Lightning beat up of RAFC graduation parade

[pulse1]

We mustn't leave out the Ark Royal's Buccaneers show of force over British Honduras which put an end to Guatemala's plans to invade.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/...te-review.html

[Danny42C]

exrivofrigido (#35),

but there is such an expectation (usually very misguidedly) of zero collateral damage, that the chains are short and tight. But perhaps, in a general war, it won't be so. Insh'allah...

You have hit the nail right on the head there ! The best comment on a "general" war came from an old uncle of mine who'd served his time in the trenches in France: "When the scrapiron starts flying about, everybody's liable to get hurt". "Collateral" damage is inevitable.

Our Bomber campaign killed (how many) non-combatant Germans in WWII ? (the Luftwaffe returned the compliment). How many innocent Burmese men, women and children did my bombs kill ? I'll never know.

I've said before: "War is war; it is not nice; the innocent must suffer with the guilty; it was ever so, and will ever be so". The logical French put it in three syllables: "C'ést la guerre".

[exrivofrigido]

Originally Posted by Danny42C

exrivofrigido (#35),

You have hit the nail right on the head there ! The best comment on a "general" war came from an old uncle of mine who'd served his time in the trenches in France: "When the scrapiron starts flying about, everybody's liable to get hurt". "Collateral" damage is inevitable.

Our Bomber campaign killed (how many) non-combatant Germans in WWII ? (the Luftwaffe returned the compliment). How many innocent Burmese men, women and children did my bombs kill ? I'll never know.

I've said before: "War is war; it is not nice; the innocent must suffer with the guilty; it was ever so, and will ever be so". The logical French put it in three syllables: "C'ést la guerre".

Danny, I couldn't agree more - and unlike most of us (and hopefully it will remain that way), you have actually experienced a war. *Our 'war' was really just the 21st Century equivalent of Kipling's 'scrimmage in a border defile'. *Dangerous and deadly to some, of course, but a long way away and not really of much consequence outside our own little bubble. *And I don't know about jezails, but our enemy was pretty hopeless with Kalashnikovs (and even - largely - with proper .303 rifles). *So we muddled through, errors and crimes against decent soldiering largely unpunished. *Our grandfathers wouldn't have got away with it against Germans or Japanese, but then nor would they have spent so much time drinking tea and discussing crop rotation with the civilians who happened to live on the battlefield. *Counter-insurgency is a conundrum - neither fish nor fowl. *As a wise man said of Afghanistan (and many other places, no doubt), 'if you think you understand the tribes, you haven't been paying attention'. *The sad irony is that we really needn't have messed it up, but we did (by dumping the place and heading to Iraq), and now here we are. *I hope, if a proper war heaves into sight, we can still fall back on the lessons hard-learned by those (such as you) who stood a proper test and lived to explain how.

Anyway, back to people knocking hats off with Lightnings and other noisy animals...