Quote Originally Posted by Van View Post
All the way back to the Iliad, close combat is considered valient and couragous, and stand-off weapon users (then archers, now airmen) were considered lacking in martial virtue. Note that 'couragous' literally means 'having heart' and 'virtue' comes from vir, Latin for man so means manliness. So, stand-off weapons make the user heartless and unmanly...
This is very much a Western myth of warfare, and ignores the experiences and cultures of the various nomadic/semi-nomadic horse tribes of Central Asia....not to mention the whole longbowmen myth. However, it can also tie into the fighter pilot "kill tally" idea and their own arguments about prowess (and lack thereof) with their bomber pilot brethren.

It's also worth remembering that the Romans trained their soldiers to use sword AND the pilum, which was a missile weapon and a central part of their tactics through at least the early Empire period. One of the key parts of the Byzantine military was the heavily-armored horse archer. I suspect the "unmanly" part may have crept in during the romanticism of the Medieval period....