On Jan 18, 3:06 pm, "Ray O'Hara" <
raymond-oh...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> As a SAR guy, if someone told me that the four helos that went in
>> ahead of me had all been shot down, my first thought would be, "Hot
>> damn! Now WE get the rescue!"
>>
>> Hard to explain rationally, I guess.
plus, they *have* to be getting low on ammo by now.
> we wrote off the Philippines in WWII.
> there comes a time when you are throwing away lives.
> it's a brutal math. but there are times you have to make that call.
your example is several orders of magnitude greater than a typical
CSAR, and a general collapse of an entire army is hardly related to
recovering a pilot in extremis. Yes, I agree with you that in times
like early 1942 in the South Pacific, there was not much left that
could be done beyond scattering the entire army in the Philipines to
the hills, with the hope that more would survive than in Japanese
custody (I certainly would have broken for the hills at the first
opportunity). At the time of the US surrender, Stillwell and the
British Generals couldn't have known what level of treatment awaited
their honorably captured soldiers.