TBM, I have to agree... if we'd ever gone to war using the tactics employed back then, we wouldn't be having this debate about refurbishing 40+ year old airframes, because every one of them would have been destroyed the very first night they were deployed - to say nothing of the poor bloody crews sheltering in shallow shell scrapes under their wings or the unfortunate grunts camped within 300 metres of each huge Caribou tail.
But let's not forget what the real plan of action was - it got those softie Brylcreem Boys out of their hotel rooms and roughing it out in the field. Unfortunately, from too many comments I've seen here and elsewhere, the myth Wiley refers to above has been transplanted all too successfully into the minds of far too many of the young pilots in today's AAVN.
I wouldn't mind a beer for each of the Sundays I pre-positioned so as to be on station with the Army unit I was to support at 0900 Monday morning - not to mention how many weekends I flew in support of CMF/Reserve units. We usually got home on the Friday though, (if frequently quite late), 'cos 1530 Friday was sacrosanct - POETS* day for every grunt unit I ever worked with.
(POETS day: "Piss Off Early, Tomorrow's Saturday")