In order to participate in the GunBroker Member forums, you must be logged in with your GunBroker.com account. Click the sign-in button at the top right of the forums page to get connected.
A supposed RAdm's take on Kerry....
greeker375
Member Posts: 3,644
It's not that I believe any of this political propaganda, its' just that I dislike Kerry...mu gut tells me he's as phony as a 3 dollar bill.
Greeker
A retired Rear Admiral's take on Kerry's four months in Viet Nam.
This guy seems to have a bit of practical knowledge on the subject, and some valid concerns.
The following e-mail was forwarded to me by a friend of Paul Galanti. Galanti was in the Hanoi Hilton for almost seven years, and was the Virginia chair of John McCain's presidential campaign (nobody's perfect).
The email is actually from him, but he credits the contents to a retired Rear Admiral who was assigned to the same duty as Kerry:
Here's a long one sent to me by a USNA '51 retired RADM (and POW) quoting a '59 RADM retired:
I was in the Delta shortly after he left. I know that area well. I know the operations he was involved in well. I know the tactics and the doctrine used. I know the equipment. Although I was attached to CTF-116 (PBRs) I spent a fair amount of time with CTF-115 (swift boats), Kerry's command.
Here are my problems and suspicions:
(1) Kerry was in-country less than four months and collected, a Bronze Star, a Silver Star and three purple hearts. I never heard of anybody with any outfit I worked with (including SEAL One, the Sea Wolves, Riverines and the River Patrol Force) collecting that much hardware so fast, and for such pedestrian actions. The Swifts did a commendable job. But that duty wasn't the worst you could draw. They operated only along the coast and in the major rivers (Bassac and Mekong). The rough stuff in the hot areas was mainly handled by the smaller, faster PBRs.
(2) Three Purple Hearts but no limp. All injuries so minor that no time lost from duty. Amazing luck. Or he was putting himself in for medals every time he bumped his head on the wheel house hatch? Combat on the boats was almost always at close range. You didn't have minor wounds. At least not often. Not three times in a row. Then he used the three purple hearts to request a trip home eight months before the end of his tour. Fishy.
(3) The details of the event for which he was given the Silver Star make no sense at all. Supposedly, a B-40 was fired at the boat and missed. Charlie jumps up with the launcher in his hand, the bow gunner knocks him down with the twin .50, Kerry beaches the boat, jumps off, shoots Charlie, and retrieves the launcher. If true, he did everything wrong.
- - -(a)Standard procedure when you took rocket fire was to put your stern to the action and go balls to the wall. A B-40 has the ballistic integrity of a frisbie after about 25 yards, so you put 50 yards or so between you and the beach and begin raking it with your .50's.
- - -(b)Did you ever see anybody get knocked down with a .50 caliber round and get up? The guy was dead or dying. The rocket launcher was empty. There was no reason to go after him (except if you knew he was no danger to you just flopping around in the dust during his last few seconds on earth, and you wanted some derring do in your after-action report). And we didn't shoot wounded people. We had rules against that, too.
- - -(c)Kerry got off the boat. This was a major breach of standing procedures. Nobody on a boat crew ever got off a boat in a hot area. EVER! The reason was simple. If you had somebody on the beach your boat was defenseless. It coudn't run and it couldn' t return fire. It was stupid and it put his crew in danger. He should have been relieved and reprimanded. I never heard of any boat crewman ever leaving a boat during or after a firefight.
Something is fishy.
Here we have a JFK wannabe (the guy Halsey wanted to court martial for carelessly losing his boat and getting a couple people killed by running across the bow of a Jap destroyer) who is hardly in Vietnam long enough to get good tan, collects medals faster than Audie Murphy in a job where lots of medals weren't common, gets sent home eight months early, requests separation from active duty a few months after that so he can run for Congress, finds out war heros don't sell well in Massachsetts in 1970 so reinvents himself as Jane Fonda, throws his ribbons in the dirt with the cameras running to jump start his political career, gets Stillborn Pell to invite him to address Congress and Bobby Kennedy's speechwriter to do the heavy lifting, winds up in the Senate himself a few years later, votes against every major defense bill, says the CIA is irrelevant after the Wall came down, votes against the Gulf War, a big mistake since that turned out well, decides not to make the same mistake twice.
I'm real glad you or I never had this guy covering out flanks in Vietnam. I sure don't want him as Commander in Chief. I hope that somebody from CTF-115 shows up with some facts challenging Kerry's Vietnam record. I know in my gut it's wildy inflated. And fishy.
"the difference between the almost right word and the right word is like the difference between a lightning bug and a lightning bolt" - Mark Twain.
Greeker
A retired Rear Admiral's take on Kerry's four months in Viet Nam.
This guy seems to have a bit of practical knowledge on the subject, and some valid concerns.
The following e-mail was forwarded to me by a friend of Paul Galanti. Galanti was in the Hanoi Hilton for almost seven years, and was the Virginia chair of John McCain's presidential campaign (nobody's perfect).
The email is actually from him, but he credits the contents to a retired Rear Admiral who was assigned to the same duty as Kerry:
Here's a long one sent to me by a USNA '51 retired RADM (and POW) quoting a '59 RADM retired:
I was in the Delta shortly after he left. I know that area well. I know the operations he was involved in well. I know the tactics and the doctrine used. I know the equipment. Although I was attached to CTF-116 (PBRs) I spent a fair amount of time with CTF-115 (swift boats), Kerry's command.
Here are my problems and suspicions:
(1) Kerry was in-country less than four months and collected, a Bronze Star, a Silver Star and three purple hearts. I never heard of anybody with any outfit I worked with (including SEAL One, the Sea Wolves, Riverines and the River Patrol Force) collecting that much hardware so fast, and for such pedestrian actions. The Swifts did a commendable job. But that duty wasn't the worst you could draw. They operated only along the coast and in the major rivers (Bassac and Mekong). The rough stuff in the hot areas was mainly handled by the smaller, faster PBRs.
(2) Three Purple Hearts but no limp. All injuries so minor that no time lost from duty. Amazing luck. Or he was putting himself in for medals every time he bumped his head on the wheel house hatch? Combat on the boats was almost always at close range. You didn't have minor wounds. At least not often. Not three times in a row. Then he used the three purple hearts to request a trip home eight months before the end of his tour. Fishy.
(3) The details of the event for which he was given the Silver Star make no sense at all. Supposedly, a B-40 was fired at the boat and missed. Charlie jumps up with the launcher in his hand, the bow gunner knocks him down with the twin .50, Kerry beaches the boat, jumps off, shoots Charlie, and retrieves the launcher. If true, he did everything wrong.
- - -(a)Standard procedure when you took rocket fire was to put your stern to the action and go balls to the wall. A B-40 has the ballistic integrity of a frisbie after about 25 yards, so you put 50 yards or so between you and the beach and begin raking it with your .50's.
- - -(b)Did you ever see anybody get knocked down with a .50 caliber round and get up? The guy was dead or dying. The rocket launcher was empty. There was no reason to go after him (except if you knew he was no danger to you just flopping around in the dust during his last few seconds on earth, and you wanted some derring do in your after-action report). And we didn't shoot wounded people. We had rules against that, too.
- - -(c)Kerry got off the boat. This was a major breach of standing procedures. Nobody on a boat crew ever got off a boat in a hot area. EVER! The reason was simple. If you had somebody on the beach your boat was defenseless. It coudn't run and it couldn' t return fire. It was stupid and it put his crew in danger. He should have been relieved and reprimanded. I never heard of any boat crewman ever leaving a boat during or after a firefight.
Something is fishy.
Here we have a JFK wannabe (the guy Halsey wanted to court martial for carelessly losing his boat and getting a couple people killed by running across the bow of a Jap destroyer) who is hardly in Vietnam long enough to get good tan, collects medals faster than Audie Murphy in a job where lots of medals weren't common, gets sent home eight months early, requests separation from active duty a few months after that so he can run for Congress, finds out war heros don't sell well in Massachsetts in 1970 so reinvents himself as Jane Fonda, throws his ribbons in the dirt with the cameras running to jump start his political career, gets Stillborn Pell to invite him to address Congress and Bobby Kennedy's speechwriter to do the heavy lifting, winds up in the Senate himself a few years later, votes against every major defense bill, says the CIA is irrelevant after the Wall came down, votes against the Gulf War, a big mistake since that turned out well, decides not to make the same mistake twice.
I'm real glad you or I never had this guy covering out flanks in Vietnam. I sure don't want him as Commander in Chief. I hope that somebody from CTF-115 shows up with some facts challenging Kerry's Vietnam record. I know in my gut it's wildy inflated. And fishy.
"the difference between the almost right word and the right word is like the difference between a lightning bug and a lightning bolt" - Mark Twain.
Comments
This RAdm sounds as though he knows what he's talking about. Of course it could be just my eagerness to believe anything negative about Kerry.
I loved the line: "....re-invented himself as Jane Fonda."[:D]
Kerry found his "Band of Brothers" (Damn I hate that reference.)
I'm sure the Bush campaign can find some of the guys from Kerry's boat.
After all, if Rumsfeld can't find 'em, nobody can.[;)]
Mudge the vicious
I can't come to work today. The voices said, STAY HOME AND CLEAN THE GUNS!<BR>
shouldn't be long before it is covered by the right.
Hannity or wild Bill need to see it.
"There is nothing lower than the human race - except the French." (Mark Twain) ". . . And DemoCraps" (me)
There is always one more imbecile than you counted on.
Hypocrisy is the homage paid by vice to virtue.
Don't assume malice for what stupidity can explain.
Dubya's Wing Men
The lessons of Vietnam were different for Bush and Kerry.
Why are the president's supporters so defensive whenever the President Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard comes up? Does the fact that John Kerry fought in Vietnam, and George Bush didn't, make Kerry a better wartime leader?
Some of the hyper-libs are saying that Bush's service in the 111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron was the equivalent of draft dodging. They're also saying - and the too willing media are buying - the idea that Senator Kerry's combat experience would have to make him a better wartime president than Bush. Both points are false. The real issue is what did each of them learn in the Vietnam days, and how those lessons shape their present-day thinking.
First, let's dispense with the idea that Bush was some sort of chicken hawk, hiding in the National Guard while others risked their lives. According to four of the pilots who flew with him, then-Lieutenant George W. Bush was a better-than-average pilot who did a dangerous job very well.
If all you know about flying fighters was learned watching Tom Cruise in Top Gun, you can be forgiven for thinking it's nothing but reckless fun, hard drinking, and a steady stream of beautiful girls. (That's only what the jet jocks want you to believe). The reality is that it's a hazardous business that will kill you - long before any enemy gets the chance to - if you aren't up to the job. My college roommate, retired Air Force Colonel Ed Atkins, flew fighters for 20 years. Ed told me, "Anybody who thinks that flying fighters is not exhausting physically, demanding intellectually, and tough emotionally just has no clue about the complexity of air combat." He added, "I've flown check rides as everything from a second lieutenant to a colonel. The [flight examiner] doesn't give a damn if your dad was George H.W. Bush, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Jesus or Moses. The only question is, 'can you hack the mission?'" And it's harder to do in some aircraft than others. Dubya had the right stuff.
Retired Col. Bill Campenni was one of President Bush's squadron mates. The Texas ANG had the F-102, and probably wished it didn't. According to Campenni, "The F-102 was underpowered and, unlike modern fighters, had a split front view through the canopy. It literally had a bar down the center, so you'd have one eye on each side of the bar. It also had a built in altimeter error of up to 500 feet, which made it interesting when you were at 500 feet out over the ocean at night." Flying and training in the '102 was a dangerous job that required a lot of smarts and flying skill.
Bob Harmon is another of Bush's former squadron mates. At the time, Harmon was an instructor pilot. He remembers Bush as a "young, affable guy" and an above-average pilot, very good for his level of experience. "We flew together two or three times a month." It was dangerous duty. Harmon said that a couple of pilots were killed in F-102 accidents while Bush was there.
The first American jet fighters to be deployed to Vietnam were F-102s of the 509th Fighter Interceptor Squadron. When Lt. Bush signed up for fighters and joined the 111th FIS, he stood ready to deploy to Vietnam, as did every other Air National Guard pilot. In fact, he tried to volunteer for Vietnam.
Of the four pilots I spoke to who flew with Bush in the Texas days, Fred Bradley knew him best. They had met before going off to the year-long ordeal of pilot school, and entered the 111th at about the same time. Both were junior lieutenants without a lot of flying experience. But the inexperience didn't prevent Bush - along with Bradley - from going to their squadron leaders to see if they could get into a program called "Palace Alert." "There were four of us lieutenants at the time, and we were all fairly close. Two of them had more flight time than the president and me, said Bradley." All four volunteered for Vietnam (Bradley doesn't remember whether he and Bush actually signed paperwork, but he specifically remembers both Bush and himself trying to get into the Palace Alert Vietnam program.) Bush and Bradley were turned away, and the two more senior pilots went to Vietnam.
Joe Glavin, another member of Dubya's squadron said, "There were always a core of the guys who were the "in guys" and [Bush] was in the middle of it...George's difference was that we all knew that his daddy was rich and that he was smarter than the rest of us." Smarter? "I don't understand where [people saying Dubya is a dummy] comes from." Glavin explained that because their squadron was an active duty squadron, they always had two aircraft - armed and fueled - standing on the taxiway on what is called "plus five" alert. From the time the horn blows, until the time the aircraft was wheels-up on takeoff had to be five minutes or less.
Glavin said, "When we had to sit alerts, there were two pilots, and two crew chiefs that sat out in the alert barn. George was like everybody else, except while George was over in a corner reading somebody's autobiography, the rest of us were watching Hee Haw."
Glavin remembers Bush as a pilot who had learned good judgment, not a Hollywood hot dog. He told me of one night when the two were on alert and were scrambled to run a practice intercept over the Gulf of Mexico. Bush went out long and high, and turned back at supersonic speed. Glavin also went supersonic and then his radio failed. At that point, the two F-102s were approaching each other at a combined speed of about 1,800 miles an hour. At 20 miles - about 45 seconds before the paths would cross - Bush broke off the intercept. "We went to debrief with the controller and the controller said to George, why'd you break off the intercept? George said something to the effect of '[here] we're coming at each other at 1,800 miles an hour and he doesn't have a radio and you expect me to just sit there?' He said, 'we're not doin' that.'"
When you fly fighters with any squadron, you're literally betting your life on your pals' flying skills, just as they are betting it all on yours. Bush's old squadron-mates have the same confidence in him now they had when they flew with him. Bradley said, "I've always thought he was an intelligent, likeable, level-headed person." According to Glavin, "George was a smart man, an excellent pilot, and I'd fly with him again tomorrow, and I will vote for him in November." Which is about as high as praise gets among the jet jocks.
The media - by focusing only on Kerry's Vietnam service and Bush's lack of combat time - is blowing a smokescreen to cover a far more important issue than who served where and when. In the 2004 election, we're not choosing someone to pick up a gun and go at the enemy himself. We're choosing someone who can lead the nation in time of war.
Kerry is a puzzle: once a warrior, now distrustful of his nation's power and position in the world. He had a soda-straw-wide view of a war that Americans still don't agree should have been fought. He came back from it to condemn the war and those who fought it even though some were still being beaten and tortured in North Vietnamese prison camps. He abandoned them for the company of Hanoi Jane to propel himself into politics. Cong. Sam Johnson, who was held prisoner by the North Vietnamese for seven years, was asked about the picture of Kerry sitting near Jane Fonda at an antiwar demonstration. He told the Washington Times, "Seeing this picture of Kerry with her at antiwar demonstrations in the United States just makes me want to throw up." There is no such revulsion of George Bush among the best of judges: the Vietnam-era military, and those who now go in harm's way.
The distrust and doubt Kerry learned in Vietnam now colors everything he sees. When John Kerry looks at terrorism he sees a threat we can deal with without going to war. In the Middle East he sees only a Vietnam-like quagmire. Kerry doesn't believe America can win this war, and lacks the confidence in America to lead it through the conflict.
President Bush is no combat hero, but he served bravely and well in the Vietnam era. His service gave him confidence in his nation and its motives that John Kerry lacks. What Bush has and Kerry doesn't is the critical difference in character between a president who can lead a nation through a war, and one who cannot.
***KATN!***
A job made less dangerous by the fact that NVA anti-aircraft wasn't opening up on him.
And to my recollection, the military wasn't turning away volunteers for combat duty at the time. If GW Bush had wanted to, he could have seen combat like Kerry or McCain. Instead he sat back and is now asking others to do what he himself was supremely UNWILLING to do.
He may have flown (an inherently dangerous activity, I know), but he always had a safe strip to land on and no hostiles to watch out for.
And please, don't denigrate the memories of the fliers who flew, fought, and died in Vietnam by equating Bush's easy duty with what they went through. Flying's dangerous, but it's not that dangerous and certainly not as dangerous as flying bombing missions over Hanoi.
***KATN!***
And to my recollection, the military wasn't turning away volunteers for combat duty at the time. Flying's dangerous, but it's not that dangerous...
"To my recollection...???" And we're supposed to take "your recollection" to the bank, huh?
"Flying' dangerous, but it's not that dangerous...????" How many hours do YOU have in combat aircraft? I'd guess several thousand since you feel qualified to make a statement like that.
I don't even know why I read your crap Munkee. You don't know sheet from Shinola.
Lord Lowrider the Loquacious.
Member:Secret Select Society of Suave Stylish Smoking Jackets
She was only a fisherman's daughter,
But when she saw my rod she reeled.
I try to respect all views and all people who post them, but in all honesty, your bias against Bush has completely obscured truth and reason in your posts. You cannot admit anything that is good or right about the man. At this point, I have to stop taking you seriously. I wish you could be more honest in your postings rather than the "if it's Bush, it's bad" attitude you present.
Sorry friend. I hope it's just election year passion rather than democratic brain washing.
How you doin'!
Then said he unto them, But now, he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip: And he that hath no sword,let him sell his garment, and buy one