Book Reveals Failed Delta Hunt for bin Laden:

For nearly a week, 40 of America’s best trained, most elite Soldiers from the 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment Delta, or “Delta Force,” combed the 14,000 foot peaks with wavering Afghan militia allies to hunt down the world’s most wanted man: Osama bin Laden. In a first ever account, the man who shepherded those bearded warriors into Tora Bora’s thin mountain air writes of the near misses, frustrated plans and weak-kneed guerrillas that stymied their quest for al Qaeda’s top commanders.

Writing under the name “Dalton Fury,” the Delta Force commander — a major at the time - gives a detailed look in “Kill bin Laden: A Delta Commander’s Account of the Hunt for the World’s Most Wanted Man” how the unit prepared for, planned and executed its complicated mission.

I haven’t checked out the book, but it sure sounds interesting. For the record: I’ve never been convinced that bin Laden got away.

My son camped aboard the USS Silversides (SS 236) in Muskegon, Michigan, this past weekend with his Boy Scout troop. Its the second time he’s overnighted aboard the retired WW2 Gato-class boat, and he’s taken the tour a couple of other times, too.

This year, he wanted to watch the film Below before the campout, as part of the movie had been filmed aboard the Silversides. We got the DVD via Netflix and checked it out and I’m glad we did. It’s a sort of thriller-type movie about a WW2 sub that picks up survivors of a torpedoed hospital ship. The sub is apparently haunted by the ghost of her former skipper, who died earlier in the patrol, and a German destroyer seems to have an uncanny ability to track them down. A young officer suspects that some of his superiors have something to hide about the death of the captain, and things basically go downhill from there.

Although I’m not convinced that the diving suits used by some characters during a repair attempt are accurate, the movie seems to be mostly believable from a technical and historical perspective, something rather unusual for Hollywood military films. They intentionally go down to 600 feet, which I think is quite a bit deeper than actual standard capabilities, though. Not a truly great watch, and certainly not a high-intensity terror flick, but I thought it was worth a couple of hours.

If anyone has a comment about the diving suits, post it.

Just received a very special IN THE MAIL book, an autographed copy of Secret and Dangerous: Night of the Son Tay POW Raid by William A. Guenon. A loyal reader chatted with him at a local open cockpit day and picked it up for ol’ Murdoc.

Here’s the goods:

A thrilling eyewitness account of the secret humanitarian mission in 1970 by one of the pilots who flew the amazing C-130 aircraft on the edge of a stall at night while leading six helicopters in close formation deep into North Vietnam for a daring rescue attempt of POWs being held in the shadows of Hanoi.

As a two-part story, it also describes the same raider-pilot’s return to Son Tay prison 24 years later, in broad daylight with camera in hand, including his high-anxiety confrontation and arrest by North Vietnamese police.

It includes 64 rare pictures and diagrams, most never declassified and published until now.

Looks good and I’ll have a bit more on it after I’ve had a chance to get through it.

And a big high five to the reader who thought of Murdoc and sent this on. Thanks!

Just got The Lions of Iwo Jima by Fred Haynes and James A. Warren and read nearly half of it while flying today. Great read so far.

The Lions of Iwo Jima tells the full story of one of the greatest units fielded in the history of the U.S. Marines. Combat Team 28, 4500 men strong, trained for a full year, landed on the black sands of Iwo Jima on February 19, 1945, and raised the flag atop Mount Suribachi after four days of ferocious combat. Major General Fred Haynes USMC (Ret’d), then a young captain, is the last surviving officer in CT28 intimately involved in planning and coordinating all phases of the Team’s fight on Iwo Jima. Drawing on a wealth of previously untapped documents, personal narratives, and letters, in addition to more than 100 interviews with survivors, Haynes and Warren recapture in riveting detail what the Marines of Combat Team 28 experienced, placing particular emphasis on the Team’s ferocious struggle to break through the main belt of the Japanese defenses to the north, and reduce the final pocket of resistance on the island in Bloody Gorge.

The Lions of Iwo Jima offers fresh interpretations of the fight for Suribachi, the iconic flag raising photo, and the nature of the campaign as a whole, and helps to answer the essential questions: Who were these men? What accounts for their extraordinary performance in battle?

The first (smaller) flag was just raised when I left off. If the second half of the book is anything like the first, this is a real winner.

I will have a lot more on this in the near future.

So I’m checking out the Desert Locust Military Goggle System from Revision Eyewear and my 10-year-old daughter says

“You look like you should have a fake laser thingy.”

“A ‘fake laser thingy’?” I ask.

“Yeah. A fake laser thingy. Like someone in a bad science fiction movie from the 70s.”

At that point I knew we needed a picture:

(more…)

Via Instapundit comes this astounding piece of in Slate by David Plotz: Red Dawn: Its portrait of Russia is dated. Its portrait of America is timely—and terrifying.

Red Dawn embodies conservative nutterdom in a way few films not made by Mel Gibson have ever managed. If Ann Coulter made a movie, it would look like Red Dawn. This is thanks to director John Milius. Apocalypse Now screenwriter, Conan the Barbarian auteur, and former NRA board member, Milius is a military zealot, infatuated with the warrior code. Red Dawn is really a fetish movie, an ode to guns and blood.

A “fetish movie”? An “ode to guns and blood”? It might be, I guess. But if it is, there are hundreds of action movies, most of them not military-themed, much more deserving of the titles.

Plotz points out that Red Dawn is in the Guinness Book of World Records for being the “most violent” movie ever made. It apparently got this record by having 134 separate acts of violence, more than any other movie. I watched it again not too long ago, and I guess I’ve got to say that most of the violent acts are pretty tame by most standards.

Plotz goes on to write

But what’s most unsettling about Red Dawn today is not its infatuation with the warrior death cult. It’s that the movie’s historical parallels have been turned upside down. In 1984, the Soviets of Red Dawn represented, well, the Soviets, and the Wolverines represented both the Americans and also the plucky Afghan mujahideen then defeating the Red Army in a guerilla war. But on re-viewing, Red Dawn isn’t a stark reminder of Cold War fears. Rather, it’s a pretty good movie about Iraq, with the United States in the role of the Soviets and the insurgents in the role of the Wolverines.

This scene was cut just weeks before Red Dawn's release after the San Ysidro McDonald's massacre

He then goes on to list all sorts of things which prove his point, but at the end of his article he admits that “Red Dawn is not an exact parallel to our situation.” He points out the things at odds with his parallel, and it sure seems to deflate his whole point. What he seems to be missing is that the portrayal of the invaders in the film was pretty much a cardboard cut-out caricature of the evil Commie bastards, while at the same time he’s taking what appears to be his own cardboard cut-out caricature opinions of the US military in Iraq and comparing the two. In short, he seems to be saying his ill-informed opinion of the campaign in Iraq is eerily similar to his ill-informed opinion of the film Red Dawn.

Also, I’m wondering if the deleted scenes section of the DVD includes the plot about how Patrick Swayze and the Wolverines spent most of their time killing and terrorizing civilians instead of attacking enemy troops. I don’t remember that part, but if it’s in there somewhere the comparisons between the US freedom fighters and the insurgents and terrorists in Iraq would hold up a bit better.

I haven’t picked up the collector’s edition DVD yet, but I think it’s high time I did so.

Also, while Plotz spends all sorts of time telling us who Milius is, what he’s all about, and how he shuck his political messages into the film, he didn’t bother telling us what Milius said the film was about. Milius says the Soviets, Cubans, and Nicaraguans actually represent the US Federal government and that the movie is basically about gun control.

Just caught this submarine wreck movie starring Charleton Heston last night. Hadn’t seen it for close to 30 years, I guess.

Not too bad and worth the time, but not really great by any means.

What I found especially interesting was that the DSRV-1 Mystic was in the movie. I just posted that it had been retired last week.

I’ve actually had Man of the People: The Maverick Life and Career of John McCain by Paul Alexander for a couple of weeks now, but am just getting around to posting it.

“Among the many legends who have made America great stands John McCain. Man of the People, Revised and Updated lyrically tells his quintessentially American story: a seemingly ordinary man doing extraordinarily heroic and selfless things–out of a pure devotion to his country. This dynamic biography shows why it’s easy to imagine him among the ranks of Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Reagan, who led America with such daring and wisdom. McCain’s life is so organically American, so true to the legacies of the leaders who preceded him, that the greatest chapter of his story is still to be written.”
–Monica Crowley, panelist, The McLaughlin Group; host, The Monica Crowley Show

“John McCain is a real man. By that I mean he has faults and weaknesses like anybody else. But he has supplemented those with a ferocious courage and intensity. Paul Alexander brings McCain’s life to life in a way the reader will never forget.”
–Bill O’Reilly, anchor, The O’Reilly Factor

“Man of the People, Revised and Updated is nothing short of the definitive text on what makes John McCain tick. The complexity of this man is not well understood–unless you read this book. Alexander’s must-read chapter on the infamous 2000 South Carolina primary–’The Dirtiest Race I’ve Ever Seen’–is the most comprehensive telling to date of that sad moment in our politics.”
–Craig Crawford, Washington journalist, cqpolitics.com

“If I were looking for a politician to clean the corporate pigsty, it would be John McCain. In Man of the People, Paul Alexander artfully captures the drive, the integrity, and the tenacity that make John McCain such a one-of-a-kind politician.”
– Arianna Huffington, cofounder and Editor in Chief, The Huffington Post

You gotta love that last one.

A new edition revised for the 2008 races, published by Wiley.

I submit that the opening credits of ‘Hawaii Five-O’ is the most awesome in television history:

The pull in to Lord standing atop that building starting at about 0:14 is, itself, awesome.

I remember watching it as a young kid, probably about the same time I also enjoyed ‘Cannon’ and ‘Barnaby Jones.’ We caught an episode last night on CBS.com’s free video section, and I gotta admit that I found the style not only held up, it still seems a bit edgy. I was impressed.

Question: In the episode we watched, “To Hell With Babe Ruth,” McGarrett claims that Japanese pilots had shouted “To hell with Babe Ruth” as they attacked Pearl Harbor. I had never heard of this before, and a quick google returns the episode as the top hit. Other hits seem to indicate that Japanese troops shouted what they supposedly thought was a great insult during banzai charges and such, but I gotta say I am inclined to think it’s an urban legend that may have even started with this television episode. Does anyone know more about this?

Bonus: The episode in question also features actor Mark Lenard, best known for playing Spock’s father in the ‘Star Trek’ shows and films, in a truly scary Japanese get up. I wonder why they chose Lenard, which Wikipedia claims was born in Chicago to a Russian Jewish immigrant, to portray a Japanese ninja rather than an actor from, say, Japan. Unless maybe they had problems finding a Japanese actor to play a man who thought WW2 was still being fought?

EagleSpeak:

It seems that every good movie about the naval war in the Pacific mentions the “Coast Watchers.” In Harm’s Way, Father Goose and even the The Wackiest Ship in the Army all feature coast watchers in setting out the path to Allied victory.

So, who were the Coast Watchers?

In a former life, I began working on a screenplay in which the Coast Watchers figured prominently. If anyone in the movie business wants to see a four page treatment for a WW2 action/drama by Murdoc, send money and I’ll get it off to you shortly.

Otherwise, go read Eagle’s whole post.