H&I Fires 13 Feb 06

Open post for those with something to share. New, complete posts come in below this one. Note: If trackbacking, please acknowledge this post in your post. That's only polite. You're advertising here, we should get an ad at your place...

Historical notes that caught my imagination today:

Happy Birthday:

1887 Alvin York, who captured "the whole damned German Army"
1923 Chuck Yeager, the first man to break the sound barrier

Other tidbits:

1692 Scotland: Campbells massacre the MacDonalds on orders of William III. Guess William liked soup, not burgers.
1862 Grant begins siege of Ft Donelson, Tn, which surrenders Feb 16.
1942 Hitler cancels Operation Seeloewe, the proposed invasion of Britain.
1942 US and Canada agree to construct the ALCAN Highway.
1960 France explodes its first atomic bomb, in Algeria. Some Algerians *still* annoyed. At least we blew up our first ones on our own territory - in our equivalent to Metropolitan France.
1945 Allies begin fire-bombing of Dresden, an estimated 50,000 die. Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind. I won't argue whether or not the Dresden raid was a good idea - but I've always been bemused that the Germans get so upset over something that has overtones of "No fair, *we* tried to do that but weren't as good as you, so it's cheating for you to do it." In fact, that kind of outrage simmers under much German apologia regarding WWII - such as "We had such fine infantry and armor, it was no fair that you took your outstanding air support and artillery and refused to close with us. Waaaaaaaah!" There is a curious parallel amongst some of the anti-war crowd in Europe that it's no fair we fought Saddam and the subsequent AIF forces with our hi-tech, low casualty (for us) approach - kinda the international equivalent of Britain's "self-defence" (if you can truly call it that) premise where if you're a 60-year-old lady being mugged by punks, using your umbrella is unfair - if you can't defend yourself in the way you're being attacked, better to just curl up in a ball, and wait for the police. Feh.

Changing gears... Carnival of the Recipes is up at Physics Geek!

I was going to blog this bit about Pappy Boyington not being a good role model for U of Washington students (well, he *was* a Marine...) but I think I'll let a local, Castle Adjutant Barb, do that for me.

Ry asks the question - just what were these Russkies up to? -The Armorer

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Jack shows why he's always got a seat at the Castle bar today. Playing dirty isn't fair play according to Jack, and I think we'd tend to agree (The Murtha conversations). -Ry

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A response to the UW students vs. "Pappy" Boyington memorial issue, from America's Son. Hint - he's a Marine, and currently serving in Iraq.
-Barb

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Les Jones makes a difficult decision - one of a nature that caused a ruckus here at the Castle some months ago. Being the Adult is hard.

The Carnival of Cordite is up!

Gee, what a surprise - you should eat what ya want, just mix it up and watch the volume. -The Armorer.

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*A term of art from the artillery. Harassment and Interdiction Fires.

Back in the day, when you could just kill people and break things without a note from a lawyer, they were pre-planned, but to the enemy, random, fires at known gathering points, road junctions, Main Supply Routes, assembly areas, etc - to keep the bad guy nervous that the world around him might start exploding at any minute.

Not really relevant to today's operating environment, right? But, it *is*

The UAVs we fly over Afghanistan and Pakistan looking for targets of opportunity are a form of H&I fires, if you really want to parse it finely. We just have better sensors and fire control now.

I call the post that because it's random things posted by me and people I've given posting privileges to that particular topic. It's also an open trackback, so if (Don Surber uses it this way a lot) someone has a post they're proud of, but it really isn't either Castle kind of stuff, or topical to a particular post, I've basically given blanket permission to use that post for that purpose. Another term of art that might be appropriate is "Free Fire Zone".

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P*nile Hegemony Alert. - Cass (like you even had to ask)