Bombs Away! The plan is all in attack.

So for my second full day in Washington, Tom offered to take me to the Air and Space Museum. Even though i’m supposed to be a liberal, tree-hugging leftie, I can’t deny that I think planes that drop bombs on people are kind of cool. The rest of this entry will probably interest nobody except those who likewise think big shiny things hanging off the ceiling by metal cables are cool (except, perhaps, if you want to see pictures of the Enola Gay and a Space Shuttle)…

Vought 4DU-1D Corsair. By 1945 these were amassing an 11:1 kill ration in the Pacific Theatre

Curtiss P40-E Kittyhawk

 

Lockheed SR 71A Blackbird. The most formidable spy-plane of the Cold War, this thing flew over 1000mph at an altitude of 70,000 feet – so about twice the hight of your average passenger cruiser today. It allowed the USA to know pretty much everything that as happening above ground in the USSR.

British Hawker Hurricane. Although the Spitfire is the most well-known of British WWII aircraft, the Hurricane won the Battle of Britain. Made of lightweigh wood with canvass stretch, it was cheaper and easier to construct than the Spitfire, hence there were more of them to take on the Luftwaffe.

Focke Wulf FW 19F – The German equivalent of the Hurricane, to all intense and purposes.

This strange little thing is a Focke Achgelis FA 330a. It was carried on German U-boats and was effectively a one-man towed helicopter, connected by cable to the back of a submarine when it surfaced so as to permit air reconaisence. U-boat commanders didn’t like it however because it gave away their position, both visually and on radar, so they weren’t much used. However, if necessary a team of 4 could assemble this in just 3 minutes.

The remains of a Heinkel He 219.

Kawanishi N1K2-Ja Shiden Kai

Kugishu MXY7 – or as you might better know it, a Kamikazee plane. This actually is an advance proto-type that was never used, but is an improvement on the original, which was strapped to the bottom of a smaller plane, then released so as a pilot could direct it, loaded with explosives, straight into a US Navy ship. Pretty grim, really.

Grumman F8F-2 Bearcat. Not a military plane, but i like the paint-job.

This strange contraption is an Autogiro Company of America AC-35. It is literally a flying car, in that it takes off but can also drive along normal roads at 40km an hour. Originally designed so as to be the ‘Model T of the Air’, it never really took off (pun intended). Then again, its retail tag of $12,500 – several times the average family annual income – probably played a part in that.

The nose of a Concord. Impossible to get a good shot because, well, it’s big and there are lots of planes around it. Luckily this one didn’t crash into a hotel and kill anybody.

Mustang P51-C, a direct descendant of the fighter plane that arguably made the USA the dominant WWII air power.

This is the Enola Gay, a Boeing B29 Superfortress. This particular one dropped the first Atom bomb on Hiroshima on August 6th 1945. It was very strange to see this plane, standing amidst others as a mere museum exhibit, considering what came out of the bottom of it.

This is an SA-2 Guideline Missile (i.e. surface to air). One of these shot down the US ‘U2’ Spy plane, inspiring the name of the annoying ‘rock’ band U2 and their irritating egomanic of a singer, the so-called ‘Bono’.

This is a Bell UH1H Helicopter, used in Korea and Vietnam and made famous by the over-rated and over-long Stanley Kubric film Apocalypse Now, which is supposed to reflect Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, but in fact is just pretentious and long.

Lockheed Martin X-35B Strike Fighter. A modern fighter jet, manufacture of which ended in 2006. Used in Iraq, Afghanistan, Serbia (1999) etc.

Grumman F-14D(R) Tomcat. These are the sorts of jet fighters that midget scientologist nutbag Tom Cruise is depicted flying in the absurd 1980s United States propaganda film Top Gun, in which said midget scientologist nutbag saves the world from dirty commies, etc.

An early MiG fighter jet (younger brothers of which midget scientologist nutbag was supposed to be fighting), the 15bis “Faggot B”

Another MiG, the 21F “Fishbed C”

This is a Lunar Decontamination Module. It was used to quarantine astronaughts who had been on the moon, in case they had carried back extraterrestrial diseases. Kind of like that film Species in which a man is infected by a virus on Mars and when he comes back to Earth he has to have sex with loads of women before turning into a monster. Great film that one…

This is an actual command module from a rocket launched in 1965, and is all that returned to earth. It’s tiny, and you get an idea of this when you look at the size of the seats relative to the rest.

(The arse-end of a space shuttle is big. Very big.):

So this is the Space Shuttle Enterprise. Except it never went into space – it was a test-model used to, well, test the real thing. But it’s fully to scale and very impressive. Real ones aren’t in museums, because they are either still in operation, or have exploded, or have disintegrated on re-entry.

Finally, two delightful little missiles:

These are the Regulus 1 Cruise Missile and the Corporal Missile, in that order. Better to have them in a museum than a silo, because both carried nuclear pay-loads in the Cold War. In short, these little babies could have resulted in our not being here. (The Corporal was the first missile to carry a nuclear warhead, the Regulus 1 he first Cruise Missile).

I rather enjoyed my day looking at shiny metal flying tin cans, but as we left Tom has a sobering thought. Despite being a military man who enjoys the ‘trip down memory lane’, he said to me in the car that, ‘i always feel a strange emotion when leaving that museum. It’s not nostalgia, it’s not sadness, it’s not anger. But i think of all the time and money that has been pumped into the designing and building of these planes and rockets over the last century, and I think to myself, sure, we might not have had such comfortable and efficient passenger planes as we do now if the money and time and been spent differently, but if we can make rockets that fly into space and planes that spy from 70,000 feet, couldn’t we at least by now have found out a way to teach inner city kids how to read?’

That, i thought, was a sobering remark worth hearing.

We’re all presidents, we’re all congressmen, we’re all cops in waiting, we are the workers of the world…

EDIT – The following are corrections – kindly supplied by Robin Jones – regarding Civil War facts i’ve gotten wrong below:

(a)   Robert Lee was actually born at Stratford Hall, the Lee ancestral home in the Northern Neck of Virginia: http://www.stratfordhall.org/
 
(b)   the Lee-Custis House in Arlington cemetery was actually his wife’s property — she was the daughter of George Washington’s stepson (Washington did not have any children of his own):

After talking to a crazy guy in a New York park for a while, I took a Bolt Bus to Washington D.C. where i’m staying for five nights. I had arranged to meet my first host – Tom Field – at the Georgetown University Law Center at 9.30 after he finished teaching a class, and as I got in to Washington at 7.15 I had plenty of time to kill. I did this by getting some bad, lukewarm food at a sports bar and reading the Washington Times. I had actually meant to pick up the Washington Post, but being an idiot I put my money in the wrong vending stand thing. Anyhow, it was good to read something, erm, not exactly in tune with my political leanings, although I quickly came to the conclusion that the Times is obnoxious right-wing drivel masquerading as an intellectual publication, and that I’ll never buy it again.

Anyhow, i met Tom at 9.30 – or more like 9.45, as after another stroke of genius I decided to sit on the one bench where Tom would be unable to see me from our agreed meeting spot, and left my phone on silent in my bag – and we went for a tour of Washington D.C. by night. Stupidly i left my camera in the “trunk” of Tom’s car, so didn’t get any pictures. Anyhow, Tom made up for that by giving me what was basically a Class-A guided tour of the big sights in central Washington: Union Station (an almost exact replica of the Baths of Diocletian in Rome), the Capitol (atop Capitol Hill, including Congress, i.e. House of Representatives and the Senate), the Supreme Court, parts of the Mall, the Vietnam memorial, and the Lincoln Monument. The latter is particularly worth seeing, especially at night when it is lit-up and there are fewer people around. Rather annoyingly you cannot walk round Capitol any more because the incumbent Republican administration appears to believe that this will reduce the threat of terrorism. How i’m not quite sure, but the result is that joe-public can’t get a good view down the central Mall any longer.

Tom is quite a character. Not only is he a walking encyclopedia of knowledge, with especial interest in history (particularly that of the American Civil and Korean wars), he is also an expert on tax law who teaches at a top American law school, a man who served in the military for over 30 years after working for the State as a tax attorney, a self-described agnostic and an Obama campaigner. In fact, spending a good chunk of the last 24 hours in his company has probably boosted my general knowledge levels more than a week spent on wikipedia would.

What was particularly enjoyable for me was that today Tom took me first to the site of both First Manassas – or ‘Bull Run’ – and Second Manassas, and to the Lee-Curtis House where Confederate General Robert E. Lee was born and lived until, in 1861, he declined an offer of Generalship from Abraham Lincoln and fought for the Confederacy instead. This was right up my street, as I’d just yesterday finished my 862-page history of the Civil War, Battle Cry of Freedom by James M. McPherson, an excellent work you all should read.

So a little history lesson. First Manassas – or ‘Bull Run’ as it was called by Union forces – was the first battle of the entire civil war taking place south of Washington over the border in Virginia a few miles below the Potomac river. It was a Confederate victory, in a battle which many expected to be the only one of the war. However, the paradox of first Manassas is that it both prolonged the war and apparently doomed the Confederacy simultaneously. If the rebel South had lost, the Northern forces would probably have taken Richmond – the Confederate capital – with ease. Victory, however, while preserving the Confederacy, also made it complacent; the belief ran high in the south that their men could whip three Yankees each, an arrogance which caused the Confederacy to under-prepare and under-resource for what turned out to be the long fight ahead. By contrast, the Union was kicked into shape by realising the task in hand, and bit-down hard to organise for the struggle ahead. In the crucial window of the first year, Southern complacency arguably caused the rebels to yield the advantage they held over the North in terms of leadership, determination, military expertise and the possibility of foreign recognition. By the time the window closed, the North had well and truly started to catch up, and with its greater industry, population (eventually blacks were allowed to fight – something which never happened in the South even in the dying days of the Confederacy), superior naval power, foreign recognition and eventual rising to the top of quality generals like Ulysses S. Grant, it was able to win the war.

However Second Manassas – fought in the same place, you may have guessed – was also significant. Likewise a Confederate victory, it allowed the army of Robert E. Lee to march north into Union Pennsylvania and fight the Yankees on their own soil, with a plan to sweep down on Washington from above. The Confederates were narrowly defeated at Antietam, a battle which was one of the crucial turning points of the American Civil War leading to Yankee victory.

As for Robert E. Lee himself, well he was a remarkable man. As I’ve already said he resigned from the Union Army to fight for the Confederacy because he believed his allegiance lay primarily to his state – Virginia – not to the Union of States and its national Federal Government. Indeed, state-specific allegiance was a motivating factor in the decisions of many soldiers of all ranks. Lee, having graduated second in his class from the elite military academy at West Point, turned out to be a military genius. Time and again he turned situations of outnumbered Confederate troops in poor territorial situation into outstanding victories against Federal forces – many historians believe that without him the Confederacy would have been defeated far sooner. You might suppose that this would lead Northerners to revile him – yet he is as celebrated in the North as in the South, where he is most definitely an enduring hero. This is because Lee is revered as a patriot, albeit one who fought for state not nation, and because he cared about the lives of his men: at the end of the war he negotiated peace-terms with Ulysses S. Grant that ensured rebels soldiers not only survived, but survived with a good deal of their stuff (including especially horses) which greatly aided the process of rebuilding and reconciliation.

So these places matter to anyone interested in American history. Now for some photographic illustration.

Replica Confederate Cannon

This is Henry Hill House, which sits atop Henry Hill right in the middle of what became the battlefield at First Manassas. Fighting wasn’t expected in precisely this area, with the result that the aged 85 year old Mrs Judith Carter Henry who was bed-ridden had to be carried out of the house amidst the (temporary) retreat of Confederate forces on a mattress. However she complained so much that her family and slave took her back inside…where she was promptly hit by a cannonball and killed (her slave, miraculously, survived by hiding under the bed). Mrs Henry was the only civilian casualty of First Manassas, and is buried outsider her (reconstructed) house:

This is a monument to the troops killed at both Manassas, erected in 1865 a few months after the war ended by Union troops.

A monument to General Thomas J “Stonewall” Jackson, a great leader of the Confederacy second perhaps only to Robert E. Lee. He acquired the sobriquet “Stonewall” after Captain Barnard Bee, with his men about to be routed, pointed and shouted: “There stands Jackson like a stone wall! Rally behind the Virginians!”.

At least, that’s one (official) version of events. Another is that in frustration Bee shouted “look at that damned Jackson standing there like a stone wall doing nothing!”. Either way, the name stuck, and lasted longer than Stonewall himself who was killed in 1863, much to the chagrin of the Confederacy.

A view of the battlefield facing Henry House from Union lines.

Tomb for the first general to die in the Civil War. Quite an achievement, given how far back generals were supposed to stand. Although, to be fair, officer fatality rates were 50% higher than non-officer rates in the American Civil War.

This is the Stone House where Pope set up his military headquarters during Second Manassas. It served as a military hospital in both battles for Union troops.

After Manassas, we headed up to Arlington, Virginia, just over the Potomac from Washington D.C. As Tom is ex-military, he still has access to the military base at Arlington which is adjacent to a major US Military cemetery with a few notable residents, as you shall see. Obviously i’ve never been inside a US military base before, so I quite enjoyed having a look around, though to be honest there was very little to see because for the most part it looks like a glorified suburb. Anyway, from the top of the cemetery you can see a bit of the Pentagon:

Not a great photo, but that bit of grey-yellow building above the trees is a side of the Pentagon.

From here you get quite a good view of, from right to left, the Capitol Buildings, the Washington Monument (the big phallic pointy thing) and the Lincoln Memorial, running North to South with the Mall in between.

The Lee-Curtis House where Robert E. Lee was born, raised and lived until 1861. After he left for the Confederacy, Federals turned this house into a hospital and appropriated all the grounds. Being a hospital in the era before penicillin, lots of people died here…hence the graveyard was started. Today, the graveyard is prestigious space and only top-brass and military men of great note get a spot, although there are one or two distinguished civilians. As Tom put it to me, “if George Shrub [his name for Dublya] ends up in here, or even asks to be placed here, i’m moving to Canada”.

One of the slave-quarters where Lee kept some of his 1000 slaves.

Somehow Tom managed to wrangle us a quick tour of the inside of the Lee-Curtis house from one of the park wardens, even though it is closed until 2010 for refurbishment. Most of the rooms are bare due to said refurbishment so no worthwhile pictures, but what was quite interesting was that stripping the walls revealed graffiti scribbles by soldiers who had been treated in the hospital:

Tom and I then walked down to see, first, the Tomb of John Fitzgerald Kennedy:

And of his brother, Robert Francis, or Bobby, Kennedy who would probably have been president if Sirhan Sirhan hadn’t shot him dead in a hotel kitchen in California during the 1968 primary:

Finally we went to visit the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier – although there are actually three unknowns entombed here, from WWI, WWII and the Korean War respectively. We were also in time to see the changing of the guards, which I all found very bizarre. Being a military man Tom I think enjoys the spectacle, but his wife Marcia described it later when we got back to their house as “obnoxious”, which i thought was quite funny:

Anyway, over and out for now.