Bannon thinks like I do about Michelle ...

[togor]

You've got a good point there. I always tell myself, who will not vote for the lesser of two evils automatically votes for the greater of those two evils.

It's a value judgement so nothing profound there, plus every candidate carries an X factor, which is unknown.

And some candidates just disappoint after the election.

[S.A. Boggs]

Damn I hate defending McCain but here goes.....again. McCain had nothing to do with the fire on the Forrestal. The fire was caused when an electrical malfunction on an F4 Phantom on the Forrestal's deck caused a Zuni rocket to fire. For some reason the safety pin had been prematurely removed from the rocket. The F4 was not McCain's he just happened to be in the cockpit of another plane that he barely escaped from. This story will never die.

I'm not going to post McCain's citation for his Distinguished Flying Cross but in a nutshell he got the medal because after his plane was hit he did not eject immediately but stayed with his ship until he completed his bombing run an put "steel on the target."

Now lets talk about pilots going against orders. McCain wasn't the first hero to go against orders or the last so I'm going to give to examples, one who got away with it and one who didn't.

Chuck Yeager was shot down over Europe and escaped from the Nazis. It was after this that he had his 5 kills in one mission day There was an iron clad rule that if you were shot down over Europe and escaped from captivity you could never fly over Europe again. Yeager managed to get around this rule and fly in combat over Europe again. On the western front all combatants respected the rules, meaning you didn't shoot guys in parachutes and extended the traditional courtesies to POWs. There were exceptions. For example if a German fighter rammed a bomber and the pilot bailed out he had better fall well clear of the combat zone before opening his "chute" because we looked on that as "dirty pool." Well the Nazis looked on getting back into an airplane after you escaped as being dirty pool too and if Yeager had been shot down again and caught the Nazis would have dispensed with the usual protocols and gone to work on his fingernails. Even if he had gonads of steel and didn't talk they'd have made him wish his father never met his mother. It worked out for Yeager but it could be argued he put a lot at risk by indulging he personal desire to shoot down more planes in Europe.

Tom McGuire didn't get away with it. McGuire was a Medal of Honor winner who was obsessed with becoming America's "Ace of Aces." He was two kills behind Dick Bong who wasn't flying at the time. McGuire was assigned to administrative duties after 1944 so he wasn't getting as many opportunities as he would have liked. The set in stone rules which McGuire had reinforced in his own men included never fighting the Japanese at low altitude and never getting into a turning fight with the Japanese. In Jan. 1945 he got himself into a P38L and flew a fighter sweep over the Philippines, During it he violated those rules all over the place. He got into a low level dogfight with an "Oscar" and a "Frank" flown by two very good pilots. On top of everything else, to extend his mission he ordered his three team mates not to drop their auxiliary fuel tanks when they engaged the Oscar and the Frank. Long story short, fighting in the wheelhouse of the enemy hampered by their auxiliary tanks, fighting good pilots in violation of several rules of engagement he and one of his team mates were killed. This was so embarrassing that the Army and later the Air Force trotted out a stream of stories to make it look not so bad.

Yeager and McGuire were bona fide heroes. Like a lot of bona fide hero pilots they would look on a rule as a suggestion when it suited them and they thought they could get away with it.

The dislike of McCain over his politics, and his personal feud with President Trump is personal for a lot of people. He wasn't my cup of tea either but he wasn't a bad pilot, he didn't cause the fire on the Forrestal and while he may not have done exactly what he was supposed to when he was shot down there was universal agreement among the powers that be that what he did took a lot of guts and he successfully attacked his target.

I wonder how many of the people who trash him now voted for him for president. He sure wasn't bad enough to make me vote for Obama.

Lt. Yeager and another pilot [name escapes me] asked to speak directly to General Eisenhower to present their request to keep flying. Apparently Eisenhower agreed and waved the rule and Yeager went back to flying. Yeager is an interesting person, startled with little and achieved much in the aviation field. His lack of formal education from the coal fields of WV has not held him back as he wrote the book that is now studied on jet flight.
Sam

[Art]

Lt. Yeager and another pilot [name escapes me] asked to speak directly to General Eisenhower to present their request to keep flying. Apparently Eisenhower agreed and waved the rule and Yeager went back to flying. Yeager is an interesting person, startled with little and achieved much in the aviation field. His lack of formal education from the coal fields of WV has not held him back as he wrote the book that is now studied on jet flight.
Sam

Lack of formal education wasn't the killer at that time it is now. My father never finished the 10th grade and certainly never went to college but became a Licensed Professional Engineer in two states. Back then if you passed the PE boards you were an engineer, in his case a civil engineer, degree or not.

If Eisenhower allowed Yeager to keep flying that wouldn't be a huge surprise if he allowed him to be transferred him to the Pacific. That he kept flying in Europe was the surprise especially since his reputation had not really been established when he got permission. What I read is that how he got permission is more than a bit of a mystery but the Ike story is as plausible as any.

[dogtag]

I remember Yeager admitted to feeling guilty about following the
German M262 (?) down as it landed (for fuel) and shooting it there on the ground.

[Vern Humphrey]

I remember Yeager admitted to feeling guilty about following the
German M262 (?) down as it landed (for fuel) and shooting it there on the ground.

That became the standard procedure -- you couldn't catch them, but you could follow them. They had to land soon, and you shot them down while they were landing.

[Art]

I remember Yeager admitted to feeling guilty about following the
German M262 (?) down as it landed (for fuel) and shooting it there on the ground.

Well if he felt any remorse about that he was one of the few. As Vern said, SOP when it came to the Me 262 was to try to ambush them when they were taking off and landing.

Speaking of taking off and landing...F86 pilots in Korea regularly shot down MiG15s in Chinese air space when they were running for home low on fuel and out of ammunition in flagrant defiance of the rules of engagement. The F86 pilots had a strict code of silence about that stuff. The brass strongly suspected it was going on but let it ride.

[S.A. Boggs]

There is an interview of Yeager talking about shooting down the ME-262 as they approached and were most vulnerable. He wasn't happy to do it but it was war so he did it. I believe the General is about 93 and is still living in California where he has resided for a number of years. The airport in Charleston, WV is named after him as he was a local guy.
Sam

[Art]

There is an interview of Yeager talking about shooting down the ME-262 as they approached and were most vulnerable. He wasn't happy to do it but it was war so he did it. I believe the General is about 93 and is still living in California where he has resided for a number of years. The airport in Charleston, WV is named after him as he was a local guy.
Sam

Interesting

I know Yeager was really unhappy about being ordered to strafe "anything that moved" on the roads of Germany later in the war and felt some real grief about that. He looked on it as the unnecessary killing of civilians, which it was of course. It was a nasty business. It was also counterproductive encouraged the desperate resistance of the German people in 1945 and, along with area bombing resulted in allied air crews sometimes being lynched if they were forced to bail out over Germany. It was a fight for the survival of Western Civilization as well as national survival which along with the understandable desire for retribution against the people responsible for the horror accounts for a lot.

[togor]

Honorable people can debate whether or not the force was excessive in 1944 and 1945 in the ETO. The war was popular enough in Germany, until things started to go south. Consequently the Germans had nothing to complain about, and those alive then pretty much understood that.

[Vern Humphrey]

There is an interview of Yeager talking about shooting down the ME-262 as they approached and were most vulnerable. He wasn't happy to do it but it was war so he did it. I believe the General is about 93 and is still living in California where he has resided for a number of years. The airport in Charleston, WV is named after him as he was a local guy.
Sam

He was also the first astronaut, for his work on the edge of space, and was belatedly awarded the Astronaut's Badge

[Art]

Honorable people can debate whether or not the force was excessive in 1944 and 1945 in the ETO. The war was popular enough in Germany, until things started to go south. Consequently the Germans had nothing to complain about, and those alive then pretty much understood that.

You won't get an argument from me on that one. Amy excesses on our part pale to insignificance compared to the NAZI atrocities. The Wehrmacht brass were also quite all right with it until things really started to go south in late 1943. It all comes under "sow the wind reap the whirlwind," and like you I'm not sympathetic. I was just recounting Yeager's personal feelings on one issue, and relating some opinions of people who were there as to whether it was productive in the "big picture." I had a favorite uncle I've mentioned on these forums before who was in the thick of the fighting and who said at the end of the war the Nazi political forces were responsible for the deaths of a lot of kids, some as young as 12 or 13 they rounded up, put in the army and stuck in often untenable defensive positions. He especially didn't like that part.

Human nature doesn't change though.