RIP
RIP Great Man.
He leaves us crybabies off Iran led by a CO shitcanned for incompentence.
Our dive bombers literally snatched victory from the jaws of defeat.
Thanks, Dusty.
RIP
No radar. Dead reckoning.
Getting back to the ship to land before running out of fuel was a miracle.
And he did it again and again - after combat in which he watched all his buddies killed.
But he got the Jap carriers.
Yep. Those guys were amazing.
The Japanese pilots were so intent on killing Americans (see Bushido) that they broke discipline and left their carriers open to attack by the dive bombers.
What it must have been like to be at the back of the formation of torpedo planes that were attacking! You see your buddies being destroyed but you slowly lumber on hoping that they might miss you but knowing you are going to die.
We didn’t just destroy four Japanese aircraft carriers at Midway.
We destroyed the morale of the Japanese Navy.
They saw those big, slow torpedo planes pressing the attack. They realized our guys were just as brave and disciplined as they were.
Those American sailors shocked the Japanese to their very hearts!
Hooray for the torpedo plane crews and hooray for the dive bomber crews who pressed the attack!
My God....the courage.
RIP.
RIP, Norman “Dusty” Kleiss.
100 year old WW2 vet?
I still have the mindset that only WW1 vets could ever be that old.
RIP.
I'm sure that we will get an appropriate announcement from the White Hut shortly...
It is a shame that most people alive today in America have never even heard of the Battle of Midway, the most decisive naval battle in history.
RIP
The book I recommend is Walter Lord’s “Incredible Victory”. I’ve read and reread it at least a dozen times. Something I try to do on the anniversary of the Battle of Midway in early June. It is inspiring, accurate, and it evokes the times and events in the way Mitchner sometimes did. Lord also wrote “A Night to Remember” about the Titanic, another book worth the read.
The other point in the article that I think is so important is that we knew the Japanese were committed no to Midway.
Their communications security was bad enough, and our code breakers were good enough, that we knew they were coming and we could prepare for them.
That’s why Hillary Clinton’s awful behavior with communications security infuriates me.
The Japanese would desperately liked to have never sent that signal about the water plant at Midway. It cost them four carriers and many men.
Probably the war.
And she just acts like what she did was nothing.
I remember that he was on the MIL channel about the Battle of Midway.
RIP Dusty with a sharp, clean, military salute!
In a way it is too bad he didn’t die at America’s peak under Reagan, rather than living to see his and others’ sacrifices shit all over.
Thank you for my freedom Mr. Kleiss. What this man and his fellow Navy aviators did in the space of ten minutes is about the most amazing feat of aviation skill, daring and sheer guts and is the reason we aren’t speaking Japanese.