My special hope is that LBJ, Macnamara, and Fonda are handcuffed together in Hell.
A buffoon, a fool, and an imbecile, in eternal embrace, forced to recite endlessly the tens of thousands of names of the warriors whose life's they wasted and dishonored.
Former F-105 maintainer.
I'm 100% with ya, our tactics were buffoonish in 'Nam, and I'm not just talking about the Buff this time LOL. The Thunderpig was a sitting duck. A nuclear striker meant to run open wide straight lanes like Mustangs on the Plains, instead of doing ad hoc politically motivated conventional bombing, and the hull loss rates are in the history books for all to marvel. The employment of that aircraft was a tactical and political disgrace.
One of the reasons I really didn't like my prior community stems from this mismatch in expectations. Flying a non-permissive-ineffective bomber in the 21st century had the added bonus of working with a cohort of pent-up folks not at all content with their "tactical lot" in life, and plenty they did to shine their @ss as a result (environment leading up to Bent Spear in '07, Raider21 in '08, I could on...). It was like working with ****ed off teenagers who didn't make varsity cut. They don't call me hindsight for nothing. I'm so glad to be just a lowly "flight instructor" now. Though my fatality odds are higher in the Talon, at least I no longer have to manage expectations to the degree I did in the Buff. Plus I fly with my favorite Captain every single time (and why I'll probably wouldn't make an FO worth a damn if I tried the airlines lol). Sport of kings (well, the
other sport of kings, especially when TDY....mil guys will get the reference.)
I wasted years of my life practice bleeding with insufferable NORE, CORE, HHDs, vaults, MOPP, and everything that came with it while waiting for the call, the call never came. Put another way: I did my job. What I
wasn't about to do was overestimate the great limitations of the equipment uncle sammy bestowed upon me like some of my coworkers did, at the detriment of their crew. And I sure as hell am damn glad I never got taken to task with an ATO as insane and wasteful as what we did to Thunderpig pilots in 'Nam. Kamikazes were regarded higher. That airplane had no business doing what it attempted to do in SE Asia, and it got its @ss handed to it.
Now my dear SLUF, that's an airplane I'd pick for the task.
