aviators-from-the-united-states

"It's the biggest, most satisfying role I've ever had. Davidge is a human being who gets to know a lot of sides to himself. Wolfgang thought he was a bit too Han Solo, at first. Now, Davidge really evolves through everything in the story: humour, anguish, tears, hate, pride, love, pain, action. There's no end to the action! I'm trying to do most of it, myself. So, it's also, physically, a very gruelling experience."

"... this is the first science fiction film I know of that's based on character rather than hardware. I read the story on a plane from New York to LA and, at a critical point, I had to throw the script down. I was in tears... it touched me that much. It's such a wonderful story. Here's two guys who are enemies. One happens to be an alien. They could easily be an American and a Russian."

"The way I look at it, I am the alien! I'm the one devoid of human values. Drac has them. Not me. Not Davidge, the spaceman. For me, the film is the discovering of the human side of myself. You know – How to be human!"

"Actually, it was quite bad. It is a bad film. Only good thing about it was meeting my gal, Marie, we've been together two years now. And Lou, of course. Lou calls it: Sharks Don't Like Soul Food! Other than that, it was a learning experience for me. At the time, I felt I should be in a film which had a good chance of commercial success. A wrong reason to make any film."

"There is no kind of ultimate goal to do something twice as good as anyone else can. It's just to do the job as best you can. If it turns out good, fine. If it doesn't, that's the way it goes."

"The more experience you have, the better you are. And that's true of anything you do in airplanes, dogfighting in combat, or anything like that. Your chances of coming out on top depend on your experience level. The more experience you can get, the better chance you have of surviving in a war, or in any situation where you are faced with an emergency."

"My father taught me to finish anything I started. And I think that carries throughout your adult life. Most people's personalities and moralities are formed when they are rather young, and that characteristic will carry out throughout their lifetime. We were disciplined as kids, quite severely, if you didn't finish your jobs, and I think that's what brought about a desire to finish what I start and do the best job you could. And that's probably the reason that characteristic has carried throughout my life."

"I recall, we had—all of the guys, though, that got to be aces over there, you can pretty well pick the guys out. They were guys that weren’t cocky or conceited. They just had a job to do, and they trained themselves the best they could to the job right. And I think you can pretty well pick the guys out. They’reall—they like to have fun. They’re not a bunch of pessimists or optimists, either one. They’re pretty average people when you start looking at the cross-section of all aces we have."

"Actually, when people tell you that, "I had my mind made up when I was two years old to do this," I think you should take that with a grain of salt. Because it's very difficult for a kid who is going through an educational process, and being exposed to the world, to decide what he wants to do. Because he really hadn't been exposed to that kind of a life yet. And I had no idea what I wanted to do, except exist and that was about it. I had no interest in airplanes; we didn't even know what an airplane was. We didn't even see them except flying in the air. So obviously, there was no interest in them at all."

"You like the P-51 because you flew it in combat. It was a good airplane. But today, the newer the airplane, the better it is. It's just like a car. You get a 1991 Cadillac, you got high tech, a lot of computer technology in it, versus a 1980 Cadillac. It's just better and more fun to drive."

"I spent 65 years in air force cockpits and fought in four wars, but I never looked at it as an adventure. It’s duty. You could say that the most important thing I did was break the sound barrier. That’s the reason we’re on the moon. But it was my job to try. That’s the way I looked at it. Whatever the outcome, it didn’t really make much difference to me."

"In World War II, in combat in P-51s, during dogfights with 109s and 190s, for the first time we became exposed to the effects of the speed of sound on our airplanes. A Mustang, a P-47, or any of the other fighters that we were using in World War II, the fastest they would go was about 80 percent the speed of sound. They had very thick wings and canopies. That additional distance that the air had to travel to go around that wing that's going at about 80 percent of the speed of sound, brought its relative velocity to the skin of the wing up to the speed of sound."

"I don’t dream. I don’t have nightmares. I’m gifted in that I can lie down and sleep within a minute anywhere I am, any time of day."

"Well ... the point is, what does being a religious person mean? Does a religious person have to go to church all day and pray every night and morning? No, to me, if that's the description of a religious person, then I'm definitely not religious person. But that I definitely know right from wrong, you know, and what honesty is and because you were taught that in your family. But you don't have to believe that there is such a thing as a God who controls everything that happens because you are trained as a scientific guy. You know ... there are a lot of things, like you use the expression, the more I practice, the luckier I get."

"I felt like all my buddies were still in this squadron, those who hadn’t been shot down, and I just felt I hadn’t done my job. I’d been taught to do my job, and that’s the reason when I went back I felt good about it. And I said, “Hell, if I come home as a flight officer, with one airplane, I’ll be a flight officer the rest of my life.”"

"Hey, man, get a job you like and you’ll probably be quite good at it. And make your lifestyle fit your income. Don’t try to make your income fit your lifestyle. It’s that simple. Guys who like their job, they’re very good at it. I don’t care what it is."

"In my opinion there’s no such thing as a natural-born pilot. A pilot’s ability depends on experience, and the more experience a pilot has, the better he is. It’s that simple."

"I am an obsessive-compulsive reader and a history junkie. I brake by rote at every , I buy out museum bookstores, and for years my interest in colonial forts and villages so exhausted my two children that they are now permanently allergic to the past. I can tell you, right down to the hour, everything that happened at , and each setback that Franklin Roosevelt endured during World War II feels like it happened to me."

"... Childers had been an exemplary, even remarkable . After enlisting in the U.S. Marines fresh out of high school in , in 1990, Childers had scored high marks at , and then at a Light Armored Driver's course in California. Eight months after enlisting, Childers had briefly served in combat during the . After seasoning in a combat platoon at , Childers had been selected for a particularly coveted duty, marine security guard service at foreign embassies, and eventually had been stationed at embassies and consulates in ; Paris; and Nairobi, Kenya. In a variety of disciplines—platoon tactics, light armored reconnaissance, guard command, and especially physical fitness—Childers had consistently achieved the highest training and personal evaluations, and scored average in only one area, marksmanship."

"I didn't spend a year building a wooden and then sailing it two thousand miles down the Mississippi to simply because I was suffering from a complex although that certainly played a part. It was hot that spring on the Tennessee farm where we built the boat and I often relieved the tedium of nailing on deck planking or raising roof stringers by daydreaming about spinning lazily down through the muddy boils, exploring remote islands and s, or pulling off at sunset into s thick with s and stumps. Mostly, though, I was entranced by history. I hungered to see that river country when I stumbled across an account of that America followed toward prosperity and greatness."

"Consequently, my prognoses … go from those which are reasonably firm to those which might be considered visionary. Fortunately, there is a considerable overlap between the advances in the state of the art which are required for firm and for visionary military needs."

"Our development philosophy includes two elements: a philosophy of testing and a dual approach. Stated simply, the test philosophy requires a great deal of component reliability testing at the earliest possible test level in order to insure reliability of components before proceeding to subsystem testing, captive system testing, and on to launch."

"A word is necessary on the relationship between military need and scientific feasibility in space technology. In the long haul, our safety as a nation may depend upon our achieving “space superiority.” Several decades from now, the important battles may not be sea battles or air battles, but space battles, and we should be spending a certain fraction of our national resources to insure that we do not lag in obtaining space supremacy."

"We always talk about technology and what the capabilities are, but very seldom do we talk about the management that is necessary to do the job."

"Space capabilities provide reconnaissance, surveillance, communications, weather and navigation. They greatly augment our warning and intelligence capabilities. If we fail to deter war, space systems will improve our ability to deliver weapons, and to assess damage."

"We have to make investments in technologies that provide a positive asymmetry. And only the military, only the national security, warrants the expenditure of huge funds that have pay-offs in the far distant future."

"But the Sputnik did one thing that was very much a plus: it woke us up and it concerned the American people very much that they [Soviet Union] beat us to the draw in getting the first satellite into orbit. But we at our level, with the information that we had, and what we were doing, knowing that we could easily put something up in space, and we did do that, including putting a reconnaissance satellite, because it was given much higher priority really because of the Sputnik."

"I am deeply engrossed in man's first concerted attempt to penetrate outer space. The compelling motive for the development of space technology is the requirement for national defense."

"However, before man can be committed to space vehicles, a tremendous amount of human factors research will be necessary."

"Perhaps not only initially but for all time, space technology will include as its most characteristic problem the need for going from the surface of one celestial body to another with successful passage through the atmosphere of each."

"Recognized as an unusually intelligent man, Bennie Schriever had a strong character and a precise, disciplined, but creative mind, determined to master any task he undertook, and willing to make hard decisions. These characteristics were at least in part a result of an extraordinary background."

"When Gen. Bernard A. Schriever retired, he left behind a new kind of Air Force, far different than the one which he entered thirty-three years before. Today, the Air Force's ballistic missiles and its communications and detection satellites provide the nation with an aerospace capability second to none and help guarantee peace. These systems are living testimony to his leadership of the ballistic missile and space programs and mark him as "the Father of the U.S. Air Force's Space Program." Gen. Bernard A. Schriever truly typifies a breed of American who engenders progress and has the imagination, courage, and persistence to face and resolve complex and difficult problems."

"Let's look now at the next ten or fifteen years in space and how it can impact policy, strategy and possibly force structure. I sincerely believe that space, from a military standpoint, is the new high ground. It hasn't arrived, but it will evolve into the new high ground. We've had predominance on land, on the sea, in the air, and now space is next in line. Land was predominant until a few centuries ago. Go back to Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan: it was land capability. The British took maximum advantage of seapower and were predominant for several centuries. I think World War I was an even split between land and sea. In my opinion, World War II could not have been won without air superiority. So airpower today, is the predominant means of applying military force. This was true even in Korea and Vietnam. We all know that from a military standpoint, they were not declared wars. They were a no win situation. They both could have been won with relative ease if we had applied the forces that were available--without need for nuclear weapons."

"You have Stealth technology. That's going to last for a long time, but there will be some breakthroughs on that on the other side from a defense standpoint. What they are, I don't know, but now we're talking about defense against ballistic missiles. We thought at one time that here was a weapon that could never be destroyed by the enemy, but I don't have that same feeling now. I think it can be. But I think you can take actions to counter the defenses that might be set up, too. So it's a game of offense, defense, defense, offense, and so forth, so therefore technology continues as long as we have the world that we're living in."

"I see a possibility of a Space Force coming into being, from an operational standpoint. I hope it doesn't, because I don't think we need one. But we need an organization that pushes very hard on space and fights the battle here in Washington [D.C.] for budget support and so forth. I think that sometimes I get the feel that there aren't enough people fighting for that piece of the pie, you know, that's necessary. Look how long it took the Army. I was in the Army Air Corps for more years than I think I was in the Air Force, because we didn't become an Air Force until 1947."

"When I started flying, when I was at Texas A&M [University], we still had horses pulling French 75s around. Now, mind you, this was 1931 when I graduated there. And look where we are today. So it's an awful lot to swallow, and I think we've done extremely well, but we still have a ways to go."

"From the standpoint of the Air Force as a service, I think we have to elevate the whole future, the future’s part of the—you need a four-star general who's looking in the future, who fights like hell, and that includes space, because that's the area that you're going to need the most advance in, in terms of operational applications. I can't name them all, but we need that four-star guy who sits at that decision table and says, "Damn it to hell, I need this and I'll argue with you until the cows come home." You know, you may not win, but you need that advocacy. I don't see it right now. Let me put it this way. I'd like to see it. There's a lot of it; it seems to be more words, and I'd like to see a little more action with the words. Because they're saying the right words, and they're fighting the battle, but I think they can still do better."

"But of course, during peacetime you don't have actual wartime data to go by, but we did have the data coming out of Korea and then later out of Vietnam. But analysis during peacetime, particularly with new systems, you have to crank in a hell of a lot of assumptions. And that's why you have to be a little bit skeptical, and look underneath what some of the assumptions are, to be sure that you have a credible conclusion."

"Gen. Bernard A. “Bennie” Schriever, unquestionably one of the most important officers in Air Force history, ranks alongside the legendary Henry H. Arnold and Curtis LeMay in terms of long-term effect upon the service and the nation. Foremost among his many achievements was the development and acquisition in the 1950s and early 1960s of a reliable and operational ICBM force. It was a towering accomplishment—one that helped propel the United States to military dominance in space, as well."

"I think space has tremendous implications on national security policy, on strategy, on force structure, and perhaps even the survivability of the free world. Perhaps I might be accused of overemphasising what I consider to be policy implications on national security matters and specifically on space. But I contend that during the past twenty years, the progress we have made from the military standpoint, has been more limited by our national policy than it has been by availability of technology, or our ability to manage. I think the policy has been very inhibiting not only in space, but has also created what I consider to be today's strategic imbalance between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Just look back 20 years. At that time, we had unquestioned superiority. We were respected by both enemies and friends. We certainly were the leaders of the free world."

"Schriever’s life spanned the 20th Century and the rise of air and space capability and power. From respectable but modest origins in Germany, he made a new life in the United States. His military career up to 1945, while honourable, would not have suggested the respect he eventually gained, though his technical qualifications might have been thought noteworthy. Rather, his renown arose from its latter half."

"Well, space overall has had a tremendous impact on national security. We haven't really gotten to the point yet that we understand just how much of a revolution warfighting is going to be, because a major war is very much different than what we're doing now over there in the Balkans [ Kosovo/Yugoslavia ]. I think that it's hard to compare that situation to one where you really have a war. Now, it's a war in the sense of the implements that are used, but the objectives are different. I think that we're in what we call a revolution in military affairs, and it's playing out now."

"So we have a challenge of optimizing our capability in a completely new environment. Space has intruded, you might say, in many ways, and in other ways it can bring about what I consider a spread in our deterrent overall capability. We can deter by—deterrence requires the deterrer to have the credibility that what he has is something that an enemy can't really do anything but, in the end, lose. Then he's deterred. But if he doesn't, for any reason at all, believe that we can do it, then deterrence flies right out the window."

"So we are in a state of rethinking a lot of things, and I think we've made a lot of progress, but we're still in the phase that is—I mean, we're no longer in the trenches. We talked about bringing people over, bringing ground troops into the Balkans. I'm not going to make any comments on that one way or another, but there are—we need more time to come out."

"I've always felt that cooperative programs is one way to eliminate antagonisms and have a better understanding. I think Communism, that threat still exists, it exists in China, and we still have problems. But I think we have a period here where we do have such overawing capability that we can afford to try to get closer cooperation where you really have a trust, you know, and that this visibility—you know, if you don't trust somebody, you can't really ever make much headway, but the way you trust people is to get to know them, and the only way you really get to know them is work together. I think this period right now is one when if we can get Russia more Westernized, so to speak, I think would be a very major step forward in ensuring—it reduces the emotion that always goes with wars or getting close to a war situation. Well, let me put it this way. I think cooperation is a good thing, and we ought to try to do it to the maximum extent, but keep our guard up."

"My plan proposed to throw a small but well-equipped air force into China. Japan, like England, floated her lifeblood on the sea and could be defeated more easily by slashing her salty arteries then by stabbing for her heart. ... The first phase of these operations entailed pounding the airfields, ports, staging areas, and shipping lanes where the Japanese were accumulating their military strength in Formosa, Hainan Island, Canton, and Indo-China. ... The second phase was to be directed against the Japanese home islands, to burn out the industrial heart of the Empire with fire-bomb attacks on the teeming bamboo ant heaps of Honshu and Kyushu."

"Sometimes, I feel that the Administration is working around toward my plan for building up the strength of South Korea and Nationalist China to the point where eventually they can carry the war to the Communists on the mainland. ... There is no justification for the employment of United States soldiers either in the Far East or in Europe. If the people and the governments in these areas do not wish to fight Communism, we should let them be communized."

"I am convinced that the people of this planet must ultimately and inevitably move toward a single form of world government if civilization is to survive. But it is our immediate task to see that this world government comes as a mutual federation of free peoples rather than through the ruthless domination of a master state enslaving all the others. In this struggle there are still many battles that cannot be avoided. The most critical of these now is to prevent the Communists from organizing the vast and rich land mass of China under their whip and turning its weight against us and the other free peoples of the world."

"Nowadays, dynamite, TNT, and fuzes, as well as fire bombs, time clocks, knives, pistols, rifles, and tommy guns can turn an occupied country into a hell for its conquerors. These are the weapons of sabotage and, in broader terms, of guerrilla warfare. Old-time campaigners considered this form of internal Strife a rag-tag orphan of war, troublesome until quelled by firm measures. But, though military strategists have been slow to admit it, there are no longer any firm measures that will quell it. Even the torture and mass murder of civilians may multiply a conqueror’s underground enemies. Assuming an outside source of supply, the airplane, the cargo parachute, and the portable radio, twentieth-century guerrilla warfare can assume maddening dimensions."

"One day, I got a call to come into General Arnold's office. He said, "What do you know about the B-26?" I said, "I don’t know a thing except the scuttlebutt that it’s a so-called hot airplane." The men were saying that they were willing to be killed in war, but they wouldn't fly the B-26. ... I flew the plane and didn't see any thing so difficult about it. I came back and said to General Arnold, "I can cure your men of walking off the program. Let's put on the girls.""