There's this book by a Wall Street Journal reporter, called "Wrong About Japan"--and in one sequence, he asks the creator of Godzilla (a monster created by a nuclear accident/testing, who rolls around destroying...Japanese cities, even if inadvertently)---about it's relationship to WW-II and being the target of nuclear weapons...and the Japanese creator flat out denies it. Says the West doesn't understand that Godzilla is actually about bureaucracy.

What a special and odd place.

oh cool!

What I like is the harkening backwards.
The plastic matrix with the granite chips was the answer to the WW II problem of armor plating merchant ships against strafing. Neat to see it re-emerge

A WW-II fleet's biggest problem was scouting and target acquisition. As a scouting solution, this was possible and plausible---but once the Japanese were on the defensive, they had other needs. You can tell how dead end this was by the fact that no other navy followed up on it after the war.

And I'm totally unaware of any scenario under which an aircraft smoke screen was ever used in exactly this way. By vague report, aircraft generated smoke screens might have been part of the landings at Iwo Jima (ineffective---and I'm not sure about this) and the Philippines in WW-II (can't find a reference for this). In terms of aid from a fleet's own aircraft, the closest I can think of is the distraction and cover attacks of Taffy 1, 2, and 3's disparate air craft at the Battle of Leyte Gulf---but they didn't drop a smoke screen---they just attacked Kurita's battleship task force while the destroyer escorts made their runs until Kurita's nerve broke and he turned.

Would have been laid by a fleet's float planes or limited basic carrier aircraft (like---very basic, pre WW II) to mask your own ships under scenarios such as 1) A turn away from an enemy fleet that had concentrated its salvoed big gun fire successfully against you, perhaps by crossing your "T" (1/2 your guns agains all of his--run away!) or 2) to mask the approach of your surface torpedo carriers, the destroyers and destroyer escorts, to close as fast as possible on the enemy's battle line before popping through the curtain and firing some of their torpedoes before popping back into cover and moving to another location and then firing more torpedoes (torpedoes were the ship killers of the small ships of the fleet and the only thing battleships had to fear from destroyers and destroyer escorts/torpedo boats)

reminds me of the front-of-tank WW-II mine roller technology!
I love it!

I think the idea was to extract OSS agents from the occupied countries of Europe during WW-II...

Or, more amusingly, captured German officers for interrogation.
No idea if it ever worked as intended.

In WW II they had Sherman tanks with a motorized cylinder sticking over the front on two booms, on the cylinder were welded dozens of chains so it would thump the ground as the tank rolled forward, hopefully detonating any mines before the vehicle got there.

Now they do this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eeaou2L2sI

None of it is considered 'cleared' it's just as good as you can get it if you have to travel through that zone. The only way to actually clear a minefield is the very slow and tedious approach.

That's why there have been so many pushes to restrict mine warfare in the past twenty years or so. Once they're out there it's really difficult to get them back safely.

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>> ^longde:
I love the sentiment, but feel this is a little revisionist. The GIs in WWII fought for alot of things but, unfortunately, equality for gays and lesbians and for minorities were not among them.


THIS GI certainly DID fight for equality.

Surely it is sensible to qualify your "statement" with that?

>> ^honkeytonk73:
I agree with everything he says.. except for.. "equal rights is what this country was started for..".
The USA was not started for 'equal rights'


Equal rights among citizens.

In reply to this comment by Opus_Moderandi:
It's not about being sensitive. Normally I don't care so much about this sort of thing, but it's getting annoying how much people manipulate titles to try to pull in views. Whether she's cute or not; and I happen to think she's a bit ugly; has nothing to do with this video. This is a talented duo performing a song. The video ought to be able to stand on that.


if people base video popularity merely on the video's title, why is "Philip: 86 year old Rep and WW II vet speaks about equality" at #3... ?

^Opus, I apologize! I did not mean to downvote your comment at all. I was actually downvoting the quoted part of it before I realized that you were addressing it, and for that I should have upvoted because I agree with your sentiment. Very very sorry!

It's not about being sensitive. Normally I don't care so much about this sort of thing, but it's getting annoying how much people manipulate titles to try to pull in views. Whether she's cute or not; and I happen to think she's a bit ugly; has nothing to do with this video. This is a talented duo performing a song. The video ought to be able to stand on that.


if people base video popularity merely on the video's title, why is "Philip: 86 year old Rep and WW II vet speaks about equality" at #3... ?

Your video, Philip: 86 year old Rep and WW II vet speaks about equality., has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Bush's diplomatic ineptitude in dealing with Palestine has created the conditions for Hamas to come to power. They are a terrorist faction and Israel needs to defend themselves. I hate to pin yet another failure on Bush -- with such a disastrous laundry list of FAILURES connected to him as it is -- but the fact of the matter is, the U.S. serves a diplomatic role for Israel in the Middle East and Bush's staunch pro-Israel / anti-Palestine position these past eight years has functioned, primarily, as a yet another example of black-and-white thinking which characterize most of the failures during his administration.

Oh, and Pat Buchanan failed to mention the concentration camp the U.S. maintained with the Japanese during WW II.