If we had constructed a next-generation version of this in 1960, and sent waves of them against Hanoi (controlled by men in B-52s well behind and out of reach of SAMs) we could have brought the North to their knees, and not have so many of our men at the Hanoi Hilton
Our leaders never really wanted to win that war. How we got roped into trying to protect french assets thee I will never quite understand. Probably drugs or stupid crap like that.
“we could have brought the North to their knees”
We did! We won each and ever major battle in Vietnam. We lost over 50,000 men and won the war and gave it away due to politics in Washington DC and the media that lied about the war day after day.
There is not a corner of hell hot enough for the souls of LBJ and Robert S McNamara to rest in eternity and may the hells of fire become even hotter for them.
Circa 1968 I last saw my friend Charles McMann outside his dorm room on the balcony. A year later he was dead in Vietnam. His army won the battles but his lose of life was but for naught as we gave it all away in Washington DC.
If one must go to war the objective must be defined. All hell must be released on your enemy. Many civilians will be killed and they are not innocent as they are part of the war machine you are fighting. They are not innocent with the exception of the the young. They are the real tragedy of war. All else is a legitimate target of war to destroy the enemy. I pray for the young that are killed. They were the innocent and no others were.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were actions of terror and it worked. Japan surrendered. If we were to take Japan by conventional warfare our causalities would have been in the hundreds of thousands. Japans casualities would have been in the millions, we owned he air, we had the aircraft, we had the bombers and they had few.
The atomic bomb saved Japan as a functioning society. They surrendered. If not for the atomic bomb we would have symptomatically destroyed them from the air and later with troops on the ground. Our losses would have been grave, our revenge for these losses would have been horrific beyond belief, just think Okinawa, we defeated them and when they retreated into the caves we burned them out with flame throwers. They had killed many of us, we killed many times more of them. If we had needed to invade Japan in an convention manner it would have mad Atilla the Hun look like a boy scout.
War is an ugly vile disease. If one must go to war it should be only be done if ones nation is at stake. If such is so it should be prosecuted with extreme violence and death. If one has this war philosophy and your enemy knows this, war is often avoided.
War is ugly, ugly,ugly and it supposed to be ugly. If it is not ugly and deadly it is naught but politics that sacrifice the blood of our country.
We must always make war ugly violent and deadly so as such we do not need to go to war. Our enemies must fear us. If our enemies do not fear us, they will attack us.
Frankly, there is no reason to continue the production of piloted aircraft.