On Sat, 13 Aug 2005 07:39:28 GMT, (Derek Lyons) wrote:

Dale wrote:

I was surprised to read that the Blue Angels disbanded to go fight in Korea. Makes
sense, of course, as they were hand-picked top pilots. But the policy changed with
Vietnam- at least I'm pretty certain I saw the Blue Angels perform several times
during the war. Was it decided their PR and recruiting role was more valuable than
what they could do in actual combat?

Korea was treated as an actual war - airplanes and ships broken out of
mothballs, etc.. etc..

Well, we were only five years removed from an "actual war", with many of
the same people in charge. But of course, it wasn't a war- it was a "police
action". I guess that indicates how tired we were as a nation of war after
the unpleasantness of the previous decade...

Vietnam was treated like an abberation in the day-to-day life rather
than an all consuming role.

It's odd if that was the attitude of the military, as it certainly seemed to
become "all consuming", pro and con, amongst the civilian population. But
if you're suggesting that we could have won had we gone all out, I don't subscribe
to that idea. At least from the standpoint of the air war, wasn't our bombing of
Vietnam of even greater magnitude than all of our bombing in WW2? I guess
Nixon glimpsed on a few occasions the only way of "winning"- using nuclear
weapons. Fortunately, he proved wiser than that.

Dale