Requiem For Failed Air Forces

Guess what? It's a combo post! That's right, two completely different subjects for the price of one! Aren't you lucky pups?

Requiem for a Dream - Watched this at Alex' this afternoon. Would not advise watching it unless you are fine with being depressed, or have something that will lighten your mood planned for afterwards. It focuses primarily on four people, with different dreams, all of whom suffer setbacks due to substance abuse. There's an older woman, happy that she's been selected to be on TV (a game show, I think), who wants desperately to lose weight. Her son (Jared Leto), and his friend (Marlon Wayans) have decided to actually distribute cocaine so that they can live on easy street. Leto also hopes to use the money to fund his girlfriend's (Jennifer Connelly) hopes of opening a store featuring fashions she created herself. Things start well, but as you might imagine where drugs are involved, it goes downhill rapidly. Marlon winds up incarcerated, and I'd say he made out the best of the three. I can't understand what the point of the show the older woman always watched was. It seemed like an infomercial about losing weight, but it also seemed like a gameshow, and she kept seeing herself on it, and I don't know what it was all about (I understand she saw herself on it because she was completely wacked out, but what it was meant to represent eludes me).

There's some interesting camera effects, with split screens for characters who are right next to each other, but they don't seem to be showing what's happening at the same point in time (one is running ahead of the other). There's also a lot of shaky camera, less to indicate people being strung out, more for people who are just under stress. And there's a sequence of shots when people take something, that explains a similar sequence I saw on an episode of Sealab 2021 (the Stimutax episode, for those who watch). That was pretty nifty, but that end of the movie, where it keeps hopping from one character to another is just like a parade of misery. In fact, it's depressed me so much, I'll need to put some mood elevators in my milk before we continue. One moment please.

AH, much better. Relax, I don't even use cold and sinus medication (stuff never works when I do use it), so I'm not turning to pills now.

Why Air Forces Fail, edited by Robin Higham and Stephen J. Harris - I'm pretty sure I mentioned this at some point, back in junior high and high school, I was very interested in aviation, especially military aviation, with a particular interest in World War 2. I just find that time period, with the level of development in plane design from wood and fabric biplanes, all the way to jets in roughly six or seven years, fascinating. This book - a compilation of essays by different authors - doesn't focus exculsively on World War 2, but that is what a lot of the essays deal with, each one concerned with a different country. What's interesting is how countries can take completely different attitudes towards air power, and yet both fail.

France was probaly the major air power after the First World War (or at least #2), but by the Second World War, they probably weren't even in the top 5 or 6. Part of that was a desire to have one type of plane to do everything, meaning it didn't do anything particularly well. Another part was that their production systems still relied on skilled artisans, as opposed to assembly line construction, limiting the amount of aircraft that could be produced, and how many varieties you could have (since it would take time for a worker to become familiar with each type). But one of the major problems was that the air force was kept beholden to the army, and was seen only in terms of how it could support the army. The idea, of sending fighters out to go search for enemy bombers was pratically unthinkable, as planes were to scout out enemy positions, provide coordinates for artillery, and maybe do a little close support strafing or bombing.

In contrast, the British went the other way, and left the Royal Air Force autonomous of the army and navy. This made communication and cooperation between the different branches rather difficult, since neither side would want to subordinate themselves to the other, seeing as they were supposed to be equal. The other problem, at least initially, was the British has emphasized the wrong qualities in their planes. They concentrated on pursuit, and defending the homeland, but in the early stages of the war, that didn't do much good against the German blitzkrieg, which was all about ground forces working closely together with air forces, to strike in a manner that crushed their enemy. The British were actually, from a strategic perspective, better off once they were driven off the mainland, and forced to defend England against bombing raids. That's what they had prepared for, after all.

There are several other essays, covering Poland, Israel, the Soviets, the U.S. (just in relation to their failures at Pearl Harbor and the Philippines), even Argentina during the Falkland Islands' War, which is notable in that the air force had to do almost everything, even though they had been expressly forbidden to even do training flights over the ocean. So now, they have to fly from mainland bases to the Falklands, trying to take out British ships or Harriers, and their pilots can't navigate over the ocean. They have no instruments for it, and they've never had a reason to learn how, since they weren't supposed to be here. It really makes me feel bad for them, because thir own country put them behind a massive 8-ball.

So if you have any interest in that sort of history, I'd recommend the book. The essays aren't that long, there's always a discussion of where more research is needed, and extensive lists of other sources to look for on each topic.