First!

great great stuff Frank. Keep it coming (if you dont run out of stories that is!)

"UBL and his ilk?" What does that have to do with Iraq? Before we invaded Iraq, UBL and Saddam were enemies. UBL is a religious fanatic, and Saddam ran a secular dictatorship. Not taking anything away from the civilians who volunteered to go to a war zone, but defending America has nothing to do with it. Not even Bush believes that lie.

Et tu, Megan?

fishfry,
You must be new to this site. Just so you know, you're a muckadoo.

Hey! Frank! What's the deal?!
I ordered my Nuke the Moon t-shirt like a month ago, when they were scheduled to begin shipping May 5. So, today I went back to the website (everyone go there and order one), expecting so see something like "Shipping Now!" Instead it still says "Scheduled to ship 5/5/2004." What's the deal Frank? You can't schedule something for the past, man, it just doesn't work that way. Also, I want my t-shirt. Gimme, gimme, gimme.

lol Am I the only one that pays any attention to the numbering? It should be "Our Military XVIII" Other than that, great series and I hope you can keep it up.

Frank
Soy Aceptable. Estoy mirando adelante a este fin de semana!

And fish fry, in the grande scheme of good versus evil, we(America)are good and UBL, & Saddam are both evil. By taking out any one enemy, we become stronger and our other enemies become weaker. Even five year olds get that concept!!

--fishfry... "defending America has nothing to do with it..."?? Excuse me??

--Allow me to explain this concept to you (and you may feel free to repeat it to the others of your kind if you wish): Since we don't know the exact number of terrorist bastards that have been killed in the Iraqi and Afghan theaters, let us assign an example number... say... 5000. Okay? Okay. So... we now know with some degree of certainty, and can say with some confidence, that those 5000 terrorist bastards will NEVER come to our shores and try to hurt us at home. Now... since we don't know exactly how many of them are left, let us say that number is 1,000,000 (again, just an example number). We can then start a countdown with each and every one of the bastards that we kill. Then, someday, there will be none of the bastards left (or not enough to create any problems).

--Get it?? The numer of terrorist bastards in the world gets smaller every time we kill one of them. Then... since we don't believe in the terrorist GHOST threat... there are less of them to come here and cause trouble. See how that works?

--It is, therefore, quite obvious to any but the most small minded (and/or hate-polarized) among us that this war is ALL ABOUT defending America. In short, we are taking it to them, rather than waiting for them to bring it to us (which they most certainly will try to do).

--Well, I think that went well... you??

I think fishfry has been drinking the grease instead of eating the fish.

Good stories.

Bingo - "18"? Can you count?

Mr. Fishfry,
Thank you for your interest in my story. You are now officially not part of my 20%.
Sincerly,
John

Maybe Frank just likes 12 twice better than thirteen?

Don't worry, John. Most of us civilians are actually bright enough to realize that some dude who gives a bunch of blood for ink in a holy book aren't running something entirely secular. And if you're funding someone, you haven't been convinced that they are your enemy. And you surely don't put up murals of yourself over their atrocities, claiming them as your victories.

Iraq and Terror: A few points to ponder.
-Saddam was sending checks to the families of Palestinian suicide bomber's families. Have you noticed the BIG drop off in the number of suicide bombers since we beat Saddam like a red-headed step child?

-Have you noticed that some people don't get the difference between not having the evidence to support Saddam's involvement in 9/11 and him not actually being involved in 9/11? (hint: it's like voting for it, before you vote against it waffles).

-We NEVER declared war on Al Qaeda, we declared war on terror(ists) and ANY nation that provide aid to them. Iraq and links to terror (including Al Qaeda links, fryboy) are numerous, but cheese eating surrender monkeys like fishfry never bother to look for them

I liked Johns e-mail, it kind of puts the military lifers attitude towards civilians into perspective. As a former COE and current DoD employee and vet, I can say with some degree of accuracy that our Rich Uncle Sam does, for a fact, have some decent people on his payroll.

opps didnt mean to put the "V" in there oh well.

Fishfry is attempting to distract us from our terrorist hunt by screaming red herring. Therefore he is providing aid and comfort to the enemy. Therefore since he is not for us, he is against us (do I need to keep painting this picture any further?) Smells like a terrorist to me!

(Sound of a thousand rounds being chambered simultaneously...)

Regarding the P-38 vs tanks -

I've played a lot of flight simluators, and flown in some small planes.... Does anyone realize how difficult it would be to drop a 500 lb bomb from a moving plane onto - or next to - a moving tank????

Think about it - there are no digital pointers, and you can't fly too low, or slow....

That would have to be some damn good flying!

Oh, and fishfry is a muckadoo.

Hey Underscore Jon: Several methods were used. Low level bombing (a bit above treetop level) could easily deliver a 500lb to a tank sized target. Anything bigger would have caught the plane in the blast. However, the P-38 was frequently used to divebomb it's targets. Real easy to hit a target that way. Problem was, the first models tended to keep flying straight towards the ground until they penetrated it somewhat. At high speeds, the P-38 lost airflow across the control surfaces (no elevator, no pulling out of the dive.) The solution was to add a big honkin' airbrake - and soon thereafter it became one of the most devastating birds in the air - in Europe AND the Pacific. Not a shabby interceptor either. Remember, it was a P-38 that shot down Yamoto's plane.

My great uncle tells of his time with the 45th Infantry Division moving north through Italy. Walking along a road with trees on either side, suddenly a P-38 comes flying down the road - knife-edge - wingtip about 3 feet off the ground. As the infantry are diving into the muddy ditches, the pilot pulls up into a victory roll as he barely dodges several rounds fired from the platoon's M1 Garands. Apparently this was not too uncommon.

At the close of our weekly Boy Scout meetings, we say " And now may the great Master of all good Scouts, be with us, and all our uniformed soldiers, until we meet again." Our Scoutmaster recently returned from a tour in Afghanistan and one of our recent Eagle Scouts has returned from Iraq and Saudi Arabia. People like fishfry just don't get what our children understand. Semper Fi John and May God Bless.

Re: How many terrorists are left.

Very unfortunately they seem to be multiplying pretty fast. It is a known unknown that we do not know whether we are killing them faster than they get recruited or vice versa. I am quite confident that our sticking a hot pocker up Arab ass in Iraq caused a huge swell in their ranks. I think there are actually now more terrorist grunts that there were before, ever. I still think we will prevail. They are dumb as manure. The main thing is to kill and continue killing their leadership.

This state of affairs may be the status quo for generations to come.

Maybe all the dictators in the Arab world are passing out airline tickets to their unemployed to head out to Iraq. Since you seem to think that poverty causes terrorism and the poverty level is generally set at about 30%, figure that we will have to kill 30% of the Arabs, then throw in a couple of Brits, some French, and an Aussie or two, with the odd American and that will be the number we have to kill, of course if we wound some bad then they will hate us but won't be able to do anything about it. Until the Iraqi economy kicks off there will be potentially more terrorists. But most Iraqis aren't stupid, dead men don't get to booze and whore around with their Saudi buddies in Bahrain. There is a finite number of crazy people in the world or Israel would be gone by now.

"There is a finite number of crazy people in the world or Israel would be gone by now."

Dude, you have been eating crack with a SPOON. I'm not arguing with the finite number thing.

# of crazy people ≤ # of people < infinity

But your statement re: the destruction of Israel is right out of Magic Fantasy Land™.

Try this instead:

"There are a lot of Israelis with great restraint, or the Muslim world would be gone by now."

beo, you're uncle was in the 45th ID in Italy? My husband is currently in the 45th, in afghanistan. He's always trying to hunt down historical bits about the 45th. anyhoo, I just think that's cool.

"There were no ties between Iraq and Al Queda!"

"There were no ties between Iraq and Al Queda!"

"Yo Quiero Taco Bell!"

Oh, wait, back to "There were no ties between Iraq and Al Queda!": Um, so why was a high-ranking member of Al-Queda found in Baghdad after it fell? Why did troops find terrorist training facilities, including numerous pre-made suicide bomber vests? Also, one of the members of the group that bombed the WTC in 1993 hid in Iraq... How many more ties do you need?

Maggie - yes he was, but he didn't tell too many stories about it. That was one of the few. Another one was about when they wanted him to reenlist. He told them "I'll reenlist if you can get me the same exact rifle I had when we first deployed to Italy." They said, "where did you have it last?" "Well, the last time I saw it was after an artillery blast, and it went flying down a hill into a ravine filled with mud." It's probably still there, somewhere in the north of Italy. The Italian campaign was probably one of the toughest, messiest campaigns of the war, and a lot of the guys who fought there tend to keep most of what happened to themselves, it seems.

Here is a site for you to check out, http://www.45thdivisionmuseum.com/

beo, I've been there once when my better half was in a color guard for something. memorial day? I'm terrible about those kinds of things. Needless to say he's very proud to be part of the 45th and the history that goes with it.

Just a note on the P-38 story:

The standard Allied method of strafing in WWII was to come in on a tank's flank and fire cannon rounds (the P-38 was cannon-equipped) at the ground just short of the tank. The rounds would then ricochet back up to the underside of the tank, which was unarmored. The resulting devastation would take out the crew and the controls. You can actually see this method in almost all gun camera footage from the war. I've never heard of flipping a tank over intentionally, but it would have to be a b%$ch to pull off since the bombs weren't very accurate.

JR - that probably worked well against Panzer IV's - but not likely against Tigers.

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