This time from occasional reader Tomas, who’s visiting in Argentina:
So I’m down here, in lovely Argentina, living for a while. Things being elatively cheap down here, I decided last year to try for my private pilot’s license. This past April second was the big day; I took and passed both the written and flying part of the exam. But who would have thought that the cool part of the exam actually taking it?
Turns out, down here at least, that the Air Force is in charge of all things related to civil aviation. So they send a full bird colonel down to my little flight school to admin the exam. April 2nd is a big day down here – it’s the anniversary of the Falklands War. So i’m about to go flying on April 2nd with a full bird colonel, who, I learned that day just minutes before the guy arrived, had flown several combat sorties during the Falklands War in A4s.
I did some research on the guy – the air force’s website has a good section on the war where they tell you in great detail every sortie flown on every single day of the war. Sure enough, this guy was there, and it turns out that during one of his sorties, he and his wingman sunk the HMS Antelope, which I understand was a pretty modern frigate/destroyer for the time. And they sunk it using MK17 bombs, which I guess aren’t laser guided or anything like that – they flew just above the water, straight for the ship, popped up a few yards away, released their payload, and start saying Hail Mary’s on their way out…old school I figure.
I have to tell you, it was pretty damn cool to fly with a guy like that. Not to mention that he even complemented me on my flying!
All the best,
Tomas
–
Our politics and culture are deeply tied up with that “sceptered isle,” so we tend to view the Argentines as the “bad guys” in the Falklands/Malvinas conflict even before we label them the aggressors. And while I’m very comfortable with the idea of the Falkland islanders retaining their right of self-determination as British subjects regardless of their physical proximity, it leaves us with a curious reticence to acknowledge the valor of the Argentinian Air Force who really faced huge odds against a modern air service in obsolete gear, using weapons ill-suited to the purpose.
It takes stones to fly a Skyhawk at 20-30 feet above the water for a hundred miles, and pop up into an opposed attack against a well-defended warship to cast low drag ordnance whose frag and blast pattern will – because of your delivery profile – envelope your own craft. The kind of valor that we ought to be able to recognize even as we detest the cause in which it serves. We’ve gotten out of the habit of that sort of thing.
Maybe it’s cultural.
From the warrior ethos standpoint, the military code of “bushido“demonstrated to us in World War II had much to recommend it. It is gratifyingly stern and self-abnegating, and those who hewed to it were capable of great acts of courage, fighting and refusing to surrender even against vastly superior odds. On the other hand, it did mean that prisoners were treated rather rudely, it being thought disgraceful that they hadn’t died fighting, apparently. This obviously conflicts with the Western romantic view of graceful treatment of a grateful, but vanquished foe. Contemporary views on the Japanese military were repellently racist even without the ammunition of prisoner treatment and the Rape of Nanjing, however – it wasn’t until some thirty or forty years after the war that a more nuanced and textured cultural understanding begand to develop.
I was at the San Diego Air and Space Museum in Balboa Park a couple of weeks ago and wandered through the Battle of Britain section – always my favorite. There’s just something about those plucky Brits beating back the Teutonic hordes that sings to the soul of a fighter pilot – a desperate, swirling battle with the odds stacked against you and the outcome very much in doubt. It helps that there’s an American connection too – in yet another strange reflection of how the culture has changed over the years, prior to America’s entry into the war, hundreds of US citizens broke the law by fleeing to Canada… in order to join the RAF and fight.
Times change, I guess.
Anyway – and I might get beat up for this – I felt a little nostalgiac for a time when you could hate the enemy, and loathe his cause, but nevertheless begrudge him a kind of respect for his own courage and devotion. The German fighter pilots were well-trained and had good equipment, but they took appalling losses – not least because of Goering’s insistence that most of their missions be tied up in “close escort” with lumbering bombers – a tactic which left them low, slow and vulnerable to the RAF’s Fighter Command.
That takes the kind of courage, discipline and devotion which is admirable even in a hated enemy, fighting for a detestable cause. Somehow it’s hard for me to imagine, 20 or 30 years on, feeling the same way about the foe we are now engaged with.
Maybe it’s cultural.
If my long ago readings of the “Five Rings” serves me well bushido predates WW II by quite a bit. Still a good read for this aging warrior, I’ll have to dig through the my library and find it again. Remarkable how a casual meeting with someone can turn out to be an experience of the extraordinary that touches our own history.
“Phantoms Phorever”
I always chuckle when I think of the Falklands war. There was a girl in my high school (in spain) who had a British mom and an Argentinian dad.
Their dinner table conversations must have been quite interesting, even if everyone tried to ignore it.
Marvelous site ! Thanks for your gently flowing style and grand stories.
Agree 100% with your commentary about WWII. What do you think of the discipline that underpinned those missions, such as the German low’n slow escort? Surely the pilots recognized the stoopidity of that assignment, yet they flew the assigned mission. In a similarly tragic vein, consider the infantry, from the War of Northern Aggression and back through time to the Legions – the troops massed and traded volley after volley, marching in formation across open fieds that were raked with shot and shell, or into formations ringed by shield and spear … you gotta have stones to do that. Into the valley of death rode the 600 … their’s is but to do and die (not ‘or’ die as so many commonly believe). The leaders and the leadees …. Imagine being the leader who ordered those movements … sleeping well at night? The Roman legions were taught to fear their leaders more than they feared the enemy. Fear worked well in eras past. Suspect the German leadership was a mixture of national pride, some fear/brutality, and so forth and so on. Now, the masses are more educated, the weapons more sophisticated, and the battles more nuanced – less brutal leadership is appropriate. The battles in Iraq and Afghanistan cover both sides of this: from JDAMS (highly sophisticated) to knife fights in a phone booth (standard infantry/SOF fare). The fear/respect for the IED threat does not stop coalition patrols. The Germans flew again and again until they could fly no more. The Japanese flew and flew; many intentionally made it a one-way mission. Good leadership? Good motivation? One of our (The West’s) challenges since WWII has been dealing with suicide attacks. Our security designs and our defenses are based on the presumption that the attacker wants to survive to fight again. The fact that so many attackers now don’t want to survive has us in a quandry. Martial law shoot-on-sight orders might resolve the immediate problem, but at the cost of creating new problems that are equally challenging, but in different ways and in different venues.
BeerMug sends
There is nothing honorable or respectable about an individual or force that targets non-combatants or uses children as props. If there is any hope at all for civilization or human kind that will remain the same in 30 years or 300 years.
Although they had Presidential approval, a nod must also go to the AVG. . . aka, the The Flying Tigers.
And when discussing a “warrior class” that leaves their country to fight along with other countries, the Wild Geese should also be considered. These men distinguished themselves in bloody battles, not only for France, but also in the service of many other countries, later including the famed Irish Brigade of our own republic. And their descendents continue their heroic legacy today.
Beermug,
It was the Romans who gave us the word “decimate”. That term reflected a punishment designed to enforce discipline as well as fear.
Any Legion that lost it’s Eagle, regardless of the circumstance, or which broke, or fled, was subject to decimation. The legion was lined up, and every 10th man was executed on the spot.
respects,
Hey Paul,
“There is nothing honorable or respectable about an individual or force that targets non-combatants..”
That’s how we won the war with Japan. (We were doing this even before we used Special Weapons.) Were we wrong? Were we dishonorable?
Nose
Nose,
I started to post a similar comment, only about Dresden. After doing some online research, I decided not to. As for Japan … I hope Paul answers.
Nose, That is a good point. At the time, fire bombing Tokyo seemed like the only option because, unlike Germany, it was very difficult to find strategic targets such as air plane factories, etc.
Were we wrong? We would not use the same method today, but back then, it was the fastest way to bring Japan down, which in the end, probably saved more lives than it cost.
BTW, my father (former Marine), if he were still here, would say it was the Marines who won the war with Japan. My uncle, if he were still here, would say it was the submarines that won the war.
Lex,
Ditto on the RAF pilots during the Battle of Britain. One of my favorite books about the era is “Reach for the Sky”, a bio about Douglas Bader, who flew Spits with two artificial legs; in which the condition actually saved his life when he was shot down over Germany…
http://www.elknet.pl/acestory/bader/bader.htm
In total war, there are no non-combatants. Everyone is in the service of the State; thus, all are legitimate targets. That’s how WWII was fought, and it made a lot of people uncomfortable. The West has tried to re-establish the idea of the non-combatant since, I think partly to avoid nuclear war (the destruction isn’t what makes it unthinkable, the killing of innocents is what makes it unthinkable) but we haven’t been able to make it stick anywhere else.
I think the reason for that is that the West invented the non-combatant. To other societies, the idea of non-combatants is nonsense. Either you are an enemy or you are not. If you are an enemy, you are a target. We and the enemy we’re fighting today have completely different rules for warfare. We condemn their killing of non-combatants; they don’t even know what a non-combatant is. We think it’s cowardly to attack unarmed civilians; they think it’s a perfectly sensible thing to do.
They’re not barbarians, they’re aliens.
Theodore
What you said makes an awful lot of sense, unfortunately.
I think I remember watching video of that actual attack. I was very impressed by the big brass ones of those Argy pilots. They came in so low that a lot of their bombs didn’t have time for the fuzes to arm before the bombs hit. Those guys covered themselves in glory. The Argy Army, not so much.
P.s. I think Antelope was gotten by the delayed explosion of one of those, while a very brave (posthumously decorated) EOD guy was working on it.
Lex–
You are correct. I can despise the cause of the Confederacy, yet still admire Robert E. Lee. Quantrell, however was beyond the pale.
I own a Quantrill t-shirt. I bought it after a conversation with Austin Wattles, the Clerk of the Atlanta Friends’ Meeting, back when.
He told kind of an inverse “Cleopatra meets Caesar” story about his Grandpa in Lawrence, Ks. when Quantrill and his “Gorillas” as they called themselves killed every man and boy there.
The way Austin told it, when the gorillas came through to burn the house and let the lady of the place put what she could on the wagon, she rolled her husband up in a rug, carried him out to the wagon, and was allowed to drive away with him.
And that’s how Austin got to exist.
I never had the nerve to wear that t-shirt in Mr. Wattles’s presence while he was alive, and on mature consideration, I’m glad I didn’t.
At least Quantrill only murdered white boys; that should get him some credit, these days.
The Donovan advised me not to wear that shirt if I’m ever in Lawrence, but I betcha the doodahs there don’t know enought to object
P.s. Sometimes Mature Consideration is a long time coming.
As Captain Sir Basil Liddell-Hart wrote, “Soldiers are slow to grow up.”
I think that goes double for aviators, and triple for auties.
Not that that is necessarily bad; I intend to stay 10 years old between the ears into my eighties, if I can manage to do that.
I hate to clutter yer comments with three in a row, but I remember something I read once, written by yet another dangerous lovable Irishman, Rear Admiral Dan Gallery.
He was writing about one of the guys he captured off of U-505, and wrote something like
“Remember, sometimes good men will fight well for a bad cause.”
P.s. Uh, Puhlleeze, I really want multiple copies of that superdoubleextrakewl&wonderful bumpersticker, but absolutely refuse to have anything whatsoever to do with CafePress.
Can you help me, here
The difference between the nippers circa 1940′ish, and jihadis is that the nippers had an organized military.
First you destroy the enemies’ will to make war. We’ll get there eventually, whether we want to, or not.
Captain,
I have a copy of “Yankee, R.N.” I feel sure you would enjoy. An old pen pal in England sent it to me a number of years ago. This details the circumstances of which you spoke, concerning Americans joining the R.N. No aviation connection, alas, but if you’re interested I’d post it on to you at no cost if you’ll give me a mailing address.
Best regards,
Chief T.
justthisguy, send me an E-mail and I’ll help you out with the bumperstickers.
unkawill, due to the regrettably necessary anti-spam measures that Cap’n Lex and most sane bloggers have imposed, I have no idea what your email addy is. You could ask Lex for mine, or, wait, I have it!
Send me a PM at TheHighRoad.org. I’m Orthonym there. If yer not a member, you should be!