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Post by quincannon on Jun 28, 2015 18:20:22 GMT -6
Tom: You spent four days last week wandering around the LBH battlefield. I could spend at least a day wandering around a Fort Mackenzie or a Fort Whipple. Both were from the second period and both were solidly constructed, to the point where when the VA came in and took them over, all the old buildings were usable, and are still in use 100 years later. In the case of Whipple, the VA constructed a hospital on the old parade ground, and virtually nothing else changed. Fort Howard in Baltimore is similarly preserved, and if you have never been there and enjoy such things, its worth your time when you next go home.
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rebcav
Junior Member
Posts: 56
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Post by rebcav on Jun 28, 2015 19:06:43 GMT -6
WO I suspected I was doing just that, but while you are part of the target, the remainder surrounds you here. Professionalism is professionalism both in 1876 and 2015. If I was talking about something that was just dreamed up yesterday, time period would be a plausible argument. If they had a touch and go mentality they were not professional then or now. These people were lazy of mind. That's what they will scatter, they will run, touch and go, Godfrey's excuse making, and all the imagined reasons why something could not be done the right way is --- JUST PLAIN LAZY. None of these people, none of them, remotely resembled the picture we paint in our minds after overdosing on John Ford. Soldiers find a way to adapt to conditions and overcome even the most adverse situations. That's why they draw pay. If they can not, will not, or do not they have no right to be labeled such. "After overdosing on John Ford."............That's SO RAD....Awesome quote Sir.... I have I guess what could be called an "oblique" question....The plan was for three columns to co-operate and then converge, right? What kind of communication was there between Lt. Col Custer, General Terry and General Gibbon? Wouldn't there have been like couriers or someone riding "dispatch"? I mean I have to believe that somewhere along the line (like maybe the 23-24) General Terry would have liked a SITREP as to approximately WHERE Lt. Col Custer was in relation to General Gibbon and Himself......Or maybe General Gibbon was chillin' in bivouac one night (like the night of the 23rd, for instance) looking up at the stars and thinking: "I wonder how Custer is doing?" Did they even SEND couriers or try to have any inter-column updates? I mean, if I'm Custer way out in the boonies and also out in these same boonies are a whole bunch of "hostiles".....I'm here to tell ya, I want INFO......Where's the infantry? Any change in plans? What the heck, over? Seriously, I can't believe they were all three of them just kinda blundering about the Badlands, hoping for contact...... J.E.B. Stuart always kept in contact with Jackson and Lee...(Well, except for that minor comm blackout mistake in June, 1863).......Just SAYIN.. Just thought I'd ask...... Wayno..... |
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Post by quincannon on Jun 28, 2015 20:51:34 GMT -6
Don't believe they was any attempt to communicate.
To be fair Stuart did not operate at these distances, but you are quite correct that he understood his obligation to provide information.
A plan to communicate must be contained in every order. There is a separate paragraph devoted to the subject within the five paragraph field order. That is of course a child of the 20th century, at least the format, but the requirement for communications has existed since two men first picked up a rock and agreed to cooperate together to attain a mutual objective.
These is nothing RC that will ruin a John Ford movie faster than looking at the BoLBH.
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Post by Beth on Jun 28, 2015 21:01:09 GMT -6
John Ford movies are art. BoLBH is reality. I think moments after the last shot was fired at LBH, the mythbuilding began--or perhaps the mythbuilding began before the first shot was fired.
Beth
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Post by welshofficer on Jun 29, 2015 9:01:50 GMT -6
Don't believe they was any attempt to communicate. To be fair Stuart did not operate at these distances, but you are quite correct that he understood his obligation to provide information. A plan to communicate must be contained in every order. There is a separate paragraph devoted to the subject within the five paragraph field order. That is of course a child of the 20th century, at least the format, but the requirement for communications has existed since two men first picked up a rock and agreed to cooperate together to attain a mutual objective. These is nothing RC that will ruin a John Ford movie faster than looking at the BoLBH. QC,
And of course GAC deliberately disobeyed an order to communicate via TC....
I am beginning to grasp why Fred is so energised by that disobedience, more so even than Gibbon's infantrymen at the time.
WO
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Post by quincannon on Jun 29, 2015 9:30:18 GMT -6
WO: Tom and I talked by phone yesterday upon his return to the Old Dominion, giving me a brief after action on his trip. We both concluded that the more we both looked at this battle the more it becomes apparent that he (Custer) was completely out of his depth. Many of his sins could be forgiven (many not all) but when you put them all in as pieces of the whole, both his disobedience and incompetence is revealed.
Going back to John Ford. Ford did exactly the same thing with Torpedo Eight, as those at the time did with Custer.
View the film Torpedo Eight. Read the narrative of Torpedo Eight at the time, and include in it the naval morality play of the one survivor, Ensign Gay, viewing the destruction of Kido Butai from water level, then read the history of the event itself, the whole event, totally unrevealed at the time, and you see how legends are manufactured, as the Custer legend was manufactured.
The only real difference is when you remove the legend that shrouds him Waldron was a highly competent officer and great leader, while Custer was all hat and no cow. Waldron too disobeyed, but for the right reasons.
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Post by welshofficer on Jun 29, 2015 17:56:43 GMT -6
QC,
Waldron set the scene for McClusky and Leslie....
WO
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Post by quincannon on Jun 29, 2015 18:06:09 GMT -6
Say it isn't so WO. Say it isn't so. You have bought into the legend, not the facts.
Waldron, along with Torpedo 3 and 5, four USAAF B26 medium bombers fitted to launch torpedoes, a detachment of VT 8 flying Avengers from Midway Island, an entire squadron of Vaught Vindicator dive bombers flown by Marines under the leadership of Lofton Henderson (Henderson Field on Guadalcanal) that were so obsoleted they could not be trusted not to shed their wings in a dive, and a squadron of B17's kept Kido Butai busy for that critical hour plus to the point where they had to keep their decks clear for CAP rearm/refuel, preventing a strike, ALL set the stage for McClusky and Leslie. Was Lem Massey's death any less heroic that that of Waldron?
That is what Ford's Torpedo Eight did. It diminished the sacrifice of all of the others, most of whom did not return.
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Post by welshofficer on Jun 29, 2015 18:14:28 GMT -6
QC,
I don't detract from the others, but I think Torpedo 8, 3 and 5 were pivotal. They kept the Kido Butai CAP low and fixated on torpedo bombers...
And fatally delayed the re-launching until the worst possible moment coinciding with the arrival of McClusky/Leslie.
WO
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Post by quincannon on Jun 29, 2015 18:40:17 GMT -6
Actually Torpedo 3 was still in business working over Soryu (I think) maybe Hiryu when the dive bombers struck.
No I know you weren't. It is just a pet peeve of mine that Waldron and Eight get all the credit in popular culture when the truth is far different. Ford created a legend, he was a master of the craft, and history, has run with it.
The part I really object to is that Waldron, being partially of Indian heritage was made to look like Tonto, the all knowing crafty American possessing powers known only to the Cheyenne or Mohawk (he was neither by the way) and only one possessing such powers could have done what he did.
The truth was he was a better navigator than his air group commander, Ring, and his Captain Marc Mitscher, he disobeyed a direct order, for the right reasons, and contributed, not accomplished all by his lonesome, to the eventual victory of 4 June 42.
Ring incompetence lost twice as many planes as VT8, did not drop a bomb or fire a shot. They did run out of gas though.
I am old enough to have grown up at a time when my hometown public library was filled with war written feel good books, and to read it how they told it Torpedo Eight won the Battle of Midway, and part of the U S Navy showed up. I find striking paralells in this stuff and all of the pulp fiction junk on Custer.
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