Women in combat (but not really) Vol. III

Nuclear weapons, (the majority of which have nothing to do with pilots), certainly have their role in combat. We both know that nuclear weapons and airpower can't win wars on their own though, short of evaporating entire nations.

Where did the Enola Gay and Bockscar take off from? They took off from the island of Tinian, which Infantrymen from the 2nd and 4th Marine division captured a year earlier.

Comparing the 8th Air Force to the ENTIRE Marine Corps is comparing apples to oranges. You used numbers for this before. You're comparing a direct combat unit with the ENTIRE branch of another service.

The 8th Air Force had 300,000 members in it during WW2 with about 130,00 actually flying combat sorites. That's a support to combatant ratio of 1.31. In WW2 a commonly cited figure is that an "average" infantry battalion had 3000 actual "fighters" in an average 16,000 man division. That's a combatant ratio of 5.33. Your ridiculous comparison takes a frontline combat unit that's extraordinarily heavy on "fighters" and compares it to an entire Branch. A Branch that had to leave hundreds of thousands of men in the contintental United States to fill training, recruiting, testing, administrative, reserve and various other functions; functions that were provided for the 8th by a massive logistic footprint you conveniently left out of your numbers. Lets add all those support positions you neglected to include in the numbers.

Lets do a Branch to Branch comparison:
The U.S. Army Air Corps had approximately 3.4 million members for the war. The Army Air Force flew about 40% of ALL its sorties in the Pacific theatre. You, of course, compared raw numbers without noting that total casualties during the war were 88,119 (a lot of non-combat) with 17,360 wounded in action for total casualties of 105,479.

The United States Marine Corps had approximately 669,100 members for the war. In WW2, they suffered 24,511 KIA and 68,207 WIA for a grand total of 92,718 casualties for the war.
CASUALTY RATE
Army Army Corps: 3.1%
Marine Corps: 13.86%

We can also break it down by DEATH RATE:
Army Air Corps:2.59%
Marine Corps:3.66%

You were also deceitful with your Pacific war numbers. People don't realize just how small the Marine Corps was. There were many times more Soldiers than Marines in the Pacific theatre. The Army had more than 3 times the KIA and the navy 1.5 times the KIA than the Marine Corps in that theatre. While it's difficult to find the exact number, the Army Air Force flew about 40% of ALL its sorties in WWII. During the war 3.4 million served in the branch. I'd estimate that approximately 600,000-800,000 air men served in the Pacific while somewhere between 300,000-450,000 Marines served in the Pacific. In other words, the Army Air Force had significantly more men in theatre yet loss fewer than the Marine Corps.

It would be much more intellectually honest to compare the 8th Air Force to the 1st Marine Division or even something like the 7th Marine Regiment.

http://www.usmarinesbirthplace.com/US-Marine-Corps-Casualties.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Army_Air_Forces#USAAF_statistical_summary_of_World_War_II
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL32492.pdf

 

You have no idea what being an Infantryman entails. I made the cognac comment sarcastically after you decided to start up our earlier arguments and degrade infantrymen.

Again, your comparisons are silly. An average squad leader in the Marine Corps/Army is an E-4 with 2-4 years of experience. An average stealth bomber pilot is an 0-4 with 9-12 years of experience (correct me if this is wrong). An infantry officer of equivalent rank and experience would be the executive officer of an 800-1200 man battalion. I would say the responsibility is very "equal" though very different.

A "rifleman" is an E-1 through E-3 with 0-3 years of experience. Stop making silly comparisons.


Being "attached" to ground combat units is not anything close to being the same thing as a functioning member of a ground combat arms unit. The Chaplain assigned to our BN was a tubby 40-something Navy Officer. He was attached to us but he sure as hell wasn't doing urban patrols and clearing hosues.

 

Yes, there is such a great superfluity of men fit for infantry duty. So many so that thousands of volunteers are forced to enlist with different contracts or commision into other specialies.

 

Aircrews risked their lives, both in the Pacific and European theaters...
A common assertion among ground pounders is that the aircrews return to base in rear echelon locations...enjoy hot meals, showers and an actual bed...

All true.

There is no rest for the weary on the ground and in the frontlines.

However, as combat flying consists of hours of boredom interrupted by moments of sheer terror...it was not entirely a "milk run"....
the bulk of the bomber fleet were unpressurized aircraft...often flying on supplemental oxygen at altitudes over 25,000'...where temperatures hover around 50 below zero...
they endured enemy flak thick enough to walk on at times...and enemy fighters waiting to pick off any stragglers. Feather a prop due to engine trouble over Germany, was a death sentence for an aircrew...they would fall behind the formation and be sitting ducks to the Luftwaffe fighter wolves.

Many squadrons suffered a 40% casualty rate over the required 25 missions.

The guy in the foxhole in Belgium or lava sands of Iwo Jima, had to live it...24/7...the terror was unrelenting...or fast forward to modernity...
there is/was no defined battlespace in Afghanistan/Iraq...situational awareness could never be relaxed for ground troops.

I'm not trying to compare the two...i'm pointing out that zoomies aren't always about flying above the fray, thinking what drink to order at the o'club after landing.

Even in the airlift community, you're entering hostile airspace with no armament or defense aside from flare dispensers...you forgo a more liesurely ILS approach
for a tactical landing equivalent to letting the water out of a bathtub and the ensuing spiral effect in the drain...dumping a lot of altitude in a little time...in a very tight
orbit over an airfield.

The conversation shouldn't be reduced to who eats the most snakes or "suffers the most"....ground units are more exposed and consequentially suffer the most casualties...
who here is arguing that...but ground units alone cannot defeat an enemy...the enemy is often softened by other elements...air and/or sea power.
Elements that often face the equal risk of death.

Flying a relatively untested atomic bomb around in the bomb hold...over enemy airspace...isn't exactly without some risk involved. Thei courage of that aircrew
saved hundreds of thousands of lives ultimately...

 

LMAO!

Wait, what?

 

If I wanted your two cents, I'd ask for it.
I have defended, females in combat roles... albeit on an anonymous internet forum...knowing full well the aviation community has not always welcomed women into the
'fraternity" of flyers...in particular military flyers. Referred to as "DUBs" dumb ugly b-----es, often times, behind their backs; wherein females were thought better suited as flight attendants than denizens of the male dominated "cockpit."

While you sit on the sidelines offering little to no input, or defense, of your gender aside from two word quips.

Indeed.

on the 115th anniversary of Amelia Earhart's birthday no less...
absolute sacrilege.

 

I don't need your permission to post, especially when my response was directed at someone else. I've defended women in the military through the first 6-9 threads about this (*)(*)(*)(*). I've also made it clear that I don't believe women should serve in infantry. But thanks for looking out for us anyways, on an anonymous message board. Thank you for justifying our roles in the military because our actions, honor, and success just don't quite add up to the power of a few anonymous posts on an irrelevant Political Forum. No, the aviation community has not always welcomed women. No, women were not always respected as military leaders. Guess what? It's the (*)(*)(*)(*)ing 21st Century now and that's mostly changed. And I'll tell you what, it's not because someone was (*)(*)(*)(*)ting all over other aspects of combat in order to promote the competency of women in combat aircraft.

You know why I mostly sit on the sidelines in this thread? Because the game is over. Everything that has been discussed in the last few pages has been discussed numerous times before. You're still on the field disputing a call that was decided awhile ago.

 

I was under the impression the fate of the free world depended upon my posts, you've really let the wind out of my sail.

Requesting permission to leave formation.

Also regarding, "(*)(*)(*)(*)ting" on other aspects of combat.

We, the U.S., have 21 B-2 bombers in our active fleet.


Nevermind cavalry, armor or other ground combat units...let's just focus on infantry.

The Army has about 49,000 infantryman...the Marines another 10 - 20,000.

which do you think is more rare?

A B-2 pilot or an infantryman?

I'm merely pointing out the reality that women have already traversed the "great divide" of acceptance in the combat arms and entered rarified air...as bomber pilots...or at least one female stealth bomber pilot...

 

I hadn't noticed, but in any case no such attacks have come from yours truly.

 

God, I can't believe how you use such generalizations to mask the truth. Infantry bear the brunt of the casualties because they're the guys on the ground looking for the enemy. The Marine Corps has suffered 25 KIA from hostile fire so far in 2012. Of those 25, 17 were assigned to Infantry battalions. Of course other job specialites risk their lives and are killed in combat. I won't let you try and gloss over the fact that it's Infantrymen who die at a the highest rate and undergo the most danger though. You may think it's a dick measuring contest, but it's important that people make the distinction. In Ramadi, Fallujah, Helmad etc. etc. it's the Infantrymen that left the wire day after day to go tangle with insurgents and get hit by IEDs. You'd like to pretend everyone's sacrificed equally, that the grunts who faced the very real prospect of death everyday sacrificed just as much as the guy loading pallets on a C-130. That's just not true, and ignoring the sacrifice these guys made is disgraceful.

I'd also like to note that I include all the support guys attached to the ground pounders who went out everyday with the grunts as grunts.

 

So you (*)(*)(*)(*) all over Infantry, calling it a regression for women, only to agree that women don't belong there?

The economic aspect of it is VERY VERY real. How can the government afford to spend millions of dollars for no benefit?

 

I've been fascinated with WWII history since I was a kid. I know just how brutal and dangerous daylight bombing runs over Japan/Germany were. I'm not discrediting what they did at all.

I made my AC comment in a sarcastic response to your degrading comment.

 

Read your signature.

 

It has nothing to do with exclusivity. The fact that you think so is rather scary actually. If you wanted to go that route you should have picked Gen. Ann E. Dunwoody who's the 4-star commanding the U.S. Army Material Command. There's only 1 person in the entire army/military/world with that title. That's pretty exclusive. If you think infantry is fancy and exlcusive you need to do a little studying.

 

She's a combat pilot...Gen. Dunwoody is support.
The thread is about females in combat is it not. I brought her up, to enlighten the board that females are currently serving in combat arms...taking it to the enemy...no different than
someone in the infantry.

B-2's were used as first strike weapons for Operation Iraqi Freedom...though were no more than a cameo in Operation Enduring Freedom.

Before boots on the ground, B-2's were in combat action.

That was my point for highlighting her contribution.

No one is arguing, or at least, I'm not..that the ground forces have beared the brunt of fighting and dealing with hardships in GWOT. Nor am I arguing to force feed females into the ground forces merely for some sort of feminist agenda.

Not everyone can be in the infantry, it's a tough job, probably the most physical job the services have to offer...and of course one of the greatest risks of death...

but not everyone can pilot a sophisticated combat system like the B-2 either...very few have the right stuff...and the right stuff is gender neutral...

Certainly an infantry Marine or soldier has the right stuff...but so does this Captain.

That was my point.

Women can handle combat...if their skill set is suitable for the task.

 

No worries, it's about legacy...just as the Marines have their Chesty Puller...or devil dogs from WWI

Army infantryman look to the Big Red One as their legacy..

Modern bomber crews look to their legacy of what B-17 and B-24 crews endured in WWII

The airlift community look to their legacy of cargo planes flying 'the hump" over the Himalayas with little to no navigation aids, in unpressurized aircraft often time
during the 2nd Sino-Japanese war.

We all have something to be proud of and look back upon as contributions...in whatever we did in the services..

We walk in the footsteps that went before us, and we ought it to them to maintain the same dedication to duty.

and I was out of line with my "regressive" comment anyway...sometimes I just like to shake up the board...that's not how I feel about the infantry.

 

It's called the F-22...heck even the B-2 is over-priced....but it's still the best out there for what it does...and at least the B-2
has actually seen action.

Analogy....the USAF fighter mafia insists on their fancy sports cars...though they keep garaged for maintenance and never actually take them out for a drive.

The DoD pisses away money all the time....

 

Actually, technicaly, SAD and JSOC (infantry) were on the ground before any kind of aerial strikes occured in either war.

 

To be truly technical...USAF F-16s were patrolling the (NFZ) no-fly zone for years before an invasion of Iraq was even in the planning stages.

However, yes, obviously some sort of ground contingency was required...however they didn't engage bad guys...to the best of my knowledge anyway.

This was the whole "shock & awe" phase of the operation.

I have no doubt U-2 aircraft were deployed in Iraq and/or Afghanistan airspace as ISR prior to any air strikes.
The timeline, I can't say.

Back in the Gulf War I...a Lear jet out of Barksdale AFB, flew into Iraqi airspace to test their radar systems...kind of like "bait."

This was the first allied aircraft in enemy airspace, even before the F-117s were deployed. They wanted to know where the radar equipped air defense systems were, so they deployed
a bait aircraft...a C-21A which flies in a similar flight envelope to the stealthy sub-sonic F-117...same speed/altitude etc...though the F-117 was high sub-sonic.

 

Green Berets and CIA (CAD) is usually on the ground months before conflicts start.

 

I was watching "Hell Week" on the Discovery channel about guys qualifying for Green Beret school. Essentially they keep them awake 36 hours, maybe a two hour nap...
another 20 mile walk involving carrying telephone pole size logs...a march at night...these guys look frazzled at the end of it. That's just to qualify to attend the school.

yeah, no thanks, I wouldn't have lasted the first day...
The closest anything resembling infantry Hell Week, was SERE school...they dump you off in the middle of the woods in Washington and you have to survive and evade capture
for a couple days...but no forced marches or walks with telephone poles.

I wouldn't have made it as an infantryman and certainly not as a Green Beret...props to those guys...they earn those Berets with a lot of sweat and tears.

 

Less tears, more blood.

 

They used to let my platoon stay at their compound (bad ass) whenever we had overnight missions. They were some of the most down to earth no bull(*)(*)(*)(*) guys I've ever met. All they cared about was getting the job done as efficently as possible with none of the official pomp and bull(*)(*)(*)(*) that the regular military thrives on. Their soul focus is on making war. They tried to get my platoon to pull security for them on some snatch and grab raids. We were all about it, but of course the dickheads at BN said it was a no-go. Field grades don't want to risk an adverse fit-rep, even if it's the middle of a war zone and its for the greater good.

 

SOF operates outside the box, so the spit & polish regulars would only be an impedance. Also, Army special forces
"Green Berets" must be proficient in a foreign language. Combine physical fitness taken to inhuman levels, weapons and tactics, with foreign language prociency, and these guys are indeed bad ass. Often times, they get tasked with training
foreign armies in addition to hunting and killing bad guys....all with little to no recognition. If someone is bragging they are or were a Green Beret, odds are they weren't.

They are very low key.

 

We had almost the exact same thing happen to us. We were a small detachment of LRS guys and ODA loved us. We were given opportunities to go with them on 2 or 3 missions, nothing spectacular. It was fun watching them in action. Then we had a mission pop up that they were going to be moving a few klicks south from our FOB to do a snatch and grab on some HVT's, and wanted us to come along, to provide security and to catch any squirters.We were all ready go, had our plan of action. It was gonna be a blast. We were gonna hop over the hesco's on the far end of the FOB, hump it for a few klicks, set up an OP, then send a small team to a known trail on the east side of the city. SP time was to be 1130 hrs. At 1100 hrs we were scratched from the mission because of BN. We were pissed.....

Ended up being a dry hole anyway, so whatever.