway down the street before he realized it was dinner time and that the circus could wait another day.

This is all that I have in common with the great men of the world; that no matter how great our accomplishments in life, the unique reward of a polite pat on our heads from our mothers with the welcome words “that’s nice dear” is probably worth all the medals of all the armies in the world. Whether we are making finger painting at the kitchen table or liberating the people of France from tyranny, a kind word from you Mom, promptly followed by a polite suggestion to not eat with your elbows on the table is likely to be our most valued reward. The world may hate you or love you, it might think you are terrific person, or a horrible evil little creature, but to your mom, you are always her little boy and if you think about it, that’s not so bad.

As the day wore on, she managed to shoo off the neighbors and we finally got to sit on the together on the porch and enjoy some quiet time together catching up on events. Who was marrying who, and the various movements of the boys I had grown up with in Elko. We listened to the radio and caught up on the war news. She pointed out that President Roosevelt hasn’t been on the radio much as of late, since his return from the conference with the Russians at Yalta, and Vice President Wallace has been making more of an appearance than he has at any time before. She’s not a big fan of the Vice President but keeps her opinions of the man to herself “for the duration”. Occasionally, they still leak out.

She also said that my friend and our neighbor "Beanie" Alonzo had made it home from the war, but that he wasn’t the same as he was when he left. She asked me to be sure to stop by and say hello when I get a chance to him and his mother. She said that she can hear him wake up screaming at night. She worries about the effect of this on his mother. They have both been friends forever, having raised their families next door to each other and having moved through widowhood together and the shared dread of having their sons away at war.

Many of the kids I grew up with have gone to war and some like Beanie have come back, and there are some who wont ever come back. I used to think that dying in war was the worst thing, but as time goes on, I realize that there is more than one way to die and not all men die on the battlefield. Some men come home from the war, but the war comes home with them and they die a little every day until in the end all that is left is a shell of the man who once left home and went off to war.

Its funny how people live in your memories, back in the “eye of your mind”. Of all the experiences you have with a person, your mind picks one snapshot of time for you to hold on to as an image of that person above all others. In my mind, I can see Beanie when he was about 15 years old, standing on the porch one fall in his football uniform with his leather helmet and covered from head to toe in mud and tossing the football from hand to hand, chewing gum and just smiling loudly from ear to ear. He had been playing with a few of the fellahs from school and they needed to get few more of us guys into the game to make it a real show, so he came down the street to get me. It was a grand game, and became an annual tradition from then on. Every year after Thanksgiving, we would have “The Mud Bowl” and the game would quickly go from American Football to English Rugby before the 4th quarter.

Now that kid who only lives in the back of my mind is in reality a war veteran, just back from the battlefields of France, out of the war with an honorable discharge with a wound on both his body and his soul. Where there was once a young man of promise, now stands a broken man in body and spirit, but in my mind Beanie is still standing there with his football under his arm and his gum in his cheeks. The reality of person of Beanie, is now very different from the memory Beanie that I hold.

On Monday morning, I went out for a walk; down the street to the market to get a few things for mom was the excuse, but it was really just a chance to get outside for some solitude. I was halfway down the street when Beanie came out to greet me. I didn’t recognize him at first. His hand went up instinctively for a salute and I waved him down before he met his forehead and shook his hand and smiled. He’s not in uniform anymore, and I’m not much for the whole formal military honors thing when I’m in my home town. At home, we are just “Beanie and Bart” not Navy Commander Abbott and Army Private Alonzo. By my way of thinking, Beanie outranks me. He’s seen the war; he’s been in combat. While other men like Beanie have been out fighting the war, people like me have been at home at risk of nothing but the occasional shortage or cold shower or case of food poisoning.

Beanie walks with a cane now as he’s left a part of his left foot back in France. Where there were once a set of kid-brown eyes, are a now a couple of dark sunken pits that have seen too much for a 22 year old to see. The smile and the gum cracking is nowhere to be found, replaced instead with a nervous tick and a wandering glance. You would never know from looking at him that a few years ago this man with a limp and a cane was just another kid at Elko High School, playing varsity fullback.

As we walked down the street, the street where we both grew up and went to school, his eyes now darted about and it almost seemed like he was on the look out for unseen German snipers. It’s clear from the moment you meet him now that there is a part of Beanie that’s still in France.

I hadn’t seen Beanie since before the war started, so we caught up on the elements of our shared history. Unfortunately, catching up quickly turned into a list of the kids we knew from school and their various fates and of course, the ones that aren’t coming home. There were more than I knew and after a bit I had wished that I didn’t know.

I asked him of his plans now that he’s out of the war, and he said as soon as hes better, he’s going to work on his uncle’s ranch out on border with Oregon. Its open country out there, its a place where a man can really put the war behind him, you couldn’t ask for a better place for Beanie to heal. I sure hope so, for Beanies sake.

When we walked back home from the market, we barely said a word to each other, each of us reaching deep to find that part of us that used to walk down that street carrying our cleats home from school and now not finding more than a shadow of what once was between us. We had taken our youth for granted, and now there was no getting it back, too much time had passed; history had ground down the bedrock of our shared experience. Too many horrors had been seen to leave much space for the memories of our shared past. Where there had once been two kids living and reliving a post Thanksgiving football game, was now replaced by two men in the grips of middle age and one of them struggling with the memory and the horror of war.

The walk to the market and back had left Beanie quite winded and he began to falter as we got closer to our homes. Beanies mom was waiting at the gate, and she guided him through to the house, concerned for the fatigue that could clearly be seen on his face. Beanie just looked over his shoulder at me, gave a small smile and half salute and went inside. His mom and I talked for a minute there at the gate, polite small talk mostly and told me how happy she was that I came home for a visit, but as she walked away she stopped for a second and said

“ ...You know, he always looked up to you”.

Then she quickly went inside, half hiding a cry in her hand.

It ripped my heart out. I don’t think that was her intent but I think she felt that she needed to say it, to help bleed that wound that she had suffered right along with Beanie. In some way, she blamed me for the loss of her boy, for that the change that she saw in her beloved child; that all of this was somehow started by a chain of events instigated by me going to the Naval Academy and not by that paperhanger in Berlin or the Emperor of Japan. I was the older of the kids on the street. I was two years ahead of Beanie. I was the first to go away and join the service before the war; a decision that was met at the time with disdain by Mrs. Alonzo and a few of the other Elko townsfolk. Mrs. Alonzo was an isolationist before the war, back when we could all afford such luxuries in our thinking.

As her words hung darkly in the air, I stood there stunned for a second, at the same garden gate where as a very young child I had once stood and asked Mrs. Alonzo if Beanie could come out and play and I felt truly sorry for her, for Beanie and felt for myself all at the same time. She wasn’t looking for an answer from me to what she had said, which is a shame because she will never know how much had always I looked up to Beanie, and how much I looked up to him now more than ever. My war, my contribution would never measure in value next to his. None of that would matter to the ears of a mother who has lost her son, which is why I’m glad I didn’t say it. It would only have made things worse if I had.

Most of all, I simply wanted my friend back, and back as the wisecracking kid he once was. I knew now that aside from the memory of what he once was, I would never have him that way again and the truth of it is that neither would she. The childhood games we played would now and forever go unplayed, the gate would remain unanswered and the mail would remain unsent. The intentions of what we meant to do with our lives were now meaningless.

Afterwards, I just sat on the porch of mom’s house for a few minutes, to collect my thoughts. I came to back to Elko to come home, to somehow get out of the choking, smothering, olive drab sameness of the war, but the home I came to see and the life I used to live in it, didn’t really exist anymore. No bombs had fallen on Elko, no armies had marched through this part of the world, but the war and the splash of its acidic horrors had spread its corrosion on the people here just as it had the people everywhere else in the world.

That memory of my friend Beanie, back before the war standing there on the porch in his mud covered football uniform was now supplanted by new sight of Mrs. Alonzo walking into her house, with the Blue Star on the front window of their home. What was also now a part of me and my thoughts of home was the sight of so many Gold Stars in Elko and the understanding of their true meaning.

Beanie has paid for his Blue Star, but I’m not too sure I’ve paid for the one sits in my mothers front window. That thought has been bothering me much more than I had realized. In an odd way, I feel like a fraud and that I’ve gamed the system for my own benefit.

I came home to get away from the war, but the war is closer to me now than it has ever been. The war isnt at the distant island of Iwo Jima or the beaches of France anymore, the war lives next door at Mrs. Alonzos house.

Posted @ March 23, 2008 03:55 PM | Blog-novel | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

Arthur C. Clarke - "The candles cost more than the cake"

Sir Arthur C. Clarke, in December 2007 saying "thank you and goodbye from Columbo Sri Lanka".

Would it be too much that we, the earthbound, do honor to this man, his intellect and his vision for the shared future of mankind by renaming the "International Space Station" as the "Arthur C. Clarke" Space Station?

It seems a small thing to do as a memorial to one man considering what his vision has done for us all.

( My favorite "Clarkian" bit of logic: "Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying". I thought of that Clarke-like twist recently when I said that I would be much more impressed if life was not found on Mars than if it was. If life is found either existing now or at some time in the past, it would not surprise me at all, what would absolutely shock me is if there was absolutely no life on Mars now or at any time in the past. That fact and the implications would positively floor me, as I'm sure it would Sir Arthur. )

Posted @ March 18, 2008 09:49 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (6) | TrackBack (0)

Journey of a Dead Man: Hometown Paper Clippings March 1945

Journey of a Dead Man: An alternate history of the end of World War II.

Previous entries for this 'blog-novel':
Introduction.
March 9th, 1945.
March 11th, 1945.

Clippings from Commander Abbotts hometown paper, The Elko Daily Free Press from March 1945.

Authors Note: 'Bart' Abbott is a fictional character and a literary device, but the men referenced in this post are not. It is the authors intent to treat the story of their time with the respect it deserves, in order that their sacrifice and the impact of their loss will be understood by a modern audience.

The posts on this blog are written in recognition of the fact that without the sacrifice of the lives of these men and millions of others in the defense of liberty and freedom, that this story, and the basic freedoms that we live with today would not be possible.

Posted @ March 14, 2008 11:36 PM | Blog-novel | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

How to Melt a Tank in Three Seconds Or Less

From PopSci.com

Posted @ March 14, 2008 09:25 AM | Current Affairs | Comments (0) | TrackBack (3)

Journey of a Dead Man: CDR Abbott, Journal Entry - March 11th 1945

Tokyo Japan March 11th 1945. The Firebombing over two days from 279 bombers killed 100,000 people and destroyed 25% of the city.

The introduction to this series can be found here.

Previous entries:
March 9th, 1945.

Log Entry, Bart Abbott's Personal Journal, March 11th 1945

Hot today. Not Georgia swamp, moldy mildew hot, oh thank the lord, but good old, dry desert “welcome home Bart” hot. Had coffee at sunset out on the porch on Dr. Daghlian’s house. Caught up with a few niceties and particulars that happened during my absence and got welcomed back to camp by Dr. Daghlian’s wife, who took up the opportunity to make a small coffee cake to share. I always feel a bit like the out of town relative when I’m around some of the professors, but a few of them are the kind of folks you could meet anywhere. Daghlian and his wife are that kind of folk. If you met him and her, you would think he made watches for a living and she was a housewife in suburban Chicago playing canasta with the girls on Tuesday afternoons and doing the shopping every Thursday like clock work. It was an informal bunch of “us folks” out on the patio tonight, no ties, all relaxed and neighborly, only half the men had nobel prizes and a fair number of the wives had Doctorates in advanced mathematics. I sat there on the porch in the company of these men like a Neanderthal with his spear,capable only of the occasional "head nod" and polite grunt in response to some question. We sat outside and enjoyed the sunset while Mrs. Dahlgren tuned in the radio. Out here in the desert in the evening you’d be surprised what we can pick up, New York, Los Angeles all the way out here. At 6:00, we heard an announcement from the War Department that Tokyo had been heavily bombed during the last few days, largely destroying the Capital city of the Empire of Japan. It seems this sort of thing is happening fairly regularly; last month it was Dresden’s turn and now its Tokyo’s turn. General LeMay and the B-29’s are now able to act with impunity against even the best defended the Japanese cities. At this rate, the Germans and Japanese are losing a city the size of Chicago every 15 days. Yet, the war goes on and the dying continues.

Had a funny thing happen out there on the patio, as the sun went down, and Mrs. Daghlian turned down the radio, you could just hear a bit of what sounded like some sort of “drumming” out on the hills. Some of the professors were saying that it was “injun joe” again, somehow giving the sound a persona and story all of its own; their european-born imaginations run wild now that they are here at work in the “wild west”. I suspect it gives them something exotic to tell their wives when they go back to their cosmopolitan New York lives since so much of what they actually do is unspeakable and top secret. I smiled when I heard the various theories to the nature of “injun joe”, they were quite elaborate, each one outdoing the other with some layer of assumed knowledge of the local indian tribes, to which they really didn’t know a damn thing but acted like experts to each other. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that the “injun joe” they had created out of whole cloth was really just our Dick Feynman with his bongo drums, working off a little steam in his own unique Feynman way of doing things.

I got word today that I will be going out to Wendover next week to meet with Deak and Col. Tibbets. Col.Tibbets needs to review readiness for the 509th. I will try to take some time and visit the folks back home in Elko while I’m out there. It would be wrong to be that close to home and not make a little effort to stop by. Wendover is a hell of a place for the uninitiated and its quite a kick when some of the Air Corp folks find themselves dealing with life in the high desert for the first time. As a native of those parts myself, there’s few guilty pleasures I enjoy more than watching some east coast ivy league 90 day wonder shavetail, who thinks he knows everything about anything and never shuts up telling you so, and 30 minutes after he touches down at Wendover he’s telling you everything he knows about it like you never saw it before, which is always wrong and always in a superior-than-thou voice and sure enough, you take you eyes off him for 30 seconds and he’s passed out flat on his back from the heat in mid sentence. Welcome to High Desert, picklehead! Now pick up your bag and get over to the flight surgeon so he can treat you for heat stroke, you silly bastard.

In preparation for this meeting next week, I went over some details on the gadget arming process with Dr. Daghlian over at his lab. When I went over today, I found him outside, shaking like a leaf with no color at all in his face. I helped him light a cigarette and he just smiled like his just had the literal hell scared out of him by something like it. I don’t know what he does in the lab, but whatever it is, it made Dr. Daghlian looked like a schoolboy sitting in the principals office getting read the riot act, but the principal doing the reading was in fact, Mephistopholes himself. He gave me a weak smile and a pat on the back when I came over this evening, it was as if I had shared some deep personal event with the doc, and I had no idea what it was that happened in the lab. He knew, and frankly I think it scared the hell out of him.

Tensions are high around camp, people slamming down books and just snapping at the wrong time and saying the wrong thing. There’s a real rush on to get the test going to see if the damn thing actually works. Funny thing is, even the folks at the top of the pyramid have no idea if it will work or even what it will do. In light of what we are already doing in places like Tokyo and Dresden you have to wonder what the big deal is about this thing. It’s a bomb (I think?), but so what? Don’t we have a hell of a lot of those already and don’t they work pretty damn good? I think the folks in Tokyo and Dresden could give us an assessment on that if we really wanted one.

Posted @ March 11, 2008 10:34 PM | Blog-novel | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Journey of a Dead Man: CDR Abbott, Journal Entry - March 9th 1945

Richard Feynman - Manhattan Project ID Badge

The introduction to this series can be found here.

Log Entry, Bart Abbott's Personal Journal, March 9th 1945

Another day, another dollar, safe and sound back at Professor Oppy’s dude ranch once again. After a month in the land of indoor plumbing, I’m finally back at the site after the conference in Washington. It was a real pleasure to ride in a real cab and eat real food off real tables with real silverware and tablecloths. One morning I instinctively looked all over the room for my security badge before I realized that I didn’t need one to go into the Pentagon. Its funny how fast you adapt to the un-adaptable.

It was good too see Deak again, we had dinner and met with a few old friends from the Idaho, who are now “big brass” assigned to the CNO himself, but he and I both knew them when they were wetnosed ensigns back before the war. We both had to laugh at all the “pomp and circumstance” of these Washington types. He and I hardly wear ties out at the site except for special occasions, but in Washington, you don’t go four hours without a shoeshine. Deak and a few others will be joining us out here soon as things are beginning to draw to a crucial point in the tests.

As a favor, Deak asked me to fly into Albuquerque rather than right to the site, to pick up supplies and as a way to help out one of “our fellas”. Dick Feynman goes down to visit his wife in the tuberculosis sanitarium as often as he can, and he will very often, just hitchhike down without any real plan to get back to the site. A few of us out here working under Deak try to look after him and help to make sure that there’s someone in town at just the right time to get him a decent ride back. When he first came out here, Oppy asked Deak to help out “Young Feynman” wherever he could he could as Deak being Navy had access to things that even Oppy couldn’t get a hold of. Deak found the guy to be a real kick and soon we all just sort of adopted him. Hell of a guy really, he tends to talk your ear off, which makes the long drives back from Albuquerque just fly by. He’s got a real thick Brooklyn accent, which is refreshing as all hell with all the ivy league folks around.

On this trip, I brought his wife Arline some flowers, which gave me a chance to come in and politely gather him up and get him back on the road to camp. They love each other deeply, but I think she’s sometimes happy to see him go. The poor girl doesn’t look much too good, but Dick is right there by her side as much as he can be. He doesn’t talk about it at the site, just keeps his head down and does what he needs to do all through the week but as soon as he can whenever he can, he’s right out the front gate and on his way down to the sanitarium. Whenever he does his disappearing act, we give him a day or so, and then we invent a reason to get someone to go down into town and get him. We always know where to find him, right there in the room with Arline.

We asked Groves if it would be ok for him to take his own jeep from the pool, but he wouldn’t have it. He said it was hard enough to keep him onsite, his own jeep would mean he would probably leave every day. Oppy said it was a bad thing all the way around and that we should just try to help Dick and Arline as much as possible without forgetting what it was we were all here to do. It seemed almost like Oppy for once agreed with Groves, which is an odd thing to witness.

Our troops crossed the Rhine the other day. Now we are in Germany proper. In my experience, men fight for all sorts of good and bad reasons, but universally they fight for their home in a way they never fight on foreign territory. I fear that the fighting will get much worse before too much longer. After what we saw in Holland last year and what we learned in Belgium over Christmas, no one is stupid enough anymore to say out loud “the war is going to over soon” even though it’s the first thing on their minds every day. The consensus is that it will be over when its over and not a moment before. I just can’t see Hitler surrendering but it’s hard to see where this is going to end without a surrender of some sort.

The fighting on that little bat crap pile of an island called Iwo Jima is still fierce and the scuttlebutt about how it is going out there is not promising at all. The Japs are not like the Germans, but little Iwo is a lot like crossing the Rhine, for the first time, they are fighting for what they think of as Japanese home territory and not some outcropping guano in the middle of the Pacific, not that it matters much, they fought like hell on Attu and Kiska too and they had no business at all being there.

For all the talk about “after the war”, it’s clear to everyone that for now at least, the war is still very much at work killing people all around the world without any sign of letting up. But I should say that picture of the Marines on Suribachi was a good shot in the arm for the folks around the site. Heck, I still get all choked up every time I see it.

Busy week ahead. Lots of progress going on all the way around.

Posted @ March 09, 2008 11:51 PM | Blog-novel | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)

Journey of a Dead Man: An Alternate History of 1945-1950.

“Alternate history” is a way of exploring the consequences of various actions in recorded by performing a sort of “what if” exercise with the events of the past. In human history, we see repeated examples of where the fate of millions rests on the acts of a few. For example, what if Churchill had been killed in his 1931 visit to New York? What if Franklin Delano Roosevelt had been killed in the attempt on his life in February 15th 1933? What if Hitler had 300 long range U-Boats at the start of the war instead of the 22 that he did have, or what if his application to the Austrian art school had been approved, or if during his time in the trenches of WWI, he had been shot or severely wounded during his service to the German Kaiser.

It’s through this form of literary “thought experiment” that we can expose on the significance of seemingly small events in recorded history by shining light on the event from an angle that was not previously available. It needs to be understood that the history that is recorded is not the result of a guarantee, nor is it the product of precise planning or some form of pre-destination or subconscious collaboration on the part of the people living through that time. The history we live today and that we create today is often the flotsam and jetsam that results from of a thousand near misses and errors. For most of the events of our lives, our actions don’t seem like history, but they often are a part of history. We just don’t know them as historically significant at the time they happen.

The purpose of this literary exercise called “journey of a dead man” is to give the reader of this blog an understanding to the fluid nature of time and the role of individuals in establishing the tide of history as it ebbs and flows around our lives.

For this story, the readers of this blog should think of themselves as time travelers. You have been sent to retrieve the written journal of a person living at a key time in human history. What follows is the recovered written diary and journal of a man living in the confluence of two mighty rivers in history. This person who wrote this journal that we are reading is US Navy Commander Bartholomew "Bart" Abbott. In reading his journal, we shall explore the past together.

Since Commander Abbott lives on another timeline than we do, we can learn from his daily observations and thoughts what the key events were that will lead to both his version of history and that of our own.

The journey we are about to begin takes place in March 1945. The place? Alamogordo New Mexico, United States of America. As near as we can tell, Abbott’s timeline and ours are almost the same up until this point in time, with a few crucial differences. Our mission is to discover where the two timelines diverged from the world that Commander Abbott lives from that of our own and most importantly, what specifically were the events that caused the divergence.

Posted @ March 09, 2008 11:37 PM | Blog-novel | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

hello? Lufthansa Maintenance?

Hello, Lufthansa Maintenence? Yeah, this is Larry Fligendorf down at the Hamburg main office. I need you guys to ship about 300 new seat cushions down here right away. It seems that on one of our aircraft that landed just the other day, all of the passenger seat cushions now have a button hole ripped right out of the center of them.

Posted @ March 03, 2008 08:07 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)