I had the exact same reaction when I learned of the USS Higgins' commissioning. Still have the officer's ball cap and the commissioning brochure on my wall at home as well as a framed photo of DDG76 on my office wall.Originally Posted by Abu Buckwheat
God bless Lt Murphy and Col. Higgins,
Tom
I'm not sure how many Burke's there are left to build, but I would expect to see a USS Dunham and USS Monsoor as well.
Luttrell had much praise for Lt Murphy as a friend, as well as a team leader. In addition it is Marcus' account of the firefight that is cited for Lt Murphy's MOH.
I had missed this before, but another book is coming out on the subject, and this one looks quite promising.
This may help clear up something else that I have noticed a lot - there are a lot of references to Operation Red Wings comprising only the SDV team's recce of the village. Luttrell says it in the book, IIRC. This is false. The team's mission was merely a part of Operation Red Wings, which was planned and conducted by 2d Battalion 3d Marines. There is an excellent Gazette article which gives more detail on the operation, and especially the enormous headaches created for 2/3's staff by NavSOF and the JSOTF. We still have not cracked the nut of integrating SOF and conventional operations.
The hilarious thing about the consumptionability () of the book is that out of 733 Amazon reviews, 546 gave it 5 stars.
Couple things
I was around for Red Wings 2, not that that qualifies me at all to speak for Red Wings 1 (and not that that has ever kept my mouth shut either), but the book either leaves out a couple very key things or points out some flaws in this unit's SOPs.
Soft comp plans have been rehased in detail here (not a mention of them in the book), hard comp plans are completely missing. The authors make a big point of all this behind the lines stuff; no PDM's, no Claymores? Did they even have a plan for these contengincies?
Basic patrolling, never reoccupy. They went right back to a previous recce point. That's a pretty rookie mistake, or it speaks volumes to overconfidence.
On the locals. The immature nature of dealing with the locals is evident in most units. We have a real problem with this and the cultural sensitivity training is not helping. We need to develop our own character a great deal, as a profession.
Someone mentioned firebombing Dresden. The Army Air Corps and their Brit equivlent did an exhaustive study on the effects of strategic bombing during WWII. No positive correlation was found. In fact, war material production increased during that time. Pysche studies showed that there is not a corresponding factor of fear instilled in civilian population either. Pretty sure this translates to "killing civilians who support a war effort is an ineffective policy."
Oh, and as my guys were out there looking for him and his team and doing body recovery on the rest that tried to help them, I feel no remorse in saying that the piss poor planning and overconfidence of these guys led directly to their deaths. They did make a helluva a good fight, and I hope when its my time to go, I can be worthy of such a story.
RIP
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