Aviators From The United States

"According to Darwin’s Origin of Species, it is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives; but the species that survives is the one that is able best to adapt and adjust to the changing environment in which it finds itself."

"It is not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent but the ones most adaptable to change."

"I tried to kill the plane, not people. We heard that the Japanese shot our parachuting pilots, but I never saw that. We never shot a pilot who had bailed out. Sometimes you would fly near them and they would salute you. As for the planes, it varied. For a fighter, you fired where the wing joined the fuselage. For the bombers, you went for the engines. You didn’t want to get too close because the wounded plane would spew engine oil all over your plane."

"Every time I flew a mission, I had the nose of my plane painted a different color so that the Japanese would think these were different planes. I got credit for that idea back in America, but really the idea was not mine. It was Chennault’s. When flying over a city, we would split up, two or three going to the right, several over the center, some to the left. The noise created the impression that there were more planes than we really had."

"I was flying with 1,000-pound bombs attached to my P-51. We were escorting B-29s sent to bomb steel mills in Korea. On the return I flew over Peking and over the Great Wall. I was fascinated with it and followed it all the way to the Yangtze River. My plane made a shadow over the wall and I said out loud, ‘O God, let me one day walk were my shadow walks.’"

"One Sunday, I was carrying out my training in a reveries, my imagination running wild as I gunned my machine into a tight turn, dipping low to compensate for centrifugal force. Suddenly over the din of the exhaust there came the frantic scream of a frightened horse. I hurriedly braked and watched the terrified animal plunge down the side of the mountain, then across the stream and into the trees on the other side. It was obviously a U.S. Cavalry mount. Between calling soothing words to his animal, the uniformed rider shouted for me to cut my engine. I almost fell off the motorcycle when I realized it was Colonel Robert C. Richardson, the commandant of cadets. Fumbling to still my raving engine, I leaped from the machine, praying out loud that the "Com" could regain control before both he and his horse were killed. All my plans for a commission as a second lieutenant seemed to hang in the balance, but I dismissed these selfish thoughts and raced down the mountain, determined to reach the Com in time to be of some aid."

"There is an archaic regulation at West Point that says a cadet shall not own a horse, a dog, or a moustache. Had the Powers That Be even suspected that I had a motorcycle that spring of 1932, it, too, would undoubtedly have been outlawed by the book of regulations. I had rented it from a shop in Highland Farms, a red Indian Scout that I had practically lived on it during the weekends from the time ice left the Hudson River. Four years of schooling in tactics and logistics had impressed upon me that no individual, much less an army, can do anything near perfect the first try. Success demands practice, doing things over and over again- what the military calls "dry runs." Thus, as the day drew closer for me to follow in the footsteps of the Venetian, I prepared by becoming completely at home on the vehicle I had chosen for my journey. The Indian was for training; I would buy another motorcycle for the trip when I got to France."

"Colonel Richardson had everything safely under control long before I caught up with him, drenched to the waist after splashing through the creek. He sat in the saddle, speaking soothingly to the panting animal and rubbing its quivering neck. I stood there at attention, feeling more in a state of shock than the horse. At least, the thought came to me, that the Com had not hit me with his riding crop. Finally, having attended to what every cavalryman considers his first duty, he turned his attention to me. "Don't you know, Mr. Scott," he said calmly, "that the bridle paths are off limits to you, much less motorcycles?" Only then did he dismount and slowly lead the quieted horse back across the stream and uphill to the path where my motorcycle lay. I tried to explain my fascination with the journeys of Marco Polo, my training for an attempt to retrace his route on a motorcycle. I even discussed with him that puzzled me. In all his journeys Marco Polo had never mentioned the Great Wall of China. The Com listened intently as we walked our mounts down the bridle path. He asked about logistics. Could I make such a journey? Had I considered every angle? I kept waiting for him to revert to being the commandant, to quote some regulation prohibiting my summer plans, but such an announcement never came. When we reached the crossroads near the Cadet Chapel, he remounted to return to the stables. Before he turned away told me to come see him at some convenient time the following week, saying that he had served as military attache in Rome before his present duty assignment. Perhaps he might be able to tell me something to help me on my monumental journey. "Good luck, Mr. Scott," he concluded. "You represent something of an enigma yourself.""

"Why are such machines necessary, a schoolchild might well ask? I would answer that having such weapons ready is the best way to make sure they will not be needed or used. I would say that if we did not have the proper state-of-the-art weapons, chances are the next generation would indeed have to fight yet another war. I would explain about the early days of World War II when we were losing all over the world; how it took two dangerous and costly years to get into service critically-needed aircraft of the right kind like the P-51 and B-29."

"As these words are being written, I am in the process of moving back to Georgia. Whatever the merits of Horace Greeley's advice, I have to paraphrase Walt Whitman and say that the farther west I have gone, the worse I have felt. It took me years to catch on. Then one day I flew east to the Museum of Flight and heard a fine lady by the name of Peggy Young tell me what it was, and I was hooked; I had found my ultimate purpose in life. I am now back in the Cherokee rose state to stay, near my hometown of Macon where- so many years ago- I jumped off the roof of the tallest house in town in a homemade glider. The Museum of Aviation only came into my life recently; it was not many years ago that I lacked the sense of purpose and satisfaction that it brings me. After coming home from China, victorious over my dual obsessions, I went through the worst period of my life, and found out how very much I needed goals. Big ones, too, because I never did learn how to do anything at less than full throttle."

"For now, the seriousness of war had gradually come to me. Unless men like myself-thousands and millions of them-left these wonderful luxuries in this great land of America we could lose it all forever. I loved these two with all my heart, but the only way in all the world to keep them living in the clean world they were accustomed to was to steel myself to the pain of parting with them for months or years-or even forever. The actuality of war, grim war, had come. I knew then that the theoretical word “Democracy” was not what we were to fight for. I knew it was for no party, no race, creed, or color. We were going to fight, and many of us were to die, for just what I had here- my wife and family. To me, they were all that was real, they were all that I could understand. To me, they were America."

"The only time I've ever been moderately successful in combat was in the bottom of my class at West Point because of a goat mind. And a goat is the bottom of the bottom."

"Weekends became training manoeuvres conducted in total secrecy- a uniformed cadet could hardly ride a motorcycle openly along the Plain of West Point- to prepare myself for thousands of miles along Marco Polo's route. I soon realized that New York State roads bore little resemblance to the rough terrain I would probably encounter in Europe and Asia Minor, but in the beautiful wooded hills sloping down past Callum Hall to the Hudson River, I found mountain trails running well past Cranberry Pond that seemed ideal for my purposes. These were bridle paths used occasionally by tactical officers on duty at the Academy- many from the cavalry- or by cadets with special riding privileges."

"I cleared the first magnolia, but then the main wing strut broke, and I came down in Mrs. Napier's rose bushes. It's the only plane I ever crashed"

"Anyway, my adventures had run out by 1982 when I made the worst mistake of my life by shutting myself away to work night and day on this book. I gradually became worse than bored until, as the year came to a close, I knew something was very wrong with me. I could not sleep and the thought of food- even breakfast, my favorite meal of the day- made me ill. As a teen-age Merchant Marine sailor I had never been seasick even in North Atlantic storms. As a flight instructor, I had never known airsuckness in all my years of teaching acrobatics. Now my force-feedings left me nauseated. I no longer bounced out of bed, awakening to sunrises full of plans, expectations, and promises. A fog had rolled in and with it came fear, cold and stark. I have always worked to remain in good physical condition and all medical tests failed to find any problem. Then they sent me to the last department, Psychiatry. I had reactive depression. As a psychiatrist explained it, I had lived a full and productive life only to become a recluse in my self-made prison. I learned then that depression is a disease; for me, accustomed as I was to boundless good health, it was the worst sickness I have ever known. In these more enlightened times, help is finally available in some measure for the millions who suffer from depression. Just recognizing it as a disease that can be treated has been a major step."

"The greatest thrill was the first time I ever flew with the Flying Tigers before I joined them. You see, they didn’t think much of us regular fliers. I had come in and gone to sleep under the mosquito netting, when a bunch of the Flying Tigers burst into my room. Not knowing what was happening, I grabbed the revolver I kept under my pillow and pointed it at them. They had come to ask if I would go on a mission with them, never thinking that I would. I readily agreed. They were really testing me out."

"Fear is a luxury one can’t afford."

"Resist until you are tortured, but do not take torture to the point where you lose the permanent use of your limbs."

"I never lost hope, and never did I despair of coming back alive."

"During the whole period of time we were in prison we heard of protests. Of course, the Vietnamese exposed us to four hours minimum of propaganda a day because we had slave speakers in every cell. There was no way to get away from that. So, they dreamed up all kinds of wild tales. If 200 people marched on Washington, they made it 200,000. We learned how to deal with the numbers. Of course, every protest, every anti-war speech made by a person such as McGovern, Jane Fonda, Galbraith, all of those only encouraged the Vietnamese, prolonged the war, worsened our condition and cost the lives of more Americans on the battlefield."

"I felt the South Vietnamese had a right to their own self-determination. And I was over there to help them to maintain that self-determination."

"Korea was probably the high point of my whole career as far as real gratification is concerned."

"Of all the indignities we were forced to undergo, I guess I resented meeting the foreign delegations more than any other. There was something so basically inhuman about appearing before the delegations and being asked how your food was and having to say it was excellent when it was not. Or to questions of your treatment, to lie in front of the cameras and say it was great, when they had literally tortured the stuffings out of you to make you appear."

"We were highly combat ready. We believed that the North Vietnamese, who were Communists led by the old atheist dictator, Ho Chi Minh, wanted to take over the rest of Southeast Asia. In other words, his doctrine was the same as Mao Tse Tung's and all of the rest of the militant Communists. We didn't want this to happen."

"I lived in abject misery for the rest of the time I was a prisoner, knowing that I had not upheld the standards that I expected of everyone else. Certainly it did one thing. It made me a lot more compassionate to other PW's who might be called upon or forced to give more than name, rank, serial number and date of birth."

"So, to my astonishment, we lived, or I lived, and many of the senior officers shared my plight, for the most time...there was no one in my cell. I was alone. And I prayed silently. But I put it up to God in such a way there could be no mistake, couldn't have been a coincidence, not even one in a billion. You see: I did this on more than one occasion."

"Guys were doing everything in order to get on the flight schedule, in order to be on a combat mission. It wasn't the type of thing that people were pretending to be sick or something. It was just the other way, people would fly while they were sick, or anyway, just to get on the schedule, to go up and participate in something that we believed in very strongly. The freedom of a nation that were our friends, the freedom of a nation that couldn't determine that freedom by themselves. And so, I believed very strongly in what I was doing over there, it was simply to protect an emerging nation from the clutches of militant Communism."

"The fact that after millions of people across the country cast their votes that our political system is basically controlled by Joe Manchin of WV and Susan Collins of Maine makes no fucking sense."

"The For the People Act would help more Americans retain their voting rights, while the companion John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act would restore and strengthen the federal oversight provisions stripped out of the 1965 Voting Rights Act by the 2013 Supreme Court case Shelby County v. Holder. The Brennan Center has advocated the passage of both bills... Both bills have passed in the U.S. House of Representatives, only to have been stalled in the Senate by U.S. Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, both Democrats."

"On every issue that truly mattered to West Virginia — such as opposing Hillary, Obama, cap & trade, Planned Parenthood, and higher taxes— Joe Manchin pretended to stand with West Virginians, but then voted with Chuck Schumer and the liberal D.C. Democratic leadership. Joe Manchin is a classic ‘say one thing do another’ politician."

"While Biden repeatedly vowed to address the climate crisis, his climate agenda was dealt a major setback back in Washington, D.C., when Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia criticized the slimmed-down $1.75 trillion Build Back Plan to address the climate crisis and to expand the nation’s social safety net. The plan will only pass the Senate if Manchin and Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema come around to support it. It was interesting Senator Manchin used Biden’s moment in Glasgow to hold his own news conference in Washington, D.C., to say, well, he’s weighing whether to support the Build Back Better Act... Some have said... that Senator Manchin has to decide whether he wants to be a senator or a lobbyist or maybe a Republican."

"Manchin is the perfect example of how Big Oil works. He’s taken more money than any other senator from the fossil fuel industry... There was that sting videotape released a couple of weeks ago where Exxon’s chief lobbyist reported talking to him every week and calling him their “kingmaker.” There was a report yesterday that Manchin spent part of September huddled with all the leading coal barons at a golf resort someplace, where they played a Civil War - themed golf tournament in between speeches."

"Manchin and Sinema are effectively acting like 21st Century-style "Dixiecrats" of the '50s ad '60s, segregationist Democrats such as James Eastland, Robert Byrd (Manchin's mentor) and George Wallace. The Dixiecrats' were committed to racial segregation and white supremacy...The question is whether faced with the potential defeat of historic civil rights legislation due to their opposition to filibuster reform, are Sinema and Manchin willing to go down in history as the Strom Thurmonds, George Wallaces, and yes, Robert Byrds of the 21st century, who stood in the classroom doors to block integration and for years filibustered civil rights laws. Will they want to face headlines like "Two Democratic Dissenters Manchin and Sinema Join Republicans in Blocking Filibuster Reform That Would Allow Majority Passage of Civil Rights Laws." Are Sinema and Manchin willing to face the outrage of the grassroots activists who helped get them elected and who are ready to cash in their chips and mobilize a mass movement to get these two Senators to change their positions? Sinema may be particularly susceptible to grassroots pressure, since her narrow win was powered in large part by organizing from unions and Latino activists. And if Sinema flips, would Manchin be willing to be the lone Democrat allowing Republicans to block historic civil rights legislation? Sinema's and Manchin's decisions may well determine whether America remains a democracy or whether it's indefinitely distorted by minority rule."

"West Virginia is the sixth poorest state in the United States of America and Manchin is pretending like he's helping them. But this is not about the makeup of the state. Look at the polling, even West Virginians agree with a lot of what is both of these bills. This is really about Manchin being bought and sold and choosing the owner-donor class over his constituents. He's not doing the will of the people and neither is Sinema."

"Sanders' remarks on the NDAA—which cleared a key procedural hurdle late Wednesday—came as Democrats in Congress also worked to finalize the Build Back Better Act, a reconciliation package whose social spending and climate provisions have been gutted to satisfy right-wing members of the majority party such as Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.). Manchin, a key swing vote in the Senate, has repeatedly cited the national debt as a reason to pare back the reconciliation bill, which now has a top-line price tag of around $1.75 trillion over ten years—roughly half of the original $3.5 trillion framework. But while the West Virginia Democrat says he's alarmed by the prospect of spending to expand Medicare and combat the climate crisis, he appears unconcerned that, over the past decade, Congress has poured over $9 trillion into the only federal agency that has yet to pass a full independent audit. Manchin has approved every NDAA since 2011, and he voted Wednesday to advance the 2022 Pentagon budget."

"the coal-baron senator Joe Manchin"

"I trusted Justice Gorsuch and Justice Kavanaugh when they testified under oath that they also believed Roe v. Wade was settled legal precedent and I am alarmed they chose to reject the stability the ruling has provided for two generations of Americans."

"these people who own fossil fuels are powerful players in our political world. Until recently, ExxonMobil was the biggest company on Earth. Entire nations - Russia or Saudi Arabia, say - are essentially petro-states, deriving most of their revenue and power from hydrocarbons. The biggest political donors in American history, the Koch brothers, were also the country's biggest oil and gas barons; United States Senator Joe Manchin, who has taken more political donations from the fossil fuel industry than anyone else in Washington and personally has millions invested in coal, was single-handedly able to rewrite climate legislation in 2021."

"He didn’t abruptly do anything,” Sanders interjected during a Sunday appearance on ABC’s This Week. “He has sabotaged the president’s agenda. … Six months ago, I made it clear that you have people like Manchin — [and] Sinema, to a lesser degree — who are intentionally sabotaging the president’s agenda, what the American people want, what a majority of us in the Democratic caucus want. Nothing new about this”...Sanders added, “The problem was that we continued to talk to Manchin like he was serious; he was not. This is a guy who’s a major recipient of fossil fuel money, a guy who has received campaign contributions from 25 Republican billionaires.” Responding to a Manchin quote about inflation and how it affects his West Virginia constituents, Sanders argued that it’s “the same nonsense Manchin has been talking about for a year” and pointed out that Manchin’s state is one of the poorest in the nation. “You ask the people of West Virginia whether they want to expand Medicare to cover dental, hearing, and eyeglasses. You ask the people of West Virginia whether we should demand that the wealthiest people and large corporations start paying their fair share of taxes. Ask the people of West Virginia whether or not all people should have health care as a human right like in every other country on Earth. That’s what they will say.” He concluded, “In my humble opinion, Manchin represents the very wealthiest people in this country, not working families in West Virginia or America.”"

"never voted for — nor do I support — such a ban [on abortion ]"

"President Joe Biden and the Democratic Congress are facing a crisis as the popular domestic agenda they ran on in the 2020 elections is held hostage by two corporate Democratic senators: fossil-fuel consigliere Joe Manchin and payday-lender favorite Kyrsten Sinema. But the very week before the Democrats’ $350-billion annual domestic package hit this wall of corporate money-bags, all but 38 House Democrats voted to hand over more than double that amount to the Pentagon. Senator Manchin has hypocritically described the domestic spending bill as “fiscal insanity,” but he has voted for a much larger Pentagon budget every year since 2016. Real fiscal insanity is what Congress does year after year, taking most of its discretionary spending off the table and handing it over to the Pentagon before even considering the country’s urgent domestic needs."

"#ICYMI: The Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill has passed the House and is now on the way to the President’s desk! Our bipartisan bill will help WV & the nation address infrastructure needs while creating good-paying jobs and growing the economy. MORE:"

"I'm fiscally responsible and socially compassionate"

"The Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill represents a historic investment in West Virginia’s infrastructure – around $6 billion over the next 5 years. Here are some of the investments that the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill will bring to WV:"

"I believe in President Biden"

"We just have to work together. We can't go too far left. This is not a center-left or a left country. We are a center, if anything, center-right country"

"Thanks to the #AmericanRescuePlan, nearly $124 MILLION in relief is on the way to 440 #WV healthcare providers. I fought for dedicated funding for rural healthcare providers in the ARP to ensure they can continue to provide critical care in our communities"

"And this is a genuine crisis for America because if President Biden is frustrated in his attempt to pass his Build Back Better legislation (that is overwhelmingly supported by Americans across the political spectrum) — all because business groups, giant corporations and rightwing billionaires are asserting ownership over their two “made” senators — there’s a very good chance that today’s cynicism and political violence is just a preview of the rest of the decade. But this isn’t as much a story about Kyrsten Sinema as it is about today’s larger political dysfunction for which she’s become, along with Joe Manchin, a poster child. Increasingly, because of the Supreme Court’s betrayal of American values, it’s become impossible for people like the younger Sinema to rise from social worker to the United States Senate without big money behind them.... While the naked corruption of Sinema and Joe Manchin is a source of outrage for Democrats across America, what’s far more important is that it reveals how deep the rot of money in American politics has gone, thanks entirely to a corrupted Supreme Court. In Justice Stevens’ dissent in Citizens United, he pointed out that corporations in their modern form didn’t even exist when the Constitution was written..."

"@LonelyPlanet has ranked #WV as one of the top 10 regions in the WORLD to visit in 2022! Bring your friends & family and experience #AlmostHeaven West Virginia - you might just want to stay."

"We are praying for Senator Rounds, their children and grandchildren, and the entire state of South Dakota as they mourn the loss of a magnificent First Lady of South Dakota."