20 May 21
“First, they’ll tell you that it will never work, and they can prove it.
Then, they’ll admit it does work, but they’ll argue that it is not important.
Finally, they concede that it is important, but then insist that they’ve know about it for years!”
Kettering
In the years following the conclusion of WWI, it was obvious to observant war planners, who were actually involved in the fighting, that:
Battleships were obsolete.
Water-cooled machineguns were obsolete.
Bolt-action rifles were obsolete
Horse-drawn logistics was obsolete
War-winning technologies of the next world-wide configuration were going to be:
Tanks and “maneuver warfare”
Submarines
Support/attack aircraft
Aircraft carriers
Light machineguns
Autoloading rifles
Mechanized logistics
Of course, each obsolete technology (particularly battleships) enjoyed an entrenched following, and the “party-line” in the West, promoted by desk-bound bureaucrats (in politics and the military), who had never been close to any real fighting, was that there would be no more war at all, certainly not another “World War!”
WWI was the “last world war” there would ever be!
And, the Officer Corps knew that all who spoke-out in deviation from this party-line could forget their next promotion!
So, in a comical imitation of “The King’s New Cloths,” everyone pretended not to see what was menacingly playing-out, right in front of them!
One must recall the lone and fearless voice of WWI war hero, General Billy Mitchell. He said publically that we have to stop squandering billions on obsolete battleships, and start building modern aircraft, aircraft carriers, and submarines, maybe even a torpedo that actually worked (the ones we had didn’t)!
As early as 1925, he boldly predicted that Japanese would attack the US fleet at Pearl Harbor, at dawn, on a Sunday morning, using naval air power.
The horrified “Army War-Plans Division” immediately and contemptuously dismissed Mitchell, and his ominous forecast, as “exaggerated” and “unsound.”
Mitchell was straightaway court-martialed and forced to resign from the Army for his “politically incorrect” predictions, and died at the age of fifty-six (1936), a broken man.
This, despite the fact that Mitchell had incontrovertibly proven his point when his aircraft bombed and instantly sank the captured and “unsinkable” German Battleship, “Ostfriesland,” during a demonstration in June of 1921, irrespective of the Navy’s best efforts to rig the test!
In a cynical effort to erase Mitchell’s memory, the Navy’s arrogant “Battleship Fraternity” even included a sparkling photo of the US Battleship, Arizona, in the printed program for the Army-Navy football game of 29 Nov 1941.
The caption read:
“… and it is significant that, despite claims of air enthusiasts, no battleship has ever been sunk by bombs”
(They had apparently forgotten the Ostfriesland!)
Exactly eight days later (on a Sunday morning), carrier-based Japanese aircraft bombed and sank the Arizona, at its moorings, at Pearl Harbor, where it remains to this day!
Of course, after Mitchell (now five-years deceased) was thus spectacularly vindicated, they solemnly named a US bomber after him (B25), named an airport after him (MKE, Mitchell Field in Milwaukee, WI), and even, in 1955, made a feature film about him and the injustice he endured (“The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell,” staring Gary Cooper).
As with John Boyd (OODA Loop), Issac Newton Lewis (Lewis Machinegun), and host of other visionary/geniuses (for whom diplomacy was admittedly never a specialty), Mitchell was reviled, denigrated, and hated while alive, and subsequently hailed and revered as a national hero, once safely in his grave!
We see this identical treachery playing-out today with the abrupt dismissal of Lt/Col Matthew Lohmeier, who had the audacity to speak-out against the pervasive Marxism that is so enthusiastically embraced by the JRB Administration.
In Western Civilization, it is a pattern!
“Always believe and act as if it were impossible to fail.”
Kettering, again
… but don’t expect to be recognized, much less thanked, during your lifetime!
/John
