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With Veterans Day here and the Marine Corps Birthday having just passed, I thought it would be appropriate to share an excerpt of an interview and conversation I had with a Marine aviator. I had the opportunity to speak with Mr. Elliot Billings a 96 year old former Marine aviator and dive-bomber pilot. His remarks certainly help give some flair to the early days of military aviation!
When were you in the Marines?
In 1934. I was looking at a luncheon menu from Washington DC in 1935; a four course meal was $.85…I got to be a 1st LT in the Marine Corp–$254/month!
BG-1 (US Navy)
Did you ever hear of a BG-1? No? Well, I was on the front end of that group where they discovered dive bombing. It hadn’t been professionalized you might say. Nobody knew a hell of a lot about it. But the idea was these BG Great Lakes were built specifically for dive bombing by the Great Lakes Aviation Company, no longer in existence.
So when I reported into Quantico. None of the older, more experienced pilots, you know the people who were 35 years old, they didn’t think much of these airplanes. They were too damn hot.
Hot?
They were fast and maybe cranky to fly. They didn’t understand the airplanes and there hadn’t been enough of them to go to the factory to talk with the people who told them about it. But we were all new, fresh out of Pensacola, and we didn’t care—we could fly anything. And this BG had more struts, it was the toughest airplane I ever flew in my life because this thing was going to be going 300 mph. That was speed.
I went by Quantico a couple years ago with my one of grandchildren; I just couldn’t believe it! I asked, “Do you know where Brown Field is?” The guard at the gate said, “Is that an airfield?” I said “Yes, that is where the aviation department resided.” Of course now they have an airport that covers 10 miles of the edge of the Potomac River. But that field had a dirt runway 3000 feet long. It was kind of a marginal performance to get these planes in there if you made a carrier landing, you know hard to get in and hard to get out. We didn’t know that.
So one of our guys one day when he knew the whole damn brass was out there—MAJ Geiger, Mokahe (sp?), and various others, all at the airfield all watching to see what these young folks do. So old Dick Scott a good friend, but instead of coming in for a carrier approach…he just came in like he was a fighter—he didn’t roll 200 feet! That was a good airplane but people didn’t understand in dive bombing, you can start anywhere…but if you get right over your target…the one thing that’s got to happen is you’re going to have to be on your back because the top of the wing is longer than the bottom…the first thing you know in order to keep it under control is that you’re upside down!
But those were great days.
Have you seen the Marine Corps Museum in Quantico?
Who was the first guy you saw as you went in?
I can’t–
Hank Elrod, we called him R-rod. He was the last one to fly an airplane out of Wake Island in World War II. And he knew he was going to get killed, but it didn’t make any difference to him. They gave him the Congressional Medal of Honor. When I walked into that museum the first time, I’ve been there twice…I saluted him when I came in because I knew him very well, flight school and so forth…Here he is surrounded by dozens of Japanese airplanes and only one airplane left and he took it out and shot down three of them before getting shot down himself. That’s a pretty good museum they have.
—————-
More to come!
Correction: Mr. Billings is 96 years old not 90 as previously stated.
Up late working on homework, but came across the Navy’s new slogan: “America’s Navy- A Global Force for Good.” Seems a little too international to me; good is so bland.
What do you think? Also, if you are in the Navy or former Navy post which slogan you joined under if you remember.
Accelerate your life!
Departing USNA grounds at 0600 this past Tuesday, I interviewed for nuclear submarine duty at Naval Reactors (NR) in Washington DC. The process consists of 2 technical interviews, which tested my skills in calculus, physics, and electrical engineering among other subjects. Following the round of technical interviews, I had a ~5 minute interview with ADM Donald, Director, Naval Reactors.
Arriving at NR at 0700, my group of 20 fellow midshipmen, interviewing for either submarines or surface warfare nuclear option, shuffled into a conference room where we were briefed on the plan of the day. We then had a quick breakfast where I ran into USNI blog reader “BWalthrop” who wished me luck…it’s a small world!
Around 0800 the first round of technical interviews started. ”Come on in, Mr. Withington. Imagine you and a friend were doing a science experiment…”and I was asked how the velocity of my friend’s plane in terms of my car’s velocity. Something I don’t do too regularly with my friends or as a history major! I was peppered with other questions for the rest of the hour and walked out a little shell-shocked. The second interview went a little better and I was dismissed for lunch.
Then it was time for the interview with the “ADMIRAL” (all caps according to our instructions for the interview). My last name landed me the last interview with the ADMIRAL for the day. We moved to another holding room and one by one we were called out. By the time 3 of us were left, we anxiously paced the room and awaiting the interview and decision.
Then I was called to wait outside his office door; I was getting pretty nervous by this point. An officer opened the door and beckoned me in the room. As soon as I passed the doorframe into the room I began my scripted introduction, “Good afternoon Admiral, I’m MIDN 1/c Jeff Withington from West Chester, Pennsylvania. In high school I participated in debate and cross country,” I was sitting in “The Seat” by this point, “while at the Academy I have participated in Masqueraders and Naval Academy Foreign Affairs Conference. I am currently company honor adviser. I am interviewing for submarines.” My wait for the first question lasted about .001 sec after I completed my intro: “Tell me about what you do as company honor adviser.”
OK, this is good, I thought; I didn’t receive the expected and more confrontational “How are you majoring in history and are interested to do nuclear power?” As soon as I finished my answer, he probed for more details about what I exactly did. He then began to ask how I would punish those found to violate our honor concept. More whys followed. ”OK, well thank you.” And that was it.
I waited outside and a commander in service dress blues came up to me, offered his hand, and said “MIDN Withington, welcome to the program.”
Posted by jwithington in Navy | read comments (12)Tags: Jeff Withington, midshipman, naval reactors, nuclear power, submarines, withington
I am set to enroll in a course entitled “Readings in Grand Strategy” next semester. The course description features many of the “greats” of strategy: Bismarck, Clausewitz, Philip II, etc. I began to wonder: as America struggles to find the way forward, are we searching for a great man or many good men?
I am fascinated by the knowledge problem in strategy. It’s the same problem which faces societies as they struggle to create an economic order. In “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” Friedrich Hayek wrote brilliantly on this issue,
“The peculiar character of the problem of a rational economic order is determined precisely by the fact that the knowledge of the circumstances of which we must make use never exists in concentrated or integrated form but solely as the dispersed bits of incomplete and frequently contradictory knowledge which all the separate individuals possess.”
Knowledge within an organization (or society) is decentralized. If America wants to make the “best” grand strategy, it has to somehow utilize all the dispersed bits of knowledge. Yet, we have an overwhelming amount of knowledge, which only serves to swamp decision-makers. For example, 50,000 intelligence products are created every year, to which Thomas Fingar, former DNI deputy director for analysis, concedes, “There can’t possibly be a market for.”
How do we aggregate the sum knowledge at our disposal? I would submit one brilliant mind cannot do this as well as many good minds. George Kennan’s “Long Telegraph” on the Soviet Union is an excellent example– one brilliant mind dominated policy discussion. Instead of asking one super-expert about the USSR’s intentions, we could have bet on it.
What if we were to have a large pool of experts and ask them to wager on a series of questions? One example, “In 5 years or less, will Russia have another armed conflict with Georgia?” The experts would then use virtual money to gamble on the outcome. It’s called a prediction market and they’re eerily accurate at forecasting. By tapping into the power of many minds, we can detect bits of information which would have previously gone unnoticed.
In many instances, the prediction market uses prices to represent probablilties. For example, if a Russian invasion of Georgia in the next five years were selling at $.20, then the market is forecasting a 20% likelihood of the invasion occuring.
Private companies already use them. Google found they gave “decisive, informative predictions” on ”product launch dates, new office openings, and many other things of strategic importance to Google.”
It Works!
Posted by jwithington in Hard Power, Homeland Security, Navy, Uncategorized | read comments (8)Tags: Alexander Martin, Innovation, Jeff Withington, prediction markets, Strategy
Wow! I just got back from Marine Corps University’s event “Counterinsurgency Leadership in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Beyond.” While I don’t have time to fully relate the awesome experience as I have to finish The Ugly American, write on Roman philosophy, and prepare for a Naval Weapon Systems exam, I wanted to leave readers with one question. Is a good counterinsurgency leader also automatically a good conventional war leader? This is the claim asserted by Mark Moyar, author of Question of Command. It seems a little too sweeping to me.; then again, COIN leaders are expected to have all the same competencies with the addition of flexibility as well as political and social skills.
Is there a problem with defining “good” COIN officers as super soldiers or is this level of proficency (in nearly everything) just the reality of counterinsurgency operations ?
Also, there were several USNI blog readers in attendance. It was great to meet you all in person!
Played around with some numbers from the Congressional Research Service. In terms of number of deaths (including from hostile action and accidents) per military personnel, we’re experiencing levels similar to 1980. Can anyone shed some light on why the number of deaths per size of the military was about the same in 1980 as it was in 2006?
Danger Room just broke that the DoD will almost certainly block Twitter, Facebook, and all other social networking sites on its networks.
Game Over for Social Media?
The ban is all-but-certain, military officers and civilian employees say. Many are upset, because after years keeping the social networks at arms’ length, the armed services appeared to be finally embracing the Web 2.0 sites. The Army recently ordered all U.S. bases to provide access to Facebook. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has 4,000 followers on Twitter. The Department of Defense is getting ready to unveil a new home page, packed with social media tools…
People started working with these social networks “before we got a handle on how to use them in the context of the Department of Defense,” a Stratcom source says. “Now, they’re just too big of a headache.”
Unfortunate as ADM Allen and ADM Harvey noted the importance of outreach using these channels. However, the security concerns seem quite real. How can the DoD find a happy medium?
ADDENDUM: Somewhat ironic that DefenseLink featured a story on social media success in Iraq on the day Danger Room’s story broke.
“For the first four or five months there, I kept working through the system to get permissions to allow us to blog, go on YouTube, play with Facebook,” he said. “I wanted to engage in these social media forums, and you just couldn’t get access to them on your military computers.”
But Caldwell met with red tape everywhere he turned — until he mentioned his frustration to Casey, now Army chief of staff, during one of Casey’s monthly visits to the Combined Arms Center.
“He looked at me and said, ‘Just do it,’” Caldwell said. “And when I asked him if this meant he was giving his permission to do this, he said, ‘Absolutely.’ He said, ‘We have got to change the culture of the Army, and you can help make this happen.’”
As Fouled Anchor posted, don’t forget about cryptology and network security. What good are assets if the enemy can hack systems to disrupt communications and cause temporary (or lasting) confusion?
Meanwhile, Peter Singer of the Brookings Institute and author of Wired for War has posted an article on the Chinese plans to build an aircraft carrier. He observes:
First, their “new” carrier is not all that new. Actually, the Varyag was first laid down back in 1985. Originally planned for the Soviet fleet, it was never completed. Instead, at the Cold War’s end, it was scrapped of all its electronics and engines and sold off to be a floating casino. Even if the Chinese can refurbish it, at best they will be getting an old, untested ship that carries only a third as many planes as a U.S. carrier.
Similarly, the idea that the Chinese can build four new carriers over the next decade is less than realistic. It takes approximately six years to build one of our aircraft carriers, and we have been doing this for more than eight decades. By comparison, the biggest warship the Chinese have yet to build on their own is 17,000 tons, a quarter the size. More importantly, building a ship is not the same as operating it successfully.
I wonder if we should think of their aircraft carrier fleet as part of a sleight of hand trick. While attention is focused on the looming possibility of four aircraft carriers, we lose focus on the imminent threat of network disruption.
Given the costs of the carrier endeavor, I’m not sure this is intentional on the part of the Chinese or that the US Navy is even falling for the hocus pocus. But for blogosphere strategists, hopefully this is a useful paradigm for evaluating the threats.
GEN Petraeus, COL McMaster (selected for BGEN), Dr. Monsoor, Nathaniel Fick, and LTC Nagl (Ret) will speaking at “Counterinsurgency Leadership in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Beyond” hosted by Marine Corps University on September 23 at the National Press Club in DC. Registration is free and open to the public.
Moreover, Tom Ricks will speaking on “Officer Development in the US Military.” Perhaps this would be the perfect opportunity to stage a protest of his column bashing the service academies? It’s been awhile since I last ran from security….
Thanks to SWJ for pointing this event out!
In other news, GEN Petraeus has joined the "Pirate Brigade"
Hat tip: Scoop Deck
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