Airborne Forces Quotes

Once again, airborne forces appeared to be coins burning a hole in the pockets of Allied commanders, coins that simply had to be spent. Soldiers soon mocked the operation as VARSITY BLUNDER, and burial squads with pruning saws and ladders took two days to cut down all the dead.

There is a feeling that the proposed plans for the employment of the airborne troops in the coming operations lack vision and boldness. As General [William] Butler [of the Army Air Force] put it, ‘It is like having Michelangelo paint a barn.

The Royal Navy had deployed a large surface task force 8,000 miles from home without effective protection from air attack. Listening to false prophets, they had retired their large aircraft carriers as obsolete, depriving the fleet of airborne early warning and supersonic interceptors. To save money they had not funded the installation of existing cruise missile defenses nor made the investment in three-dimensional air defense radars for their ships. Now they began to pay a mounting price in blood and treasure.

sit on a man’s back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means—except by getting off his back.”[1] True then and there, and true now and here. There is so much poverty in this land not in spite of our wealth but because of it. Which is to say, it’s not about them. It’s about us. “It is really so simple,” Tolstoy wrote. “If I want to aid the poor, that is, to help the poor not to be poor, I ought not to make them poor.”[2] How do we, today, make the poor in America poor? In at least three ways. First, we exploit them. We constrain their choice and power in the labor market, the housing market, and the financial market, driving down wages while forcing the poor to overpay for housing and access to cash and credit. Those of us who are not poor benefit from these arrangements. Corporations benefit from worker exploitation, sure, but so do consumers who buy the cheap goods and services the working poor produce, and so do those of us directly or indirectly invested in the stock market. Landlords are not the only ones who benefit from housing exploitation; many homeowners do, too, their property values propped up by the collective effort to make housing scarce and expensive. The banking and payday lending industries profit from the financial exploitation of the poor, but so do those of us with free checking accounts at Bank of America or Wells Fargo, as those accounts are subsidized by billions of dollars in overdraft fees.[3] If we burn coal, we get electricity, but we get sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide and other airborne toxins, too. We can’t have the electricity without producing the pollution. Opulence in America works the same way. Someone bears the cost.

And I was thinking, Oh man, so this is a rice paddy, yes, wow! when I suddenly heard an electric guitar shooting right up in my ear and a mean, rapturous black voice singing, coaxing, 'Now c'mon baby, stop actin' so crazy,' and when I got it all together I turned to see a grinning black corporal hunched over a cassette recorder. 'Might's well,' he said. 'We ain' goin' nowhere till them gunships come.' ¶ That's the story of the first time I ever heard Jimi Hendrix, but in a war where a lot of people talked about Aretha's 'Satisfaction' the way other people speak of Brahms' Fourth, it was more than a story; it was Credentials. 'Say, that Jimi Hendrix is my main man,' someone would say. 'He has definitely got his shit together!' Hendrix had once been in the 101st Airborne, and the Airborne in Vietnam was full of wiggy-brilliant spades like him, really mean and really good, guys who always took care of you when things got bad. That music meant a lot to them. I never once heard it played over the Armed Forces Radio Network.

You can think of the snatch as a clean to the point above your head. Do not even think about taking it on until you have mastered one arm swings and cleans! Stand over a kettlebell, your feet about shoulder width apart, your weight on your heels. Inhale, arch your back, push your butt back, and bend your knees. Reach for the bell with one hand, the arm straight, while keeping the other arm away from your body (initially you may help yourself by pushing with the free hand against your thigh but it is considered ‘no class’ by most gireviks). Swing the bell back and whip it straight overhead in one clean movement. Note that the pulling arm will bend and your body will shift to the side opposite to the weight. But you do not need to worry about trying to do it that way; just pull straight up and your body will find an efficient path in a short while. Do not lift with your arm, but rather with your hips. Project the force straight up, rather than back—as in a jump. You may end up airborne or at least on your toes. It is OK as long as you roll back on your heels by the time the bell comes down. Dip under the K-bell as it is flipping over the wrist. Absorb the shock the same way you did for cleans. Fix the weight overhead, in the press behind the neck position for a second, then let it free fall between your legs as you are dropping into a half squat. Keep the girya near your body when it comes down. As an option, lower the bell to your shoulder before dropping it between the legs. Ease into the one arm power snatch because even a hardcore deadlifter’s hamstrings and palms are guaranteed to take a beating. Especially if your kettlebells are rusty like the ones I trained with at the ‘courage corner’. It was a long time after my discharge before my palms finally lost their rust speckled calluses. Unlike the deadlift, the kettlebell snatch does not impose prohibitively strict requirements on spinal alignment and hamstring flexibility. If you are deadlifting with a humped over back you are generally asking for trouble; KB snatches let you get away with a slightly flexed spine. It is probably due to the fact that your connective tissues absorb shock more effectively when loaded rapidly. Your ligaments have wavy structures. A ballistic shock—as long as it is of a reasonable magnitude—is absorbed by these ‘waves’, which straighten out like springs.

Everybody knew that the only way for the United States to get out of Afghanistan was by creating a strong Afghan Army. The 101st called their effort to achieve this shonna ba shonna, translated as “shoulder to shoulder.

The American Airborne Forces had truly lived up to their motto, which was emblazoned in big letters over their camp gates: STRAC, meaning ‘Skilled, Tough and Ready Around the Clock.’ To some wags in the SAS this was interpreted as ‘Shit, The Russians Are Coming!’ However, for many years afterwards in the SAS to be ‘strac’ meant you were ready. [Concerning SAS training at Fort Bragg in 1962.]

Martin K. A. Morgan, wrote in Down to Earth: The 507th Parachute Infantry Regiment in Normandy,

I have been so lucky to lead amazing teams to incredible places: the remote Venezuelan jungles of the “Lost World” in search of Jimmy Angel’s lost gold; or the remote white desert that is Antarctica to climb unclimbed peaks. (I managed to break my shoulder in a fall on that trip, but you can’t win them all!) Then we returned to the Himalayas, where my buddy Gilo and I flew powered paragliders to above the height of Everest. Once again, we were raising funds for the charity Global Angels, an extraordinary charity that champions the most needy kids around the world. But the flight itself was a mission that so nearly had fatal consequences. All the aviation and cold-weather experts predicted almost certain disaster; from frozen parachutes to uncontrollable hurricane-force winds, from impossible takeoffs to bone-breaking landings--and that was before they even contemplated whether a small one-man machine could even be designed to be powerful enough to fly that high. And if we could, it certainly then would not be possible to lift it on to our backs. But we pulled it off: Gilo designed and built the most powerful, supercharged, fuel-injected, one-man powered paraglider engine in history, and by the grace of God we somehow got airborne with these monsters on our backs. Some blessed weather and some ball-twitching flying, and we proved the skeptics wrong--even, at the end, landing effortlessly at the foot of the Everest range, nimbly on two feet, like twinkle-toes. Mission complete.

disrupted by the electromagnetic pulse of a nuclear weapon. If Green Pine was knocked out, SAC brought online in October 1967 the first of twelve Emergency Rocket Communication Systems (ERCS) at Missouri’s Whiteman Air Force Base. Instead of a warhead, the special ERCS Minuteman missiles contained a powerful UHF transmitter that would broadcast launch orders to U.S. forces along the missile’s trajectory, creating, in effect, a high-flying radio broadcasting tower. The launch capsules of the 510th were retrofitted with large, floor-mounted telephone consoles that the crews quickly dubbed “knee knockers,” since they hit their knees on it whenever turning their chairs. With the arrival of ERCS, the very last remnants of the U.S. government in a nuclear war would have likely been the voices of the missileers of Whiteman’s 510th Missile Squadron. In an emergency, the crews would use the console to record launch orders onto the ERCS transmitter (the airborne command posts could record an Emergency Action Message remotely). Then either the capsule crew or an airborne command post would have launched the missiles, each set on a different trajectory to blast in a different direction. For thirty minutes after launch, ERCS-equipped Minutemans would broadcast “go codes” to any bomber, submarine, or missile silo along its path, the last communication of a destroyed

. Unable to find a master list of what military assets they could use, NORAD personnel opened phone lists and began to call Air Force and Air National Guard bases across the United States one by one, asking if they had any planes they could get airborne. “There were Guard units I’d never heard of calling asking how they could help. And we said, ‘Yes, take off,’ ” recalls one NEADS technician. By the day’s end, nearly 400 fighters, tankers, and airborne command posts would be keeping watch from the sky, flying out of sixty-nine different sites around the country. Not even the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis had seen such a huge, rapid military buildup. VII. Even inside the agency, communication

The Air Force had a requirement that an EC-135 be airborne with a general officer aboard at all times, with no lapses ever, which translated to three missions of eight-plus hours a day. Remarkably, Looking Glass aircraft were airborne and mission-ready continuously for thirty-one years.

Rather than calling for the white citizens of Little Rock to show Christian love toward the black students, Rice mocked “the wholly selfish and political attitude of the NAACP radical leaders, by socialists and communists, by modernist ‘do-gooders’ who have no other gospel but questions of race and pacifism and labor unions.” He continued:   The nine Negro children were selected by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and on their instructions and to make a public issue.. wholly for political and propaganda purposes…and not for the good of the students themselves, attempted to transfer to Central High School…The Negroes already had a high school equally as good, newer and less crowded…To force integration, President Eisenhower called out units of the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock, who took over somewhat as “occupation troops.” Citizens were barred from certain streets. Some [whites] were clubbed in the head by soldiers. The nine Negro students went to Central High School.[176]

Treatment must respect the feeling of pride the paratrooper has in belonging to the airborne forces. It must be more generous, more circumspect and more comradely than anywhere else. The culture [of the airborne forces] must rest more on mutual trust to one another than on discipline and obedience. I personally made efforts to give the best example.

Whenever I visited the forces, I frequently talked to individual paratroopers and discussed their interests, their personal relationships and concerns. I asked them about their point of view and was happy whenever I received open and honest answers. In that manner, my company and battalion commanders and I brought together the airborne forces to an ever larger family, and it was an exceptionally difficult punishment for a paratrooper whenever he was kicked out of the family and assigned to another arm. To a large extent, this basic attitude was the secret to success for the airborne forces.

Airborne forces employed the first large-scale deception maneuver at exercises held at the Bergen Training Area in July 1939. Oberstleutnant Heidrich had the idea of attaching life-size dolls to parachutes and then dropping them to deceive the enemy. The dolls landed in the rear of an “enemy” combat formation, which promptly turned about to engage the non-breathing enemy.

How Long Will It Take? You can’t blame people for wanting instant results. Time is money, and quickness, especially quick OODA loops, is good. But when it comes to adopting maneuver conflict / Boyd’s principles to your business, there is a lot to be learned and a lot to be done. Consider that: •   According to its principle creator, Taiichi Ohno, it took 28 years (1945-1973) to create and install the Toyota Production System, which is maneuver conflict applied to manufacturing. •   It takes roughly 15 years of experience—and recognition as a leader in one’s technical field—to qualify as a susha (development manager) for a new Toyota vehicle.150 •   Studies of people regarded as the top experts in a number of fields suggest that they practice about four hours a day, virtually every day, for 10 years before they achieve a recognized level of mastery.151 •   It takes a minimum of 8 years beyond a bachelor’s degree to train a surgeon (4 years medical school and 4 or more years of residency.) •   It takes four to six years on the average beyond a bachelor’s degree to complete a Ph.D. •   It takes three years or so to earn a black belt (first degree) in the martial arts and four to six years beyond that to earn third degree, assuming you are in good physical condition to begin with. •   It takes a bare minimum of five years military service to qualify for the Special Forces “Green Beret” (minimum rank of corporal / captain with airborne qualification, then a 1-2 year highly rigorous and selective training program.) •   It takes three years to achieve proficiency as a first level leader in an infantry unit—a squad leader.152 It is no less difficult to learn to fashion an elite, highly competitive company. Yet for some reason, otherwise intelligent people sometimes feel they should be able to attend a three-day seminar and return home experts in maneuver conflict as applied to business. An intensive orientation session may get you started, but successful leaders study their art for years—Patton, Rommel, and Grant were all known for the intensity with which they studied military history and current campaigns. Then-LTC David Hackworth had commanded 10 other units before taking over the 4th Battalion, 39th Infantry in Vietnam in 1969, as he described in Steel My Soldiers’ Hearts. You may also recall the scene in We Were Soldiers where LTC Hal Moore unloaded armfuls of strategy and history books as he was moving into his quarters at Ft. Benning. At that point, he had been in the Army 20 years and had commanded at every level from platoon to battalion.

Special Forces Armed Airborne Ultra Secret Hard Bastards Division (which would have a nickname like the Patriotic Iron Hell-Tigers) he earned the Rusty Bronze Star for Leaping from Planes a Lot

March 5, 2014 – Units of Russia’s 3rd, 10th, 16th, and 22nd Independent Spetsnaz Brigades, the 25th Independent Spetsnaz Regiment, the 45th Independent VDV Spetsnaz Regiment, part of the 31st Independent VDV Airborne Assault Brigade, and small but very capable Special Operations Forces (SOF) units join Russia’s 810th Marines Brigade in Crimea.

German soldiers wearing U.S. uniforms had misdirected U.S. forces, and soon units of the 101st Airborne Division found themselves encircled in a trap at Bastogne in Belgium.

While airborne, we ran exercises to assess our readiness to respond if threatened. We could always respond with catastrophic force. We could never prevent the annihilation of our homeland. No one who'd held the responsibility for deploying nuclear weapons during an exercise could deny that reality. It was this experience that convinced me that neither side would ever intentionally inflict a nuclear attack on the other.

This stretch of road is not where you want to fuck up. You slip on the kozmic banana peel coming down these switchbacks you are suddenly Lost in Space, man. You are Rocky the Flying Squirrel, you are air-borne... You can have eighteen wheel drive and it won't matter, if all those wheels are in the sky. What you don't have is wings, or a parachute, which is what you're going to need if you screw up the distinction between centrifugal and centripetal force on one of these curves.

The pros get airborne on powerful shots precisely because they have connected to the earth so well and created so much power, that the force of their connection combined with their body rotation, weight-transfer and stroke speed lift them up.

villages and Jewish settlements for illegal arms or wanted men; how to throw a cordon round any area before those inside could slip out undetected; how to obviate the use of force unless it was quite unavoidable, and even then to exert only the minimum

At the beach called Utah on the day of the invasion, Lt. Robert Brewer of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, U.S. Army, captured four Asians in Wehrmacht uniforms. No one could speak their language; eventually it was learned that they were Koreans. How on earth did Koreans end up fighting for Hitler to defend France against Americans? It seems they had been conscripted into the Japanese army in 1938—Korea was then a Japanese colony—captured by the Red Army in the border battles with Japan in 1939, forced into the Red Army, captured by the Wehrmacht in December 1941 outside Moscow, forced into the German army, and sent to France.

The Air Force defined a “UFO” as “any airborne object which by performance, aerodynamic characteristics, or unusual features does not conform to any presently known aircraft or missile type, or which cannot be positively identified as a familiar object.

The General remembered his own time aboard ship, how vulnerable he’d felt, how dangerous it had been. A distant part of his consciousness felt sympathy for the American Marines. But gallantry was a luxury the General could not afford. His paratroopers were heavily engaged, and he didn’t need more enemy troops and heavy equipment—of course! His division was deployed to keep the Americans away from the Reykjavik-Keflavik area as long as possible. His original orders remained operative: deny the Keflavik Air Base to NATO. That he could do, though it would mean the probable annihilation of his elite troopers. His problem was that Reykjavik airport would be equally useful to the enemy, and one light division wasn’t enough to cover both places. So now the Americans trailed their coats in plain view of his observers—a full regiment of troops plus heavy weapons and helicopters that they could land anywhere they wished. If he redeployed to meet this threat, he risked disaster when he disengaged his forward units. If he moved his reserves, they would be in the open where naval guns and aircraft could massacre them. This unit was being moved, not to join the others deployed against his airborne infantrymen, but to exploit a weakness within minutes instead of hours. Once in place, the landing ships could wait for relative darkness or a storm and race unseen across the water to landbound troops. How could he deploy his own forces to deal with that? His radars were finished, he had a single remaining SAM launcher, and the battleships had systematically exterminated most of his artillery. “How many submarines out there?” “I don’t know, Comrade General.” USS REUBEN JAMES Morris watched the sonar plot. The sonobuoy contact had faded off after a few minutes. A school of herring, perhaps. The ocean waters abounded with fish, and enough of them on active sonar looked like a

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