US Aviation Pioneers

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• The United States Army Air Forces is created under Major General “Hap” Arnold in order to give the air arm greater autonomy within the Army hierarchy. The subordinate Army Air Corps will gradually be phased out. The US Navy bitterly opposed creation of the USAAF on the grounds that it would give the Army too much control over military aviation.

 

• Charles Lindbergh speaks at an America First rally attended by 30,000 people in Los Angeles. Lindbergh criticizes lend-lease and proclaims that the US is virtually impregnable due to the oceans. President Roosevelt will note to Secretary of War Henry Stimson, “When I read Lindbergh's speech I felt that it could not have been better put if it had been written by Goebbels himself. What a pity that this youngster has completely abandoned his belief in our form of government and has accepted Nazi methods because apparently they are efficient.”

 

- American aviatrix and anti-Semite Laura Ingalls [cousin of the writer Laura Ingalls Wilder] also speaks, criticizing America’s “lousy democracy” and giving Nazi salutes.

 

 

- It will later be determined that Ingalls has been working for Freiherr Ulrich von Gienanth, head of the Gestapo in the US, and he encouraged her participation with America First. She will be arrested after Pearl Harbor for failing to register as a paid German agent. "

 

From Oddtruths

 

Laura [Ingalls] was convicted and sentenced to 2 years in prison.  She was released on October 5th, 1943 after serving 20 months.

 

Prison did not alter Laura’s views in any way. After being released she commented on the Normandy Landings saying: 

 

Quote

This whole invasion is a power lust, blood drunk orgy in a war which is unholy and for which the U.S. will be called to terrible accounting… They [the Nazis] fight the common enemy. They fight for the independence of Europe—independence from the Jews. Bravo!

 

 

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "Charles Lindbergh addresses an America First rally in Oklahoma City. He warns that Great Britain could turn against the United States "as she has turned against France and Finland." Montana Senator Burton K. Wheeler speaks next and chastises Great Britain for its treatment of India, stating:

If our interventionists want to free a country from the dominion of another country, we ought to declare war on Great Britain to free India. I have never seen such slavery as I saw in India a few years ago.

Lindbergh and Wheeler are fighting against the tide, as Gallup public opinion polling suggests that more of the public is beginning to accept President Roosevelt's interventionist policies.

 

[Guest deleted@83466]

Shows that even if you’re an aviation “pioneer”, and a hero to some, you can also still be a total waste of protoplasm.

Edited August 29, 2021 by SeaSerpent

[Hoss]

I would think of Aviation Pioneers like Bill Boeing, starting his business in a barn. Even Alexander Graham Bell was an aviation pioneer.........Glenn Curtis...... Igor Sikorsky. The list is just too vast to do it justice. 

 

Hoss

[cardboard_killer]

Leonardo da Vinci.

[Hoss]

1 hour ago, cardboard_killer said:

Leonardo da Vinci.

Touche

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• At an America First rally in Des Moines, Iowa, Charles Lindbergh delivers a speech, "Who Are the War Agitators?"
 

• “The three most important groups who have been pressing this country toward war are the British, the Jewish, and the Roosevelt Administration. Instead of agitating for war, Jews in this country should be opposing it in every way, for they will be the first to feel its consequences. Their greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government.”

- American right-wing press will widely praise the speech, particularly the warning of consequences for the Jews. It also gets prominent air time on Father Coughlin’s radio show.

- Interventionists will create pamphlets showing Lindbergh being given Nazi medals by Göring and quotes from his pre-1940 speeches saying that he considers the survival of the white race as more important than the survival of democracy in Europe. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover will on his own initiative investigate Lindbergh for criminal activity but not find any.

- Also attending the rally is former evangelist and US diplomat Lawrence Dennis, who in 1936, wrote, “The Coming American Fascism”, portraying Fascism as a good thing.

 

Dr Seuss responds"

 

 

 

 

[Vig]

I prefer cats to people of any political persuasion.

[cardboard_killer]

9 hours ago, Vig said:

I prefer cats to people of any political persuasion.

What sane man doesn't?

 

[Vig]

He's a good boy. 

 

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• Retired American General George Van Horn Moseley, who served as Douglas MacArthur’s Deputy US Army Chief of Staff, writes that European Jews are “receiving their just punishment for the crucifixion of Christ ... whom they are still crucifying at every turn of the road.” He proposes a “worldwide policy which will result in bleeding all Jewish blood out of the human race.”

 

- In 1939 he had described fascism and nazism as good "antitoxins" for the United States, adding that “the finest type of Americanism can breed under their protection as they neutralize the efforts of the Communists.” While saying that he personally holds no anti-Semitic views, he described Jewish people as “crude and unclean, animal-like things ... something loathsome, such as syphilis.”

 

- Shortly after Pearl Harbor, Moseley will write to former President Herbert Hoover claiming that it was a British-Jewish conspiracy that goaded Japan into attacking the United States."

 

[Guest deleted@83466]

I’m a bit confused about this thread.  Every single one of the US “Pioneers” profiled here is a Nazi sympathizing, anti-Semitic, etc…what’s the agenda with this?  Nothing in the thread title indicates that these are the kinds of people this thread is actually about.

[BraveSirRobin]

Until now CK has done a pretty good job of hiding the fascist political agenda of his “history” posts.  Apparently he has decided to stop hiding it.

[cardboard_killer]

My agenda is to remember that my country had a fair number of nazi sympathizers in it before and during the war, to my regret. We forget that at our own peril.

[THERION]

14 minutes ago, cardboard_killer said:

My agenda is to remember that my country had a fair number of nazi sympathizers in it before and during the war, to my regret. We forget that at our own peril.

 

Every country, alas, had and still has nazi sympathizers! Even and especially the little "very neutral" Switzerland...

[cardboard_killer]

25 minutes ago, THERION said:

Every country, alas, had and still has nazi sympathizers!

 

Of course. If it doesn't need to be said because we all know it, then there is little reason to get upset when it is said as it is just repeating what we already know. And yet, here we are.

[BOO]

What has Moseley to do with US aviation pioneers?  I think you've derailed your own thead there CK

[BraveSirRobin]

4 hours ago, cardboard_killer said:

My agenda is to remember that my country had a fair number of nazi sympathizers in it before and during the war, to my regret. We forget that at our own peril.

Then the title of the thread is very misleading if you’re only including the pioneers that sympathized with the Nazis.  It makes it look like you’re supporting  them.

 

And since politics isn’t allowed on this forum, maybe you should stop.

[BOO]

1 hour ago, BraveSirRobin said:

Then the title of the thread is very misleading if you’re only including the pioneers that sympathized with the Nazis.  It makes it look like you’re supporting  them.

 

And since politics isn’t allowed on this forum, maybe you should stop.

Not sure I agree that CK apears to be supporting them since every post has been to their their detraction rather than gloryfication. I do agree with the latter statement. Its crossing a line regardless of intent.  

[BraveSirRobin]

11 minutes ago, BOO said:

Not sure I agree that CK apears to be supporting them since every post has been to their their detraction rather than gloryfication. I do agree with the latter statement. Its crossing a line regardless of intent.  

Not really seeing a lot of detraction in these posts.  

 

In any case, they're absolutely political.

[BOO]

Just now, BraveSirRobin said:

In any case, they're absolutely political.

On that Sir, we can agree!

[Robli]

Well, to me it seems that his agenda is more about "exposing" Nazi sympathisers or anti-semitics, but I do agree that these topics tend to be too political and overall give a skewed view of things. Reading his threads, one can get an impression how most eastern Europeans were Nazi sympathisers and just liked killing jews and now also how most American aviation pioneers were pro-nazis and anti-semitic. That kind of cherry picking does not really paint a realistic historical picture of things.

He also has quite interesting posts about historical happenings in general, so I would much prefer him to concentrate on these instead of this political nazi-hunting. 

[Monksilver]

The below is from a recent news item here in the UK about US aviation pioneer - hopefully not controversial.

 

The medals of a First World War veteran who was deadlier than the legendary Red Baron have sold for over £7,000.

US-born Captain Frederick Gillet was 23 years old when he started operations with the Royal Flying Corps in August 1918 and he claimed 20 kills in just three months of flying.

His tally included three Fokker aircraft in the space of five minutes.

 

The pilot finished the war in November 1918 with 14 Fokkers, three kite balloons and three Albatross aircraft as his victims, earning a Distinguished Flying Cross with Bar for his 'great dash and skill'.

Pound for pound, Capt Gillet's success rate was greater than German ace Manfred von Richthofen - known as the Red Baron - who claimed 80 kills in 19 months before his death in March 1918. 

Capt Gillet was born in Baltimore, US, in 1895 but moved the Britain after being rejected by his home nation's air force. After the war, he returned to the US and became a businessman - dying in 1969 aged 74. 

 

His medals were sold by a private collector with London-based auctioneers Spink & Son, fetching a hammer price of £5,800. With extra fees, the final figure paid by the buyer was £7,200. 

His first victory was the destruction of a kite balloon north of Estaires in France on August 3, 1918.

Had Capt Gillet maintained his strike rate, he would have clocked up 126 kills in that period.

He was awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC) for shooting down a kite balloon east of Armentieres, which was being defended by an enemy aircraft. He dived down and fired 200 rounds from 100 yards away, causing it to crash to the ground. 

 

Capt Gillet then headed towards the balloon, which was being pulled down, and fired 50 rounds into it at close range.

He wrote in his combat report: 'I dived through the clouds east of Armentieres to attack a kite balloon. As I approached the K.B. I saw an enemy aircraft flying at about 1,500 feet.

 

'I opened my throttle and dived on him, firing about 200 rounds at about 100 yards range. The E.A. dived and the observer fired a burst at me. I followed the E.A. down and fired another 150 rounds at very close range. The E.A. crashed into the ground.

'I then returned west towards the balloon which was being pulled down and fired 50 rounds into it at very close range, dropping two bombs near the winch.

'The balloon was hauled down and appeared to be deflating.'

He added a Bar to his DFC for attacking three Fokkers during a low line patrol on November 4, 1918, near Besseghem.

Capt Gillet shot down one of the enemy aircraft and the other two, in the chaos, collided with each other.

It states: 'A pilot of great dash and skill who, since 3 August 1918 has destroyed twelve hostile aircraft.

'On 29 September, when on low line patrol, he attacked three Fokkers, driving down one, which fell in flames.'

Capt Gillet, who was also awarded a Belgian Croix de Guerre, left the RAF in March 1919 and returned to the US to become a businessman.

He died aged 74 in 1969.

Marcus Budgen, head of the medal department at Spink & Son, said: 'The medals of Captain 'Razors' Gillet represent one of the finest and most successful American airmen of the Great War.

'The Red Baron scored 80 kills from September 1916 to March 1918 so at that rate Gillet was quicker.'

His medal group consists of the Distinguished Flying Cross; British War Medal; USA; Victory; Belgian Croix de Guerre.

 

 

[Guest deleted@83466]

Ok, I understand what this thread is about.

 

Von Braun for the WIN, then!!

 

 

 

 

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