COUNTERCOLUMN: All Your Bias Are Belong to Us

There's a meme going around that American soldiers, marines, and airmen in prior wars were somehow properly equipped for those wars, and only today are we sending poorly equipped troops into battle.

Al Neuharth drops it into his latest column here like a backhanded slap while he fastens the chains around the necks of newly free peoples everywhere.

But it's nothing new.

That meme has got to be put down like a sick animal.

Here are the facts:

--The Continental Army nearly perished at Valley Forge for lack of warm clothing.

--Equipment and uniforms in the American Civil War, even for the Union side, were so bad in some instances that the term "shoddy" stays with us to this day.

--The handgun used in the Spanish-American war was wholly inadequate.

--In WWI, thousands of US troops perished or became seriously ill due to poor living conditions (go figure!)

--At the outset WWII, American fighter pilots were completely outclassed in their Brewster F2A Buffalo fighters planes. The Japanese shot them out of the sky like so many skeets at the Battle of Midway. They were so bad that the Navy first pawned them off on the USMC, and then finally retired the fighter from active service altogether.

--American tanks -- except possibly for the Grant -- were pathetic throughout the war. The Sherman was flammable as a match. The 76mm armament was inadequate to defeat the Tiger. They only way they could figure out how to defeat a German Tiger tank was to send a whole platoon against it, try to overwhelm the German gunner and get in a rear shot, and hope against hope to have single crew left at the end. The only saving grace was that the Germans could make so few Tigers: Less than 2,000 were ever made.

It took 40,000 Shermans to defeat them.

--US Marines fought World War II with Springfield .03's - a fine bolt-action rifle, but of WWI vintage. The Army went with the M1, which was the finest infantry weapon produced up to that time, and only issued the .03's to snipers.

--B-17 Bombers initially had almost no firepower in the nose. German fighters figured this out fast. The deficiency was not corrected until the B-17 G model was introduced.

--Landing craft sank. A lot.

--American troops hit the Korean peninsula ill-prepared for the cold weather, and so short of weapons cleaning gear that the soldiers had to cut patches out of their uniforms to swab out their barrels. The lubricant froze in the cold, locking bolts in place and deadlining vehicles.

--American soldiers in were issued the M113 personnel carrier. Which was a good idea. But making the bodies out of magnesium - which is strong, lightweight, and burns - was a bad idea. So bad that drivers stopped operating them from inside the vehicle, and instead tied ropes to the controls and controlled the vehicles by sitting on top of them.

--The M16 rifle was ok, contrary to popular belief. It was an excellent design for the European battlefield, once we accepted that hardly anyone ever got a shot off beyond 300m. But the propellant used in the early variants of the ammunition was inadequate to force the bolt to recycle. The slightest grime or mud provided enough friction to slow the bolt action down, causing it to fail to expel the cartridge, and chamber the next round. The result was rampant feeding problems. It got so bad that many US troops took to using the more reliable AK-47.

And NONE of these armies routinely armored their trucks. Some local variants were fashioned. Soldiers sandbagged their hearts out. But there was no central, coordinated, theater-wide effort to uparmor vehicles ANYWHERE until late 2003.

And only recent advances in ceramic and ballistic technology even make it feasible.

The only reason anyone could bitch about a shortage in Kevlar vests in 2003 is because we had enough of them for the guys who didn't have them to stand out.

Bloggers and media consumers need to confront this "ill-equipped" meme whenever it arises.

The fact is that the US Army fighting in Iraq right now is the best armed, best-equipped, best watered, best-fed army in the history of mankind.

And the next army, the next OIF rotation, will have it even better.

Splash, out

Jason