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They made a statement last week, that they were going to begin to kidnap Multi-National Force personnel, becuase they believe the defection of some of their personnel in Iraq were kidnappings, not defections.

Keep your eye on the eastern horizon for mushroom clouds.

Managing Editor

have been in Iraq.

Retaliation or more like a negotiating tactic? I had completely forgotten about the Iranian defections as the media hasn't mentioned them.

of negotiating tactic would this be? Last I checked, Holding Hostages wasn't a very good way to get the British and American militaries to kowtow...

There are those who look on Dresden and Tokyo and Hiroshima as some of the greatest evils ever perpetrated by man. I look on them and thank the perpetrators for saving millions.

Bargaining chips is probably a better description. They may be looking to trade the British soldiers for the Iranian defectors (whether they want to return or not). It is a typical middle eastern tactic.

"Do the day's work."

An even better tactic would be to destroy one or more oil loading terminals. They are acutely dependent on gasoline and refined fuel imports because they have very little refining capacity. If this ability to off load gasoline or diesel fuel is damaged, it would be devastating and destabilizing to the regime. This would bring about some major civil unrest.

Wubbies World - The odds of hitting your target go up dramatically when you actually aim for it!

Would be to just Capture one of those terminals and hold it and every person working there that they get their hands on as a hostage until the British soldiers are returned...

There are those who look on Dresden and Tokyo and Hiroshima as some of the greatest evils ever perpetrated by man. I look on them and thank the perpetrators for saving millions.

"There are those who look on Dresden and Tokyo and Hiroshima as some of the greatest evils ever perpetrated by man. I look on them and thank the perpetrators for saving millions."

But couldn't we have detonated the bomb offshore of Japan, thus demonstrating our might without actually incinerating a bunch of people?

Mike Gamecock DeVine @ The Charlotte Observer
Starbucks cups hurl
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson

Post Hiroshima to prevent surrender. We were still conventional bombing Japan after Nagasaki.

Some people take a lot of convincing.
______________________________
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777

was 1 A-bomb= 1,000 B-29 conventional fligths.

2 weeks after Nagasaki, 2,000 B29s flew a single sortie against Japan's last remaining oil refinery. The Northernmost one that the Japanese military had thought was untouchable.

...just thought I would flesh that out...

There are those who look on Dresden and Tokyo and Hiroshima as some of the greatest evils ever perpetrated by man. I look on them and thank the perpetrators for saving millions.

We only built a total of 3700. The largest B29 raid I could find was 111 planes.
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Those who live by the sword get shot by those who don't.

We had multiple manufacturers of B-29s. Boeing alone produced over 3,000.
Unfortunately, the link I had that time on the air raid itself on August 14, 1945 is no longer functioning. And all the search results I get now that Should get me info on it are paid access only. All I have now is the retelling from a PA vet who was in that raid.

There are those who look on Dresden and Tokyo and Hiroshima as some of the greatest evils ever perpetrated by man. I look on them and thank the perpetrators for saving millions.

was 3970 with production continuing until October, 1945, so not all would have seen WWII service. Most were built by Boeing at their Wichita plant or at Renton, some by Martin in Georgia, and some, the B-29B, by Bell. There were four wartime variants, the B-29, the B-29A (couldn't find the distinction, but it might be Martin manufactured), the B-29B, the Bell manufactured variant with Bell tail turret, and the B-29 C, a lightweight version for pathfinding for the nightime incendiary raids. There was a post war variant the B-29D which became the B-50. There were many mission specific variants postwar and the B-29/B-50 was retired in 1958. Only one remains flyable and flying, that of the Ghost Squadron of the Commemorative Air Force (the new politically correct name of the Confederate Air Force) Gleaned from several websites about the B-29 that I found with a Google search.

I found no reference to a 2000 plane raid, and, while I'm no expert, I suspect such a raid would have certainly been a "maximum effort" and if there were such a raid, that number would probably represent the total sorties in a 24 hour period. The 29 was enormously complex and not especially reliable, so if you figure in losses and unavailability, it would have been very, very hard to get 2000 of them flying at any given time. BTW, the B-29, not the Manhattan Project, was the single most expensive US effort of WW II.

In Vino Veritas

Are all bad now and the ones I Can find that Should discuss the raid are all payfor services, so I don't know for certain what they have.

I do agree that the raid on Aug 14th, 1945 was a maximum effort. That's kind of obvious.

Unfortunately, as for exact numbers of planes in the mission or how many missions they may have actually broken into after reaching Japan, all I have is the story of one of the pilots who flew that mission. He was also on the WPSU tv channel about this time last year, if you know how to search that, if possible. That's where I first found out that the war continued after the Big 2. Got to meet the guy a few weeks later. But that's all I have at this time.

There are those who look on Dresden and Tokyo and Hiroshima as some of the greatest evils ever perpetrated by man. I look on them and thank the perpetrators for saving millions.

irrelevant (said the guy who started this). The point IS that the Japanese STILL hadn't surrendered by 8/14 after BOTH bombs.
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Those who live by the sword get shot by those who don't.

In these threadjacks...

There are those who look on Dresden and Tokyo and Hiroshima as some of the greatest evils ever perpetrated by man. I look on them and thank the perpetrators for saving millions.

Tokyo and four other cities. One small city simply ceased to exist. First, in Tokyo, we created a firestorm that caused the rivers to boil. Sixteen square miles of the city were completely destroyed, 83,000 people were killed, another 40,000 injured. The Japanese showed no interest in surrender. We then firebombed three other cities with similar results (smaller kill numbers because they were smaller cities). Still no interest in surrender.

Documents released in the last couple of years indicate the extent of the defensive commitment of the Japanese army and air force to the defense of the homeland. They had Kamakazi planes available for wave attacks on our shipping that could have potentially wiped out most of the Pacific fleet and the army/Marine Corps landing craft. The estimates of a million US troops dead is probably on the low side. Look at the experience of the Marines in the Island Hopping campaigns. Casualties were huge and they were fighting against small numbers of well trained Japanese supported by Korean and other "draftees" who were not well trained or all that committed. Yet they fought to the last man. Landing on the main island would have been a slaughter unprecedented in warfare, on both sides.
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Those who live by the sword get shot by those who don't.

Just before the surrender, the Japanese had a strike team of three aircraft carrier submarines! in position to take out the Panama Canal. In fact the chance of success was estimated as very high after the Navy saw the plans.

"Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty"
Kyle

The sobering fact is that we are still using purple hearts that were minted for the expected casualties in operation Downfall.
______________________________
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777

Given the activities that others have described above, followed by the Hiroshima A-bomb, the Japanese still didn't surrender until the second bomb was dropped on a city. Had the first one been dropped at sea, #2 would have had the same effect as #1--it would have caught their attention, but another one would have been required to clinch the deal.

Democrats on Iraq: "We don't want to win. We just want to quit."

sorry, I couldn't resist!

Mike Gamecock DeVine @ The Charlotte Observer
Starbucks: Coffee, good. Cups, bad, but
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson

Dear all you anti-war, get-out-of-Iraq people:

I am pleased to inform you that all British troops have been withdrawn from Iraq effective immediately.
As the Hon. John Murtha suggested in his brilliant plan for withdrawal, we will be maintaining our presence in the region. Due to current geopolitical circumstances, the government has chosen Iran as the proper place to redeploy our troops.

Sincerely,
Tony Blair

Democrats on Iraq: "We don't want to win. We just want to quit."

what the ROE were if an Iranian vessel(s) were allowed to even approach the boarding party. My money is that they were too restrictive or unclear and the snatch was over before the CO could go thru the "mother may I" drill.

In Vino Veritas

I don't want to think that a Skipper afloat would let this happen. It is possible that the ROE did not cover this contigency but I would think unlikely. There must be a broad ruling (or should be) on approach of any possible hostile to any craft under the Flag's Command. At any rate, I remember as a bridge deck officer on both flagships and escorts that we had instant voice comms with the flag staff for clarification.

The longer we dwell on our misfortunes the greater is their power to harm us - Voltaire

is that too many decisions can be left to political authority, which then fails or refuses to decide, delays, or decides wrongly. Like you, I can't imagine any naval commander allowing this to happen; I can easily imagine someone in political authority dithering or calculating wrongly.

In Vino Veritas

In my neck of the woods, people with expensive pleasure boats buy Barret .50 Cal rifles to defend themselves from human garbage.

Here you have a ship of the line stopped from doing what any yachtsman would.
______________________________
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777

but you sure wouldn't want to try to board my boat, or even try take my inflatable, to the point here, without my permission.

In Vino Veritas

And what do you base that notion on? Is standing by the US in Afghanistan and in Iraq not enough for you?

The only proper response was war, but Carter didn't want to do it. So now we have Iran again commiting an act of war, and again they'll expect to get away with it.

Democrats refer to not doing anything when provoked, thus setting us up for an even bigger attack, as "having peace." Near as I can tell, they are serious when they say this. Perhaps they are mentally ill.

Just yesterday, some Democrat came in here to tell us that Clinton's not doing anything about the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, thus setting us up for the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center, was Clinton bringing us "peace" and "unparalleled American Prestige and Moral Leadership." We got so much prestige out of ignoring Osama's attempt to bring down the twin towers that he came back to do it again. Thanks to Clinton, Osama was unencumbered in doing that. Clinton left him in Peace.

Carter brought us peace and unparalled prestige, too. The only thing that brought us more prestige than cowering while Ahmadinejad (yep, he was there) and his student pawns held our hostages, was Operation Desert Helicopter Crash.

Drink Good Coffee. You can sleep when you're dead.

But if I recall operation desert crash was a pentagon snafu. Of course after the peaceniks had spent nearly 20 years making the military as unattractive as they could, no one could be surprised they had problems.
______________________________
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777

Say what you will about President Bush, he doesn't make threats, he makes promises. The President already promised the Iranians what he would do in response to this kind of nonsense, in his last major speech the President said "If the Iranians escalate their involvement in this war we will take military action beginning with air strikes against their nuclear facilities". I am pretty sure that the President is going to view this incident as an escalation.

I can tell you what is going to happen when the President decides to take military action:
1. The Iranian air force will be obliterated on the ground.
2. The Iranian navy will be blown out of the water.
3. The Iranian nuclear facilities will become large craters where the facility used to be.
4. There will be a naval blockade of Iranian ports.
5. Iranian offshore oil assets will be siezed.
6. Iranian artillery positions which have been fighting an undeclared war against the Kurds for the last few months will be destroyed.

There might be more to the response but this should be enough to get it started.

Before you bleeding hearts jump on me and call me a warmonger, I am only relating what the President has said he will do in previous speeches, and relating what my best guess is at his intentions given the advice I imagine he is getting. You can find policy papers on any of this online from the kinds of think tanks and policy makers that the President listens to. But the air strikes against nuclear facilities is what he himself said on national television.

Particularly about Bush making empty threat.

One thing we found out about this president a few years ago is that when he says 48 hours he means 48 hours not 48 hours and 1 second.

it comes to President Bush.

Mike Gamecock DeVine @ The Charlotte Observer
Starbucks: Coffee, good. Cups, bad, but
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson

one of Her Majesty's vessels in Iraqi waters an act of war, in itself?

Democrats on Iraq: "We don't want to win. We just want to quit."

Or French. But I repeat myself.
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Those who live by the sword get shot by those who don't.

for Ted Kennedy and counts only a year for the rest of the swine. War has an expiration date that moves with the polls.