Low-yield tactical nukes in Vietnam?

vanity | 11 July 2012

[M Kehoe]

This was my post to you: "You have been on this site a little over 2 months, and decide to denigrate the Vietnam veterans on this forum. Not a wise move sparky." I said nothing else.

I stand by what I post. I post with my real name.

Methinks you need your woof ticket punched.

Richard Cranium

5.56mm

[Chainmail]

You are an example of what is really wrong with our country: somebody with very little understanding of history - or much else - yet you continue to happily expose your ignorance in public without a hint of shame. Another failure of our school system, I guess.

You and John Kerry and Jane Fonda and all the pro-Communist Left used the crime at My Lai to smear all the 2 million rest of us who served in Vietnam's service - which is like tarring the whole history and worth of the United States because Wounded Knee occurred or smearing the city of London because Jack the Ripper lived there.

The men I served with in Vietnam were good, solid, courageous Americans and I will always honor them. I did see some of my fellow Marines die in the act of protecting civilian lives. Despite the falsehoods of the enemy, the press, and you, the refugees always streamed in to us, not to the NVA or the VC. The people knew who we were.

You clearly didn't serve in Vietnam. Yet like many others, you are more than happy to broadly smear those of us who did, including the 58,000 of us who died. I guess I don't have to say more about you - you already know who you are.

[moonshot925]

If anyone is ignorant of history it is you.

My father was a B-17 bombardier with the 8th Air Force 390th Bomb Group in WW2.

He flew bombing missions over Regensburg, Schweinfurt, Frankfurt, Cologne and other German cities.

He never proclaimed that “we protected civilians”. His job was to kill civilians, not protect them.

In WW2 we dropped millions of tons of bombs on Germany and Japan and killed hundreds of thousands of civilians. It diminished their will and ability to resist which is why we won.

Our job was to stop communist expansionism in Southeast Asia, NOT to protect civilians. We failed to do that. Vietnam was a humiliating defeat and there is very little to be proud of.

I never smeared you or anyone else who served in Vietnam. Stop with the pathetic strawman arguments.

[Corwin of Amber]

Didn’t you see Alien 2?

“Nuke the site from orbit. Its the only way to be completely sure.”

[Chainmail]

You even smear your own Dad: the 8th Air Force heroically bombed in broad daylight - unlike the Brits who bombed at night and their objective was to wreck cities - to precisely hit military targets. The mission at Schweinfurt was to hit the German ball bearing factories and Regensburg to attack the Messerschmitt factory. They took huge losses to fighters and flak to hit those targets and spare as many civilians as possible. They were heroes in the true sense of the word - but you aren’t: you were of the age to serve in Vietnam, weren’t you? You hid out and now you justify things by trying to tar all of us who did fight. Here I just thought you were a lefty troll but I now I know you for who you really are - a coward who didn’t risk anything and even smears his own Father and the valiant aviators who flew with him.

[moonshot925]

You even smear your own Dad: the 8th Air Force heroically bombed in broad daylight

I am very proud of my father and the 8th AF. Strategic bombing by the USAAF and RAF was only effective because they carpeted whole cities round the clock. It diminished civilians morale, destroyed housing, industry and infasturcture.

unlike the Brits who bombed at night and their objective was to wreck cities - to precisely hit military targets.

Precision bombing in WW2 really did not exist.

USAAF crews flew in a formation of 36 aircraft 2,340 feet wide 900 feet from top to bottom and 640 feet from front to back, all dropping their bombs at the same time as the leader. Ignoring the height differences you end up with a bomb pattern 2340 feet wide and 640 feet deep.

Only 7% of all bombs dropped by the Eighth Air Force in 1944 hit within 1,000 feet of their aim point.

USAAF bombing was no more accurate than RAF bombing.

you were of the age to serve in Vietnam, weren’t you

No. I was born in 1963. 12 years old when the red flag was raised on Hanoi. Joined the Navy in 1981 and retired in 2006.

[Chainmail]

It's hard to deal with your skewed view of reality: The US Army Air Force did their best - at great cost - to hit strategic targets in Germany and the occupied countries as precisely as possible. Your Father participated in some of the most difficult attacks in the war - Schweinfurt cost us almost half of our aircraft and crews - and those attacks were that difficult because we insisted in bombing in daylight to accurately attack heavily defended military targets. The actual accuracy was lousy and as you point out, achieved results were poor in some cases but you utterly smear those men by implying that their mission was to murder civilians to reduce German morale. You Father and the men with him were the best of the best and they will always deserve the highest honors for what they tried to do. If you want to discuss Curtis LeMay and the bombing campaign in Japan, particularly his decision to go to low-level night firebombing, OK. That was a conscious decision to target the city centers and was a response to the resistance of the Japanese and the poor results achieved by the high altitude attacks and is certainly contentious in the hindsight of history.

You are still way off base to smear Vietnam Veterans with the crimes at My Lai. That was an isolated occurance that was committed by draftees under a particularly weak set of commanders. The unit in question hadn't even really been in combat - a few booby traps and one guy shooting himself in the foot to get out of things. An Army Warrant Officer Huey pilot distinguished himself by landing his helicopter and attempted to save some civilians and stop the soldiers from shooting. The men that prticipated in this crime should have been hanged. The enemy in Vietnam and here in this country used this crime the smear all of us who fought in that war with some success, given your statements. The truth is that the young men I saw in Vietnam were the best young men this country had to offer and we conducted ourselves with honor and courage. We did our best to protect the civilians and they knew it. When we would first patrol into a ville that had never seen us before, everybody hid. Then a few kids would come out and we'd give them our candy discs from our C-Rations and cigarettes (the kids smoked). Then the old people would slowly come out and see that we weren't going to harm anybody and soon everyone else would come out. We had good relations with the locals and we understood that they were the real reason were there to fight. The next time we approached the same village, they would greet us warmly and some would carefully point out where the mines were for us. Our unit actually would run medical visits in some of the villages to treat the dieases and wounds for the locals when we could. I applaud you and thank you for your career in the Navy but I don't think you have much of an idea or appreciation for infantry combat much less what we achieved in Vietnam. I am proud of us and as you can tell, I have nothing but contempt for those other young men of my generation who found convenient justifications for avoiding service during our war. I still won't have anything to do with them.

Finally, when I was commissioned after I returned from Vietnam, I was trained as a Nuclear Weapons Employment Officer - so I know quite about that subject. Nukes would have been a lousy idea.

[donozark]

You seem quite concerned about the less than 500 civilians murdered at My Lai. How about the est. 5K citizens of Hue’ murdered by VC/NVA during Tet?

[moonshot925]

"the aim of the Combined Bomber Offensive...should be unambiguously stated as the destruction of German cities, the killing of German workers, and the disruption of civilized life throughout Germany. The destruction of houses, public utilities, transport and lives, the creation of a refugee problem on an unprecedented scale, and the breakdown of morale both at home and at the battle fronts by fear of extended and intensified bombing, are accepted and intended aims of our bombing policy. They are not by-products of attempts to hit factories."

~~~ Arthur Harris

[Chainmail]

“Bomber” Harris was a Brit. He didn’t define US policy for our bombing campaign. Do you really believe that your Dad was a war criminal? The Brits pursued a campaign of massive night attacks to wipe out population centers. We didn’t. What did you do - give up your citizenship? As I have stated before, you sound like Jane Fonda, not a navy veteran.

[Chainmail]

“Bomber” Harris was a Brit. He didn’t define US policy for our bombing campaign. Do you really believe that your Dad was a war criminal? The Brits pursued a campaign of massive night attacks to wipe out population centers. We didn’t. What did you do - give up your citizenship? As I have stated before, you sound like Jane Fonda, not a navy veteran.

[TomasUSMC]

We were unwilling to fight as we fought WW2. And so we lost.

Exactly. Although I would have used nukes since thats where we left off in WW2. I don’t think Russia nor China would have risked MAD over North Vietnam.

[TomasUSMC]

“Use ‘em again, even the small ones, and a precedent is set.”

ALL weapon types are used eventually.

Exactly!

[TomasUSMC]

I wonder how small those 1950s warheads are now in 2012, half a century later.