Last night, a clip about this memorial came up on my facebook feed. A sobering reminder
of what was lost.
The "Counting the Cost" memorial, located at the American Air Museum in Duxford, England, is a 52-panel glass sculpture commemorating over 7,000 US aircraft lost during WWII operations from UK bases. The etched panels line the entrance ramp, visually representing the immense scale of losses with silhouettes of bombers and fighters.
Location: Imperial War Museum (IWM) Duxford, near Cambridge, UK.
Significance: Honors over 30,000 US airmen who died while flying from UK bases during World War II.
Design: The 52 glass panels are divided into two segments (43 on the left, 9 on the right) and feature engraved silhouettes of aircraft, acting as a "missing in action" memorial.
Details: The panels include engravings representing the USAAF 8th Air Force (6,346 lost) and 9th Air Force (692 lost).
I have been there, and it is an impressive memorial. More impressive in person.
ReplyDeleteThe cost of war is seldom remembered properly.
ReplyDeleteIf we did more often war wouldn't be so popular.
It was 20 years between "The GREAT WAR" aka WW1 and start of WW2. So many people REMEMBERED the cost that FDR had to create a "They ATTACKED US" to get support for the war effort in Europe.
Today it seems our "Greatest Ally Ever" (spit) can simply buy and extort America into fighting wars for them.
yeah. and good old FDR did everything he could to start it too. we used to call what he did "acts of war" too.
Deleteone reason why Russia doesn't take the bait over the bullshit we do is that they remember the great war where so many died in WW2. their kids KNOW what happened and the cost of it all to end it too.
Russia lost what close to 20 million or more during WW2 ? I also heard it was like 1 in 7 of them.
in the first year alone, they lost 3.5 to 5 million people. that tends to leave a mark.
One of my uncles was shot down in 1943 on a mission with the 8th Air Force, 95th Bomb Group. Although wounded, he manged to get out of the aircraft and spent the remainder of the war as a guest of the Lutwaffe.
ReplyDeleteNemo
And now they won't let us use DG in our fight to preserve civilization.
ReplyDeleteDG ?
DeleteOne of the world's great air museums.
ReplyDeletehad a bomber vet who was my eye doctor back when I was a kid. really nice guy too. had some pictures of planes and
ReplyDeleteother stuff on his walls. he told me about the damn cold. of being scared to death up there. and watching planes going down. main thing I remember about him was saying it okay to be scared to death as long as you still did you JOB. he told me, "everyone gets scared, it what you do while scared that matters" him and my Dad seem to get along alright. but then again, Dad was a vet as well. what I didn't know was that my Dad had 2 navy crosses for valor
and 16 or more "battle stars" until he was buried . yeah. Dad is buried in Arlington. the Navy did Dad right. they put Mom up for the night. had 2 commanders to work with us even. real class act. and funny part is that Dad always called "the fucking navy" I told that to one of the commanders and he just laughed. he told me, "well, with all of his medals , he could call whatever he wanted too and NO one was going to give him any shit for it"
a whole lot of guys gave a lot more than anyone had any right to ask them to do. and to them, it was a job that needed to get done. it a damn shame that the kids today are not taught about how much their grandfathers went thru and did to get the world we live in now. back when I was going to school, a lot of our teachers where WW2 vets.
we lost a lot by not having more vets become teachers. now we have blue haired freaks teaching kids and we wonder how why the kids today are so damn stupid and don't know anything ?
kids need to know their history. what their parents and grandparents went thru and did to get here today.
most kids have no idea of just how bad it was. it not some damn video game where you can reset everything and start over. it way past time we started to teach history again to the kids. they need it and we all would be better off if we did .
wonder what the Brits will do when the Muzzies blow that up? which they will do....
ReplyDeleteI was there several years ago. Did you know that Major Alton Glen Millers name is there. Saw it. And, also Joseph Kennedy Jr. also. Very moving.
ReplyDeleteOne of the biggest factors to winning the war was the ability of the U.S. to out produce the enemy. The number of ships and planes we built after Dec 7, 1941 was more that Japan and Germany lost during the entire war. Today, after decades of off shoring machining and production, we may not be able to do that again.
ReplyDelete