An environmental brain spasm...

[elfs]

My grandfather liked to tell the story about how, as a medic during WWII, he was attached to a POW camp filled with surly Germans. New prisoners, he said, all went through a common process: on their first day, they were surprised, and would often laugh, at mealtimes, because their meal came on flimsy aluminium trays. The Americans, it seemed, had fallen on hard times, and been so desperate for materials that all they could afford for their prisoners were these flexible metal trays. Surely, the war would soon be over, and surely Germany had won.

At the end of the meal, they were shocked to learn that the Americans were just throwing the trays away. The Americans had enough raw material they could afford to just toss aluminium into the trash. Then they understood: surely, the war would be over soon, and surely Germany had lost.

It occurs to me that my children's generation will shake their heads at the ridiculous wastefulness of both sides.

Comments

[solarbird]

Don't need your kids to do that - I did that.

[gromm.livejournal.com]

Both sides? No, this is an American thing. The Germans never stopped recycling everything that could be recycled, and reusing everything that didn't need to be recycled yet.

[srmalloy.livejournal.com]

Not just something as fungible as a stamped-aluminum tray. I remember, a number of years ago, looking through a book on the Lockheed P-38 Lightning, and coming across a picture of a bulldozer pushing a P-38 into a ravine that already held a dozen or more P-38s; the caption explained that this was an airfield in the Aleutians, and the Army Air Corps had decided that it wasn't worth the gas to fly the planes back to the continental US to be scrapped. Today, the value of a P-38 in restored but non-flyable condition is close to a million dollars; Glacier Girl, the P-38F recovered from the ice in Greenland, is the only fully-functional P-38 left in the world, with an estimated value of fifteen million dollars.

[sianmink.livejournal.com]

Actually there are currently 9 P-38's in airworthy condition existing in the world, with about 7 more undergoing restoration (though whether for flight or display is unclear) Glacier Girl is the only P-38F model in existence however. The rest were G or M models, generally restored to L-5LO specifications.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

Ah, there's a reason for that -- if it was in Europe.

You know why the US/UK forces mostly stopped west of the Rhine, and why the Falaise Gap opened up in late 1944/early 1945? It's because there wasn't enough gas. Tanks run on gas. Planes run on [a different grade of] gas. More importantly, the ammo trucks to keep them in bullets and the tankers to keep them in gas run on gas. (Forget trains, in late 1944/45 -- apart from the RAF/USAAF bombing, the retreating Germans didn't want to leave working transport infrastructure behind for the enemy to use.)

Gas had been stockpiled in the UK since 1940 and was pumped to the forces advancing through France via PLUTO. Each PLUTO pipe could transport 300 tons of fuel per 24 hours; eventually they reached 4000 tons per day by the end of the war. That's most of the fuel they had to run a war on. A single modern US army mechanized brigade will burn that 4000 tons in a day, burp, and ask for more.

Which is more use: three fighter planes with enough fuel for just one of them to fly, or one fighter plane with enough fuel (and some slack in the logistic pipeline)?

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

The three planes. And here's why:

You are forgetting that planes break down. Also accidents happen. More importantly, in a war, the other side is actively trying to shoot them down. If you have a single plane, and you lose that plane to crosswinds while landing or bullets or a pilot getting explosive dysentary at 20,000 ft, then you have nothing at all to wage your war with. But having spare vehicles allows you to just gas up the next bird and fly again.

This is one of the reasons I'm so worried about our current military way of thinking. When faced with the numbers of Soviets weapons, we instead choice fewer but more capable machines. That was fine, up to a point. But now instead of 200 B52s, we are counting on 20 B2s. It doesn't take long for inevitable accidents (as what happened on Anderson AFB in 2008) and equipment failures to whittle your force to nothing with so few machines. Capable, yes. Indestructible, no. And putting all your eggs in so few baskets, as the saying goes, isn't wise.

B-52

[(Anonymous)]

As of February 2009, 90 of the original 744 B-52 are still in service

[lovingboth]

Plus there are better things for pilots to do, even girly transport pilots, than fly from the Arctic near the Soviet Union to California just to scrap the planes. Depending on the journey route and how many planes you need to move, it's not impossible that someone will die en route too.

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

One day, tech will progress to the point where we can mine our own landfills for metals, plastics, and glass. The problem today has been separating stuff. But if you can somehow automate seperation (say, with cameras and robotics) cheaply, you can get lots of free copper, iron, aluminum, etc.