Autumn Edition - The Naval Order Of The United States: Fill & Download for Free

P-38 Lightning! (Get over it, Hollywood historians).Is there some algorithm that periodically spits out this …best fighter of WWII …best plane of WW2 …best fighter plane of WWII question? It seems like I've already climbed into the cockpit of my trusty word processor half a dozen times to flame flawed pop culture logic. IJS. But once again into the breech. Tally ho!The best fighter plane, in fact the best warplane of any type, during WWII was the Lockheed P-38 Lightning. Because of petty politics within the U.S. military and the general lazy-mindidness of pre-war commanders, the plane was not developed with a sense of urgency even as the country counted down to war. Didn't matter. Except for the Eastern Front, the Lightning took on and defeated all opponents in every theater of battle around the world. And it did this from early in the war to the last day of the war.“Lightning Strikes” Smithsonian: Air&Space Collector's Edition, Summer 2018 , 65.Firstly, I must qualify my answer for the geographically challenged. Europe was not the only continent on Planet Earth during WWII, and the Atlantic was not even the biggest ocean. When taking the world war into consideration, the P-38 was not only the best fighter plane, it was the best warplane of any sort. PERIOD.The P-38 first flew in February of 1939, making it the only U.S. fighter to serve throughout WW2, (Actually, I kinda think that honor should go to the P-40 Warhawk since a P-51 Mustang is nothing but a souped up P-40). The P-38 is the only war-winning airframe that was in place early enough to have actually shortened the war in Europe. First the stats for the P-38F, which is the first combat ready version:Max speed: 390 MPH at 20,000 ft.Combat range 245 miles on internal stores.Time to 20,000 feet: 7 minutes.Armament: 4 fifty caliber machine guns and 1 twenty millimeter cannon, all firing through the nose.Power: 2 Allison V-1710 twelve-cylinder, liquid-cooled inline enginesCrew: 1And here is another critical statistic that explains more than any other number the difficulties faced by the P-38. Number of P-38 assembly lines: 1. Any combat aircraft, no matter how good it is, will ALWAYS struggle if it is ALWAYS outnumbered and thus ALWAYS outgunned, and that is very much the story of the P-38 Lightning during WWII, especially in Europe.Next a little background… At the beginning of WWII, and in fact up until about 1944, pursuit planes, which we now call fighters, were considered defensive weapons. The offensive weapon was the bomber. Even an escort fighter was there to defend the bombers and allow them to complete the mission. The United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) was focused on bombers, not fighters.When the P-38 first flew in February of 1939, it was obvious after only a couple of test flights that the P-38 was the fastest thing in the sky. General Henry H. (Hap) Arnold had been chief of the Air Corps for less than six months. Arnold was an incorrigible promoter of air power, and he decided, as a publicity stunt, on using the one-of-a-kind, hand-built P-38 prototype to break Howard Hughes’ cross country speed record. The plane easily broke the record and then, for reasons which to this day are still unclear, crashed while landing in New York.Tony LaVier, one of the great test pilots of this country, and for years the chief test pilot in the P-38 program laid it out candidly:“I have always said, and I suppose many people realize it but forget it, that when you are dealing with experimental airplanes, you are dealing with something that can mean an awful lot to the security of our country, especially in time of war. If test pilots and the flight test crew don't take every precaution to keep it from being damaged, it could cause serious loss to the country. I've seen it happen through the years and it is happening today.“For example, in World War II, the Army grabbed our first P-38 to set a new transcontinental speed record. It was a grand idea, but the only thing a speed record would give them was some newspaper headlines for a day and that's about all. Instead of waiting a few weeks until we knew more about the airplane, they took it when it had hardly been tested. The engines failed going in for a landing at New York…and the airplane fell short of the field and crashed. What did that do? It set the P-38 back about two years, because we had to start from scratch and build another prototype airplane and run a whole new test program, and as it was the best fighter airplane we had at that time, that incident may very well have lengthened the war.” (Martin Caiden, Fork-Tailed Devil:THE P38 [I could go on here (And in other articles, I have) until a definite pattern is established. Suffice it to say that under competent AF leadership, the so-called problems of the P-38 would have been nothing more than the normal teething problems of a new airplane. Unfortunately, if the P-38 Lightning was Super Plane, then Hap Arnold, not the Germans or the Japanese, was its kryptonite. Arnold was a bomber man. He did not like the P-38.The original specification filled by the P-38 called for a high-speed interceptor capable of cruising at maximum power for an hour. Max power gobbles up fuel, so extra fuel was added, which meant that the Air Force had inadvertently created a long range fighter when the plane was flown at normal cruise settings. The airframe was extremely stable and versatile, but it didn't look right. In the dogma, rather than data, dominated thinking of the old men of the Air Corps, pursuit planes were supposed to have a single engine. Medium bombers had two engines, and in the U.S. anyway, heavy bombers had four engines.As an aside... The Navy was no better. At the same time the Army was evaluating the P-38, the Navy was evaluating the F5F-1 Skyrocket, another long-range twin-engine design. In level flight, the F5F-1 was faster than the P-38, and if the P-38 climbed like a homesick angel, the F5F-1 climbed like a bat outta hell. Unfortunately, like the P-38, the F5F-1 didn't look right. Grumman originally designed the plane with no nose.To get an idea of how the admirals felt about a plane with no nose, play that old Joe Tex song, "Skinny Legs and All". Listen to the song a couple of times and then substitute "plane" for "woman" and "no nose" for "skinny legs". The F5F-1 was nonstarter. The Navy made Grumman put a nose on the plane.And despite the properly proboscissed prototype's superlative performance, when it crashed, the Navy cancelled the program.Come to think of it, maybe Hap Arnold's publicity stunt actually saved the P-38. Once the press learned the Army had a plane that fast, they couldn't cancel it.The idea of a multi-role pursuit plane; i.e., a fighter bomber, hadn't caught on. The commanders of the USAAF actually feared multi-role aircraft because they wanted the Air Force to be independent of the Army, and they feared that ground officers would seize on fighters performing attack and close air support missions as an excuse for keeping the Air Force under the control of the Army.But the tactical advantages of a long range pursuit plane could not be ignored. The United States anticipated going to war with Japan long before it expected to have to engage the Third Reich, and because of its range, the P-38 was the perfect land-based fighter for war in the Pacific.Which brings me to my first point. The Spitfire and the Bf 109 of the Battle of Britain, which is where these planes established their reputations, were only formidable machines when they were fighting in the close quarters of Europe. In the Pacific, against the long-range fighters of the Japanese, they would have been as useless as mammary glands on a boar hog.The P-38 did suffer from one important disadvantage. All WWII aircraft were susceptible to phenomenon called compressability. Compressability is the interruption of smooth airflow over the wing of an aircraft as the aircraft approaches the speed of sound. The interruption of the airflow over the wing caused shockwaves that buffeted the tail of the airplane and caused the controls to freeze. The phenomenon was amplified in the P-38 because of its large tail plane. At high altitudes, where the speed of sound is slower, compressability could literally tear a diving P-38 apart. The speed of sound is called Mach 1. Most WW2 pursuit planes could fight up to about Mach 0.8 before compressability became a factor. The P-38 could only fight up to about Mach 0.7.The denser the air, the faster the speed of sound. At medium to low altitudes, compressability was not a factor in air to air combat. At high altitudes, it gave enemy fighters an easy escape from a P-38. They could simply dive away. The P-38 couldn't follow. The compressability issue was solved by the middle of 1942. The ludicrously simple solution consisted of installing a dive flap under each wing. With dive flaps, a P-38 could dive quite safely, but the fix wasn't implemented on the assembly line until 1943. There was only one P-38 assembly line. Demand for the Lightning was so high, the War Production Board refused to shut down the assembly line just to implement a design revision that would save the lives of hundreds of aircrew. Planes could still be modified in the field, but the goddamned British accidentally shot down the transport plane carrying the modification kits for the fighters in Europe and no more kits were sent.Fortunately, even without the modification kit, a P-38 was quite capable of protecting itself at all altitudes. With its speed in level flight, it could fight or escape at will. It was dominant at medium to low altitudes, but at high altitudes, an enemy aircraft could easily dive away from it.Armies fight on the ground. The best place to destroy enemy aircraft is while they're parked on the ground. Most reasonable people would consider the ground low altitude. P-38s performed well at medium and low altitudes. Theater ground commanders were begging for P-38s. They couldn't have cared less about the compressability issue. In the Pacific, Generals George Kenney and Douglas MacArthur were happy with the plane as long as it got over the Owen-Stanley mountains of New Guinea.Hap Arnold didn't think a high altitude pursuit plane, let alone a long-range one, was needed in Europe either. He thought his heavily armed B-17 Flying Fortresses could take out the Luftwaffe in the air. Besides, the P-47 Thunderbolt was his fighter. He had personally ordered that the P-47 be built with an air-cooled radial engine. Problems with the engine, tail-buffeting, and yes, compressability, all slowed the deployment of the P-47. And yet, the only P-38s Arnold was interested in were the photo-recon versions, which found potential targets for his bombers, and that was a low level mission. The reason compressability—something that could easily have been dealt with a year before it was—wasn't solved earlier was because nobody in a command position in the USAAF, or anywhere else in the U.S. Army, gave a shit until the shit hit the fan in 1943.There were two reasons the P-38 did not dominate in Europe, and the second reason is a direct result of the first. The first reason is poor leadership. The commander of the Eighth Air Force was Hap Arnold's yes-man, Ira Eaker. Only Arnold's yes-men got commands in the European theater. If you disagreed with Arnold, it was a sign of disloyalty to the mission, and you were exiled to the Pacific. And the mission was not to win the war. The Allies always knew that short of Germany getting the atomic bomb first, they were going to win WWII. The mission, which demanded absolute loyalty, was the establishment of an independent American Air Force.The method by which the United States Army Air Forces was going to liberate itself from the Army was strategic bombing. The goal of the Eighth Air Force was to knock the Third Reich out of the war through strategic bombing alone. The U.S. Air Force intended on forcing a surrender before a ground invasion of Fortress Europa could be launched, which would, of course, obviate the need for both the Army and the Navy. Like Athena springing fully formed and armed from the head of Zeus, the newborn United States Air Force, USAF, would rise supreme from the ashes of Europe. Bwa ha ha ha ha! Bwa ha ha ha ha! (Yeah, right).Of course Arnold's plans didn't work out. But one casualty of them was P-38 development and timely deployment. Except for the P-47 Thunderbolt, all resources had to go to bombers. And then, rather belatedly, the pressing need for transport was realized, which also almost killed the P-38. The second reason the P-38 didn't dominate in Europe is simply because there weren't enough of them, which was the curse of having to incorporate all design changes on a single production assembly line without being permitted to stop the assembly line. Lockheed essentially built the P-38 while flying it.Until the P-47 was brought up, the Lightning was the United States’ only first-rate, front-line fighter. Until the Merlin-engined P-51 was brought up, the Lightning was the United States’ only long range fighter-bomber. From day one of WWII, there should have been at least two factories producing P-38s. Three P-38 plants would have made more sense, and four would not have been unreasonable. The following is a list of missions P-38s performed capably in the areas where they were in capable hands:High altitude interceptorPursuitDive bomberLight bomberPhoto-reconnaissanceAir ambulanceAttackLong range naval patrolPathfinder for heavy bombersClose air supportNight fighterEscort fighterWhy was there no second assembly for this plane? I'll say it again. Multi-role aircraft were a threat to Army Air Force dogma. Hap Arnold banned external fuel tanks for army fighters because the same hard points could be used for carrying bombs, which meant the Army could use fighters for attack and close air support missions. Arnold did not believe in supporting the troops.Lieutenant Ben Kelsey, the P-38 project officer, and in many ways the father of the P-38, put his career on the line by making a verbal request for external fuel tanks. If he had put the request in writing, he would have been court marshalled. Lockheed passed the hard points off as some sort of wing stiffening. If Kelsey hadn't risked his career, the P-38 might not have been able to save the daylight bombing campaign over Germany in 1943.When it became obvious after the first Schweinfurt raid that things were going downhill fast for unescorted B-17s over Germany, Robert A. Lovett called for the P-51 Mustang to be developed as a long range escort fighter. Lovett held the high-fallut'n title of Assistant Secretary of War for Air. In reality he was the increasingly erratic Hap Arnold's babysitter. That is literally true. Arnold was a high-profile and heroic figure even though he had never flown a combat mission in his life. Firing him would have been like firing General MacArthur. Something had to be done, and that something was Robert Lovett.While the P-51 was getting extra fuel tanks, the P-38 was called on to perform the long-range escort mission. Except for photo-recon, the plane had been out of the European Theater for almost a year. No thought was given to acclimating it for high altitude combat in Europe. There just wasn't time. The Eighth was on the verge of losing the daylight bombing campaign.No way in hell were there ever enough P-38s in the skies over Germany to take on the Jadgwaffe, the Luftwaffe’s fighter arm. There weren't enough P-38s in existence to take on the Jadgwaffe. In order to provide proper air escort, the ratio of fighters to bombers should be at least two to one. The ratio of P-38s to B-17s was hardly ever even .5:1, and the Lightnings were required to fly close escort, which was the very same tactic that got the Bf 109s (another plane that is a legitimate contender for the best fighter of WWII) shot up over England during the Battle of Britain. Without getting torn up nearly as badly as the 109s had, the P-38s brought bomber losses down enough for the campaign to continue until the P-51s took over the brunt of the fighting.Developing the P-51 for the long range escort was the absolute correct decision at the time it was made. The Mustang was much easier to build than the Lightning. Many planes were needed quickly. There was no way Lightning production could have come anywhere near P-51 production in the short time factories had for ramping up. But that truth in no way diminishes the efficacy of the P-38. If the same decision had been taken a year earlier, P-38s could have been escorting the B-17s all along and saving thousands of lives and airplanes.One more thing before I talk about what should have been. Training. The P-38 picked up a reputation for being a difficult plane to fly for poorly trained pilots. Well, two things: Any plane is difficult to fly for a poorly trained pilot. In the run up to WWII, the cream of the flying crop were taken for bombers. In many cases good pilots were pulled out of fighters over their vehement protests. After all bombers were multi-engine aircraft, and pursuit planes had only one engine. But the P-38 Lightning was also a multi-engine aircraft, and U.S. Army fighter pilots were second rate even when compared to U.S. Navy fighter pilots.Just as an example, let's take the Army's 27th Bombardment Group's experience with the A-24 Banshee, which was the Army version of the Navy SBD-6 Dauntless dive bomber.USAAF pilots, however, could not outmanoeuvre aggressive Japanese fighters. Where the rear-seat gunner had been highly effective in the US Navy machine--one US Navy crew shot down seven Mitsubishi Zeroes in two days--he was less potent aboard the A-24. Casualties were so high that the type was quickly withdrawn from front-line service. Since US Navy pilots at Coral Sea and Midway had demonstrated the ability to handle themselves against the Zero, the US Army's less satisfactory performance with the Dauntless is usually attributed to the inexperience and lower morale of its flight crews.The Encyclopedia of Aircraft of WWII [London, Amber Books Ltd., 153]And it wasn't just the 27th Bombardment Group. The 531st Fighter Bomber Squadron had the same dismal experience as the 27th. Are P-38 detractors going to claim that the SBD-6 was difficult to fly too! C'mon already.In the USAAF, the best pilots were funneled into the bombers even when EVERYBODY wanted to fly P-38s. It was a glamorous machine and there weren't that many of them. Good pilots should have been put into those planes, but even if they weren't, standards still could have been maintained. It is interesting to note that when George Kenney took over the 5th Air Force in New Guinea, the first thing he did was ground it. The pilots needed more training and the ground crews couldn't maintain the planes. Despite MacArthur’s constant prodding, the 5th didn't fly until it was ready. Then it just went up and produced ace after ace, not to mention winning campaign after campaign.Europe didn't have air commanders like George Kenney or Claire Chennault. That outspoken type of leader was exiled to the Pacific. All the Lockheed engineers and test pilots could do was shake their heads. They knew that many of the “problems” with their plane in Europe, whether with pilots or ground crews, were training issues. But what could they do? The Army Air Corps ran the way it ran.So what was possible? To start with, all the U.S. Army's victories of 1942-43 were made possible by the P-38. Operation Torch would not have even been attempted without the Lightning. The P-38 was the primary U.S. fighter in North Africa and the Mediterranean and played an important role in cutting the Axis supply routes to Rommel.It is also interesting to note that despite all that had been learned--or at least should have been learned--from the Spanish Civil War and the war in Europe, the American air commander in North Africa, General Carl Spaatz, seriously sucked at first. Instead of concentrating his forces, he broke them up into small groups derisively nicknamed “penny packets", which were easy pickings for Luftwaffe units attacking and defending in large concentrations. After seeing his P-38s, P-39s, and P-40s suffer heavy losses because they were always badly outnumbered, Spaatz wised up and concentrated his forces. Losses dropped, and those same P-38s, P-39s, and P-40s went on to pummel the Luftwaffe.It doesn't matter what types of planes are being flown, the side with an overwhelming numerical advantage, even if that advantage is just local, determines the conditions of combat and thus has the tactical advantage as well. Spaatz’ learning curve cost the lives dozens of airmen in North Africa, but at least he learned, which is more than can be said for some other USAAF generals.In the Pacific, General Kenney used P-38s as escort fighters for his B-25s and B-17s and won the Battle of the Bismarck Sea, which finally took the pressure off Australia. Exploiting the P-38′s fantastic range during one of the brilliant air campaigns of the war, Kenney then leapfrogged, against well-equipped and well-trained opposition, from airbase to airbase right on up the coast of New Guinea.Operation Torch and the New Guinea Campaign both depended on the range of the P38, but Kenney’s use of the P-38 in the thousand mile push up the North Coast of New Guinea suggests what could have happened in Europe if the P-38 had been wanted there from the very beginning.Long range is an important advantage which allows an aircraft to either project power far from its base or loiter over the battlefield for an extended period of time. Long range combined with superior speed and power is a killer advantage. The P-38 possessed all three of those attributes from day one of America's entry into WWII. Until 1943, altitude was optional.The following images show escort ranges for Allied fighters in Europe. Note that the earliest dates are from 1943. That is because the USAAF didn’t get around to bombing Germany until 1943. The earliest date for the P-51 is 1944. For the size of drop tanks shown, the range of the P-38 was about the same in 1942 as that shown for 1943. The only problem is that the P-38 was already using a bigger external tank by 1942. Early in 1942, before the Allies had won the Battle of the Atlantic, Hap Arnold reversed his no external tanks decision so the P-38 could be flown across the Atlantic. I'm not sure if the ferry tanks could be dropped, but in the Pacific, the 5th Air Force was independently designing and building its own drop tanks and flying much longer missions than were being flown in Europe.What if the range of the P-38 had been exploited in Europe in 1942? It's debatable whether the Luftwaffe ever had a chance of winning the Battle of Britain. But most people can agree that the battle was definitely lost when the Luftwaffe switched from bombing British airfields to bombing British urban areas. The U.S. strategic bombing campaign against Germany basically said let's skip all that stuff against airfields and get right to bombing German cities. Turns out that strategy didn't work any better against Germany than it had against England.If the same successful tactics used by the 5th AF in New Guinea and by the Luftwaffe in England were used against the Germans in Europe, then P-38s would have escorted fast light bombers and medium bombers against Luftwaffe airfields. The mission should not have been to shoot Bf 109s and FW 190s down. The goal should have been to shoot them up. While they were parked on the ground. By the time the heavy bombers began their assault, the opposition would have been neutralized or greatly reduced.Above is a map of Luftwaffe bases in Germany. Many of the cities were guarded by multiple bases. This is the defense that B-17s and B-24s had to fly over and into to reach their targets. Sometimes the bomber crews could see the airfields that launched fighters against them. But the bombing of Germany did not start until 1943. See that circle around Berlin? If P-38s, A-20s, B25s, and B-26s had attacked those bases and their transportation support network in starting in 1942, most, if not all, of the black dots in front of that circle are no longer there in 1943. The B-17s and B-24s could have flown safely to their targets.In addition to attacking airfields, P-38s should also have hit highways, railroads, bridges and canals because that's how the Luftwaffe was supplied. The factories that built the planes were powered by coal, and in Germany, coal was shipped through a canal system. Shutting down the canal and river transport system would interrupt not only aircraft production, but German war production in general. When the heavy bombers eventually got around to flying, they would have faced a much weakened Luftwaffe. If the heavies could destroy Germany's refineries and synthetic oil industry, the Luftwaffe would have been brought to its knees. Unfortunately the United States didn't get around to pressing the war against German airfields and German oil until 1944. By then it was too late to shorten the war.Increasing the quantity of P-38s would have inevitably pulled production resources away from heavy bombers, but it would also meant that fewer heavies would be needed because their loss rate would have plummeted. 1000 fewer 4-engine bombers frees up resources for 2000 2-engine planes.All those 2-engine P-38s and medium bombers would have been needed. Thousands of Allied airplanes would have gone down in the fight for air superiority in the skies over Germany, and most of those planes would have been P-38s. It's probable that more than 2000 P-38s would would have gone down. But the incremental loss rate for a P-38 is two engines and one person. For a heavy bomber it's four engines and 10 people. Lose fighters, not bombers.Let’s look at that range map again. Note that escort range for a P-38 extends as far as Denmark. That means the East Frisian Islands lie well the range of a P-38 equipped with external fuel tanks.The East Frisian Islands rise up (well, sort of) out of the North Sea just off the coast of northwest Germany. They are part of the German province of Lower Saxony. The Frisian Islands are low and flat and could have provided excellent emergency landing strips for damaged Allied bombers unable to make it back to England. The islands are tiny and the sandy soil wouldn't have supported the weight of heavy bombers, but a couple of them have strips of land firm enough for WWII fighter airfields.There are nine East Frisian Islands. Some of them are little more than giant sand dunes. They are situated almost against the coast of the mainland just west of a little peninsula, maybe 40 miles wide and 30 miles deep, that juts into the North Sea between the estuaries of the Ems and Weser Rivers. The entire East Frisian chain is less than 60 miles long.As early as possible in 1942, the United States should have taken the East Frisian Islands of Borkum, Norderney, and Wangerooge. The distance from Norderney to the mainland is only about nine miles, and the strait is so shallow that it’s mudflats at low tide. People walk across it.There is a West Frisian Island chain as well. The West Frisians belong to the Netherlands and were occupied by Germany in WWII. The United States should have at least tried to take the West Frisian Island of Texel. With its proximity to densely populated areas, Texel may have been a bridge too far, but it could have accommodated at least a couple of large fighter bases.The only force capable of successfully overrunning and holding four Frisian islands would have been a large joint Navy/Army operation involving capital ships supported by land-based air power. The islands were only lightly defended because the Germans thought they were beyond the range of Allied fighters. In 1942, the only fighter in England with the range and loiter time over the battlefield to cover such an operation was the P-38. Once the islands were captured, they could have been held until the cows come home because they are shielded by open mud flats or shallow seas on the landward side, and Germany did not have a strong enough navy for an attack from the sea.The East Frisian Islands are part of Germany proper. To have taken them in 1942 would have delivered a crushing blow to German morale, especially after their failure to take Moscow in 1941. The Third Reich would have been forced to commit an enormous amount of Heer and Luftwaffe resources needed in Russia to the defense of their own northwestern frontier. If they had refused to commit adequate forces, the Allies would have crossed the mud flats. WWII would have been over six months later.More to the point of the air war over Germany, a P-47 taking off from Texel could have escorted B-17s across the Ruhr. A P-47 taking off from Norderney could have escorted B-17s all the way to Berlin. The Germans also recognized the strategic importance of Norderney. When long-range fighters and transports for air assault became common in England, they sabotaged their own airfield so the Allies wouldn't bother with the island.The kind of cohesive strategy and inter-service cooperation needed to capture the Frisian Islands is exactly the kind of strategy used by MacArthur to fight the New Guinea Campaign. The reason it didn’t work in Europe, at least not early on, is that in Europe, within the U.S. Military, the different service branches couldn’t work together. (The reason the British nixed Operation Sledgehammer, the invasion of Europe in 1942, and insisted on Operation Torch, the invasion of North Africa in 1942, instead is because they thought American GIs needed combat experience. Events were to show that it was American generals who needed some combat experience, and some negotiating skills too. In North Africa, they went up against the crack Afrika Korps.) And this was especially true of the Air Force. Its generals only wanted to prove that they had outgrown the Army. And the Navy as well. Hap Arnold was very disappointed that the Navy was allowed to keep its aviation arm even after the modern USAF was formed. In the Southwest Pacific, MacArthur was able to mold the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force into a single fist. He also had the Australians rather than the British. The Australians were much more willing to defer to the Americans than the British, and there were times when they bore the brunt of fighting the Americans should have borne.My point is that it was always the generals that fell short rather than the P-38. In Europe, it took the generals almost two years to mature into the plane, and yes, by that time, there were cheaper, easier to build, alternatives, but nothing really better. In the Pacific, Kenney was a good commander from day one. He knew how to fight the P-38, and the rest is history.But let's forget about imaginary invasions and stick to basics. Basic Air Force doctrine is to first achieve air superiority. Total air supremacy is always the ultimate goal, but operations cannot be expanded until air superiority has been achieved. When the United States went to war in December of 1941, there was only one plane in the U.S. inventory that could go toe to toe with the Luftwaffe over Germany. By not building the P-38 Lightning in the quantities necessary for achieving and maintaining air superiority over the battlefield before sending the B-17s into battle, the commanders of the USAAF, for self-serving political purposes, violated basic Air Force doctrine. It was a doctrine some of them had a hand in writing.With all the disadvantages the P-38 was forced to fight under, its kill ratio in Europe was still 1.5:1. That kill ratio is favorable to the P-38 even though the lightning was always on offense and outnumbered by as much as five to one. There is no way that the Third Reich’s industrial complex could have kept pace with America's industrial complex in fighter production, especially with Germany being bombed day and night. If the P-38 Lightning had been built in greater numbers starting from the United States entry into the war, the Jadgwaffe in the west could have been destroyed as an effective fighting force as early as the Autumn of 1942, and certainly by 1943. With no fighter arm, the Luftwaffe is effectively destroyed except for it ground-based anti-aircraft.That would have shortened WWII in Europe. Without a Luftwaffe, the door to Festung Europa is wide open.In the Pacific the P-38 vied with the Navy's F4U for best fighter. The Allies named the F4U the Corsair. The Japanese just called it “the whistling death". Like the Merlin-engined P-51 Mustang and the P-47 Thunderbolt, the F4U Corsair combined the attributes of a P-38 Lightning with a single fuselage fighter, but none of those single-engine planes were available at the beginning of WWII. I believe the P-47 was the first to see combat, but it was still a short-range fighter for most of the war. If the question is put in a different way, “What is the best fighter of the second half of WWII?”, then the P-47, the P-51, and the F4U must be considered.If the question remains, “What is the best fighter of WWII?”, then the only serious contenders are the Supermarine Spitfire, the Hawker Hurricane, the Messerschmidt Bf-109, and the Focke Wolfe FW-190. Each of those planes was there from the beginning for their respective countries. The 190 wasn’t quite there at the very beginning for Germany, and the Hurricane didn’t quite last the entire war as a front-line fighter, but they were both close enough.The early versions of the Spitfire, Hurricane, 109, and 190 simply didn’t have the range to be truly considered the best fighter. In the Pacific, all of those planes would have lost to the Japanese Zero because the Zero would have used its long range to destroy them on the ground. When the Spitfire did operate in the Pacific, it had problems with the climate, just as the P-38 had problems with the climate in Europe.There are two other candidates that deserve a mention: the Zero and the De Haviland Mosquito. I think everyone realizes that the Zero was possibly the best fighter in the world when first entered service, and it was certainly very good, but I don’t think it was ever better than a P-38. To achieve its spectacular range, the Zero made too many compromises in the speed and power category. It also had a weak airframe relative to the P-38 and saved weight by not having self-sealing fuel tanks. The Zero soldiered on throughout the war because the Japanese just didn’t have anything better, but I don’t think anybody thinks that by the end of WWII, the Japanese Zero should still have been a front-line fighter.One cannot question the greatness of the De Haviland Mosquito. It could do everything a P-38 Lightning could do, except maintain air superiority during the daylight hours. The Mosquito may have been the best of the night fighters, but its inability to defeat the best modern day fighters disqualifies it from being the best fighter. Now as far as being the best all-around combat aircraft, that’s another story. I still give the nod to the Lightning, but a convincing argument can be made for the Mosquito as well even though it was a no-show in the Pacific.The first combat-ready version of the P-38, the P-38F—Actually, I think the P-38E was combat ready. The changes that resulted in the F just slowed the plane down and reduced its range—was the best warplane when the U.S. entered the war. The final combat version of the P-38, the P-38L, was still the best warplane of the war on VJ day.EDIT: I didn't realize this until I started reading up on the F-4 Phantom II, but look at any modern day strike fighter. They all have two engines, even the Russian ones. As far as I can tell, the P-38 Lightning pioneered most of today's strategic long-range fighters.The F-4 Phantom must be considered one of the two most dominant fighters in the world from around the mid-sixties to about the mid-seventies. (In my opinion, the other would be the MIG 21, but no matter which fighter-bomber from whichever country garners first place or second place, the Phantom is probably going to be in the top two). I'm obviously a dyed-in-the-wool P-38 fan, and I was astonished to learn how similar the histories of the P-38 and the F-4 are.Most interesting is that neither plane was designed as a fighter. Essentially each plane is its era's version of two engines stuck onto a brick, and they both started out as high-speed, long-range interceptors. Their multi-role potential was immediately recognized, and yet they were both thrown into the pursuit or fighter role without being configured for it.The P-38 wasn't tested in a wind tunnel until just after the war started--or maybe just before--and the army was still learning how to properly configure the turbo-supercharger/liquid-cooled engine combination while the plane was engaged in combat in Europe and in the Pacific. Still, as far as I know, no WWII era fighter can claim a positive kill ratio against the P-38. Since the P-38 was available from day one of America's entry into WWII, and since the United States could produce many times the number of fighter aircraft any other country could produce, the ability of the P-38 to maintain a positive kill ratio guaranteed a U.S. victory in WWII, even if the United States had produced no other model of pursuit plane. And that's not even considering the P-38's efficacy as a reconnaissance platform or a bomb truck.Since it was designed as an interceptor, which were armed with missiles only, the early Phantom, without a gun, went head to head against the MIG 21 at a time before air-to-air missile technology was mature. Dud and errant missiles, especially when released at close range cost the lives of Phantom pilots. Even so the early F-4s matched the MIGs in kill ratio. After the F-4 was developed as an air-superiority fighter, it left the MIG in the dust. I believe the F-4 Phantom is considered the most important plane of its era because of the adaptability of the airframe. It could perform all the roles necessary for winning a war. One design.The F-4 is a Navy design. While it was being developed by the Navy, the Air Force was developing its Century Series of fighters, reconnaissance aircraft, and fighter-bombers. If I remember correctly, the series ran from the F-100 through the F-106 or 107. The Vietnam War showed how off the rails the Air Force's philosophy was. (The Air Force still had a hangover from the Bomber Mafia days of WWII). The Air Force had to turn to the F-4 Phantom or be rendered irrelevant to the mission in Vietnam. ONE plane replaced the entire Century Series. I don't believe the F-4 was ever used as an air ambulance, but that may be the only mission the P-38 flew that the F-4 didnt. That is how adaptable the F-4 airframe was.The record of the F-4 Phantom and Phantom II is legitimately legendary. But the story of the F-4 is not the story of a fighter. It is the story of powerful engines mated with an incredible airframe. That happens to also be the story of the P-38. The difference between the two planes is simple. The U.S. Navy believed in developing multi-role utilitarian aircraft. The U.S. Air Force didn't. That's why the Century Series was a series. The F-4 Phantom is Navy. The P-38 was Air Force.The United States Army Air Force generals screwed up the development and the deployment of the P-38 so badly that they may have lengthened WWII. The Air Force would, of course, rather not pump the P-38. It's time for them to eat crow. Of course the Air Force will never eat crow (or even name a plane after one), but that doesn't change the fact that the P-38 was the best fighter of WWII, and until very late in WWII, probably the best design period.Sorry for the long edit. This seemed to be a good place to jot down some thoughts about the similarities between F-4 and the P-38.

The intermittent border of the South China Sea is no longer understood todayRecently, I participated in several seminars on South China Sea issues triggered by the so-called Philippine South China Sea arbitration. There was a peculiar phenomenon at the meeting that aroused my interest: Speaking of the South China Sea issue, several "post-80s" (elders over 80) who have studied the South China Sea issue for decades have come up with the case. The more they talk, the more excited they become. The more he said it, the more angry he became, and he even advocated "bright swords" at all costs if the reasoning doesn't make sense. It seems that they are all "eagles", but a few younger experts from important departments of the country are calm and calm. Their speeches are all about the United Nations Law of the Sea. They do appear to be very rational. On the contrary, those "post-80s" elders appear to be very "angry young".南海中的美丽岛屿，是我国最美的海洋风景飞越南海上空，南沙群岛进入视野，茫茫大海中，它们只是一个地形上的小小凸起，但海洋中风景最美、生态系统最繁盛的地方正是这些岛屿及其周边海域。翡翠一样的礁盘，托举着洁白的沙滩和绿宝石般的小岛，层层浪花拍岸而来，海水清澈得可以一眼看透海底的线条和纹路。眼前的小岛就位于南沙群岛，是我国南海九段线内众多美丽岛屿中的一个，名为马欢岛，是为纪念明代跟随郑和下西洋的翻译官马欢而命名的。（The beautiful island in the South China Sea is the most beautiful marine scenery in my countryFlying over the Vietnamese sea, the Nansha Islands come into view. In the vast sea, they are just small bumps in the terrain, but the most beautiful scenery and the most prosperous ecosystem in the ocean are these islands and their surrounding waters. The emerald-like reef holds the white sandy beaches and emerald-like islands. Layers of waves come from the shore. The water is so clear that you can see through the lines and patterns of the seabed. The small island in front of you is located in the Nansha Islands. It is one of the many beautiful islands within the nine-dash line in the South my country Sea. It is named Ma Huan Island, which was named in memory of Ma Huan, the translator who followed Zheng He to the West in the Ming Dynasty.）The beautiful islands in the South China Sea are the most beautiful ocean scenery in our countryFlying over the Vietnamese sea, the Nansha Islands come into view. In the vast sea, they are just small bumps on the terrain, but the most beautiful scenery and the most prosperous ecosystem in the ocean are these islands and their surrounding waters. The emerald-like reef holds the white sandy beaches and emerald-like islands. Layers of waves hit the shore. The water is so clear that you can see through the lines and patterns of the seabed. The small island in front of me is located in the Nansha Archipelago. It is one of the many beautiful islands in the 9th section of the South my country Sea. It is named Ma Huandao and is named in honor of Ma Huan, a translator who followed Zheng He’s journey to the west in the Ming Dynasty.As for me, I support the views of the elders, and I understand their emotions: In Nanhai, the ancestors left us a good hand, but the children and grandchildren played worse and worse, so they were depressed. The crux of the South China Sea issue is that domestic experts and scholars fail to reach a consensus, and officials do not know what viewpoints they adopt. They often make problems for themselves. For example, we have announced the base points and baselines of the territorial waters of the Paracel Islands, which will all be underwater. What status do the Zhongsha Islands place? What is the status of the "Nine Section Line"? Can there be national boundaries within national boundaries? If the baseline of the territorial sea could be drawn for the Xisha Islands, the experts who had drawn the "nine-segment line" had already drawn it. It was because they were unable to do so, so they had drawn an intermittent "U" line in the South China Sea. It is their wisdom (the geographers who participated in the prototype of the nine-segment line in 1947 were Fu Jiajin, Zheng Ziyue, Yang Huairen and Hu Huanyong, who were the heroes of the Chinese nation).In fact, the crux of the South China Sea issue is that the experts use different language systems when discussing the issue. One type of experts uses our own national and aboriginal language about that piece of land, and the other type uses the United Nations law of the sea. A basic set of languages. In my opinion, if we use the language of the United Nations Law of the Sea to discuss the South China Sea issue, we will have lost most of the South China Sea before we speak, because in this language, there are no laws for underwater reefs, beaches, sand, etc. Status is regarded as non-existent, that is, the high seas. But we know that the entire Zhongsha Islands are underwater, and most of the reefs and beaches of the Xisha, Nansha, and Dongsha Islands are also underwater. Before we reclaimed the land, the Nansha Islands had only about 1.5 square kilometers of water, written in primary school textbooks. Everyone in China knows that the southernmost tip of China, the Zengmu shoal, is more than 20 meters underwater.When it was my turn to speak, when I said "the nine-segment line is the borderline", I found a contemptuous smile on the faces of several young experts: how is it possible? Who will admit that you are the national border?On most maps of the Chinese territory, there is a map of the South China Sea islands in the lower right corner. There are nine very eye-catching discontinuous lines in the east, west, and south directions, which are called "discontinuous national boundaries" or "Nine South China Seas". line". But at present, more than 40 islands and reefs in the Nansha Islands have been invaded by other countries. Therefore, the "Nine-Dash Line" has existed in name only. If the Chinese people want to fight for reasons, they must understand the origin and significance of the South China Sea Nine-Dash Line.On most maps of the Chinese territory, there is a map of the South China Sea islands in the lower right corner. There are nine very eye-catching discontinuous lines in the east, west, and south directions, which are called "discontinuous national boundaries" or "Nine South China Seas". line". It is not only the "island ownership line" of the South China Sea Islands, but also the "scope line" of the waters under the jurisdiction of the South China Sea. This objectively reflects that the Chinese people first discovered the South China Sea islands, first developed the resources of the South China Sea, and implemented the accurate space for effective control. However, at present, more than 40 islands and reefs of the Spratly Islands have been invaded by Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei and other countries, including 31 of the 32 main islands and reefs, all of which are within the "Nine-dash Line of the South China Sea." Therefore, the "Nine Section Line" has already existed in name only. If Chinese children want to fight for their reasons, they must understand the origin and significance of the Nine Section Line in the South China Sea.France covets the South China Sea islandsFrance has long coveted the South China Sea Islands. In 1885, France occupied Annan (now Vietnam) as a colony. Later, the French government publicly spoke about King Annan's Jialong and Mingming, who had expeditions to Xisha. "In the early 19th century, Annan is now owned by France, and the Xisha Islands It is also owned by France." In 1909, Li Zhun, the admiral of the Guangdong navy of the Qing Dynasty in China, and his entourage visited the Paracel Islands. Whenever they visited an island, they named Leshi, built wooden houses, erected masts, and hung the yellow dragon flag to show that they belonged to Chinese territory. The legality is questioned and denied.In this regard, the Minister of the Republic of China in France noted in September 1932 that the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs emphasized: "According to international law and customary law, the main condition for having an island far from the mainland is the first effective occupation, in other words, the national is the first to be there Settled so that their country owns these territories. Hainanese fishermen settled in the Xisha Islands and built houses and fishing boats to meet their needs, since ancient times." This is why France’s self-infection implies that Xisha has no basis for law and has turned its attention to Spratly Islands.From April 7th to 13th, 1933, Schaffer, the director of the French Saigon Institute of Oceanography, took three warships and survey ships to traverse the Nansha Islands and conduct detailed "investigations" to show "occupation." I boarded Taiping Island, Zhongye Island, Xiyue Island successively... Counting the Nanwei Island occupied in 1930, there are nine islands and reefs, which is the "Nine Small Island Incident." Among them, the French flag was raised when people were sent to board Zhongye Island, and the fishermen on the island were taken to take a group photo under the flag. On July 19, 1933, France issued a notice of occupation of the nine islands in Nansha, but at the same time admitted that two of the islands "have Chinese fishermen."The government of the Republic of China determined the borders of the South China SeaWhen the Nansha Nine Islands were occupied, China was at a time of internal and external troubles. The whole country was paying attention to the bloody battle between China and Japan that lasted for more than a month. The government of the Republic of China did not protest to the French government until the French issued a notice: "(French) both claimed that the Chinese with Qiongya lived in the archipelago for exclusive fishing, and that there were Chinese living on the island at the time, and that there were The house covered by leaves has the image of worshipping gods and men... It is the island of Kyushu who has long lived with Chinese, not an island without a master. The legal person has proved it for me." And, according to international public law and practice, "every new discovery The island, whose nationality is the national, proves that the sovereignty belongs to which country. Now that the archipelago is all Chinese, its sovereignty should belong to me, and there is no room for excuse!"It is absurd that the Japanese government also lodged a protest with France, because when the French army landed on Taiping Island on April 10, 1933, even the Japanese merchants were also expelled. Japan believed that the French had violated its sovereignty.At the same time, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of China also asked France to find out the names, latitudes and longitudes of the islands. The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs replied that “the nine islands are between Annan and the Philippines. They are all rocks. They are the main route of the sea. Because of their steepness, the French ships are often in danger here. Therefore, they occupy them so that they can build anti-risk equipment and produce pictures. Explain that it has nothing to do with the Xisha Islands."Facing such a situation, the government of the Republic of China deeply felt the need to publish a detailed map of China's South China Sea territory, and decided to establish a "Water and Land Map Review Committee" to uniformly review the Chinese and English names of the islands and reefs in the territory. In the first issue of the journal published in January 1935, the names of 132 islands, reefs and beaches in the South China Sea were listed in more detail, and for the first time the islands in the South China Sea were clearly divided into Dongsha Islands, Xisha Islands and Nansha Islands (now Zhongsha Islands) and Tuansha Islands (now Nansha Islands). In April 1935, after completing the field survey by the Naval Hydrographic Survey of the Republic of China, the second issue of the Proceedings of the Land and Water Map Review Committee specifically produced "Maps of Islands in the South China Sea". In 1936, this map was included in the "New Map of China's Construction" edited by the geographer Bai Meichu. It was also named "The Whole Map of China after the Haijiangnan Exhibition". It also inherited the 1927 Tu Sicong's "Map of China's Coastal Changes" The drawing of the borders of the sea and borders. The picture shows the Dongsha Islands, Xisha Islands, Nansha Islands and Tuansha Islands in the South China Sea. They are marked with national borders to show that the South China Sea islands belong to the Chinese territory. The sovereignty of the mother shoal. This is the first South China Sea boundary line that appeared on the map of China, which is the embryonic form of the U-shaped discontinuous line on the map of South China Sea today. Since then, the Chinese government and the map publishing industry have followed this drawing method.In addition to setting boundaries, the Chinese government has also paid attention to the legal protection of territories. On June 24, 1931, the Nationalist Government promulgated the "Three nautical miles of territorial sea order" to resist the maritime invasion of Western powers, officially announcing that China had adopted the three-nautical-mile territorial sea width system generally recognized by the international community at that time, thus ending China’s lack of The history of the width of the territorial sea.South China Sea U-shaped discontinuous line repeatedly trampledAlthough the Republic of China government has made unremitting efforts to safeguard the rights and interests of the South China Sea at the level of map surveying and mapping and the legal level, the effect was finally compromised because of the country's war. In the Nansha Nine Islands Incident, the Republic of China government and France repeatedly refuted the negotiations, but they never came out.From 1935 to 1938, Japan sent warships to occupy the Nansha Islands. On March 1, 1939, Japan took the Xisha and Nansha Islands together and changed it to the "New South Islands", which belonged to Kaohsiung, Taiwan, which was occupied by Japan at that time. Until the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japan, the Chinese government regained Taiwan in accordance with the provisions of the Cairo Declaration. In the autumn of 1946, the then Chinese government decided to send warships to the Paracel Islands and the Nansha Islands by the Navy Command. At the same time, the Ministry of National Defense, the Ministry of Interior, the Air Force Command, and the Logistics Department also sent representatives to inspect, and the Guangdong Provincial Government sent personnel to receive it. The receiving personnel were sent to the four ships by "Taiping", "Yongxing", "Zhongjian" and "Zhongye". In November of the same year, the two ships "Yongxing" and "Zhongjian" led by Yao Ruyu arrived at the main island of the Paracel Islands and named them Yongxing Island. A monument was erected to show that they received the Paracel Islands. In December, the two ships "Taiping" and "Zhongye" led by the nephew Sun Linzun, the national hero Lin Zexu, arrived at the main island of the Nansha Islands and named it Taiping Island. Later, the recipients went to Zhongye Island, Xiyue Island and Nanwei Island, and set up monuments on the islands as evidence. The Nansha Islands Management Office was established on Taiping Island, which is under the jurisdiction of the Guangdong Provincial Government.However, the sovereignty crisis in Nansha has not been completely resolved. In France, which has returned to Indochina, there are still attempts to enter the Nansha Islands. When the Japanese surrendered were waiting for repatriation, France rushed to occupy several islands in the South China Sea before the Chinese troops entered, and often sent warships to patrol the South China Sea. In response to the National Government’s decision to regain the Xisha and Nansha Islands, France also protested and sent the warship "Tokyo" to the Xisha Islands. When sailing to Yongxing Island, it was found that there were Chinese troops stationed on the island. An administrative center was established on theThe Philippines, which has just gained independence, also wants to start at a time when China has not completely taken over the Paracels and the Nansha Islands. At that time, Philippine Foreign Minister Ji Linuo claimed on July 23, 1946: "China has disputed with the Philippines over the ownership of the Nansha Islands. The islands are 200 nautical miles west of Palawan. The Philippines intends to merge it into the scope of national defense. ."In order to deal with the border dispute, the Ministry of Interior of the Republic of China established the Fangyu Department on July 18, 1946, and Fu Jiaojin, a professor of the Geography Department of Fudan University, served as the director. After the establishment of Fangyu Division, it first planned to recover the South China Sea Islands, and at the same time adjusted the names of the island groups in the South China Sea. According to the geographical location of the islands, the "Tuansha Islands" was renamed "Nansha Islands", the original "Nansha Islands" "Islands" was renamed "Zhongsha Islands". According to the surveying and recording of the geological, square and mapping aspects of the South China Sea by the fleets that recovered Xisha and Nansha, the Fangyu Division officially published the Location Map of the South China Sea Islands in 1947. The map is marked with Dongsha Islands, Xisha Islands, Zhongsha Islands and Nansha Islands in the South China Sea. It is exactly the same as today's map, and a U-shaped line composed of 11 intermittent lines is marked around it, and then changed to 10 There are 9 in the South China Sea and one between Taiwan and the Ryukyu Islands in the East China Sea. This is the U-shaped discontinuous line officially marked on the map of the South China Sea, which is commonly referred to as the "traditional boundary line", and the territorial scope of the South China Sea is also embodied by this.In February 1948, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the People’s Republic of China publicly issued the “Map of the Administrative Region of the Republic of China”, which officially announced to the international community the Chinese government’s sovereignty and jurisdiction over the South China Sea islands and their adjacent waters. It is expressed in terms of intermittent national boundaries, "fully considering the connectivity of the ocean and the characteristics of the South China Sea as a major transportation route in the Pacific Ocean."Since then, the "Map of the South China Sea Islands" and the "Comprehensive Map of the People's Republic of China" published by the Government of the People's Republic of China also marked the intermittent borders of the South China Sea, but in 1953 the 11 intermittent lines were removed from Beibu Bay and Tokyo. The 2nd section of the bay was changed to 9 intermittent lines, and the geographical position was slightly adjusted. This is the boundary line of the South China Sea, commonly known as the "nine-dash line".But the dispute over the sovereignty of the South China Sea has not yet ended. The 1951 "San Francisco Peace Treaty with Japan" suddenly overturned all previous claims of China's South China Sea sovereignty in the final drafting stage. It only stated that Japan had waived all its rights to the Paracels and Nansha Islands, but did not clearly indicate that it would be returned to China. This laid the bane for future territorial disputes, and turned the dispute between China and the two colonial powers-Japan and France before World War II into the dispute between China and the newly independent neighbors of Southeast Asia after World War II. Dealing with the potential "wedge" of China.The important practical significance and jurisprudential value of the nine-sectionFirst of all, the basic facts that the Chinese government has long claimed and exercised rights and exercised jurisdiction based on the nine-dash line cannot be denied. The nine-dash line has always been my solemn proposition in the South China Sea. After the official publication of this line in the "Republic of China Administrative Area Map" in 1948, all kinds of maps published since then strictly continued this drawing method, whether it is mainland or Taiwan. (Adjusted from 11 paragraphs to 9 paragraphs in 1953) The government of the People's Republic of China has consistently adhered to this line of drawing and has always stated that it has indisputable sovereignty over the islands of the South China Sea and its adjacent waters. The resources of the relevant seas belong to China. Our government’s law enforcement vessels or warships also cruised along this route, invaded and strengthened island reef control by Vietnam, the Philippines and other countries, invaded our 9th section line for fishery or oil and gas exploration and development, and also expressed their solemn positions on many occasions. All these fully reflect my actual jurisdiction over the South China Sea Islands.Secondly, the nine-dash line has been recognized by the neighboring countries in the South China Sea, and constitutes the "forbidden estoppel" in international law. Since the announcement of the Nine-Dash Line in the South China Sea until the early 1970s, no country has raised objections or protests, and the official or authoritative maps published by neighboring countries such as Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, etc. are mostly marked with the line I advocate, or marked The Nansha Islands belong to China. According to statistics, there are about 200 types of maps that clearly indicate that the Nansha Islands belong to China. After China has officially published a large number of maps on the nine-segment line, the official or authoritative maps of the above-mentioned neighboring countries still clearly include the Nansha Islands in China, or do not include the Nansha Islands on their maps. The direct or indirect recognition of Nansha's sovereignty forms the "forbidden estoppel" in international law. However, now some neighboring countries have turned their backs on their own words, invaded Nansha islands and reefs, and deliberately modified their maps. These are all prohibited by international law. Therefore, the legitimacy of the nine-dash line is beyond doubt in international law.At present, most of the islands within the nine-dash line have been invaded by all parties, making it difficult for China to protect the territorial sea baseline based on islands and the law of the sea rights based on the baseline. In this regard, we must resolutely safeguard my country's marine rights and interests and actively respond to various challenges. Therefore, it is of great significance to correctly interpret the legal meaning of the nine-dash line.After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, the Chinese Navy recovered the islands of the South China Sea. In 1947, the Department of Civil Affairs of the Ministry of Internal Affairs printed the "Location Map of the South China Sea Islands", using 11-segment lines (U-shaped lines) to delineate the waters of the South China Sea, two of which were delineated on the Beibu Gulf. After the founding of New China in 1953, the two-segment line of the Beibu Gulf was deleted and became the current nine-segment line.From the Qin Dynasty to the Tang Dynasty for more than a thousand years, Vietnam was a state and county in China, under the direct administrative control of the Central Plains Dynasty, and was once called Jiaozhou and Annan. In the first year of Kaibao in the Northern Song Dynasty (968), the Ding leader quelled the civil strife of Vietnam's "Twelve Envoys" and claimed to be the emperor, establishing the first unified dynasty in Vietnam's history, taking the country name "Dai Yue", Vietnam's independence . Ding Buling said that the emperor sent emperors to the tributary Song Dynasty successively and was named King of Jiaozhi County. Vietnam regards China as its suzerain state and pays regular tribute to China. The king is canonized by China, and China has the obligation to guarantee the dominance of its canonized objects in Vietnam, and does not interfere in Vietnam's internal affairs and diplomacy. In the eighth year of Jiaqing (1803), Ruan Fuying asked the Qing Dynasty to enshrine him as the king of South Vietnam. However, the emperor Jiaqing believed that in the Qin and Han Dynasties, including Guangdong and Guangxi, Ruan Fuying called "South Vietnam". The country first had the old land of Yueshang, and then there was the whole country of Annam, and the country name "Vietnam" was given. Under the vassal-vassal relationship, there has always been no territorial definition and entanglement between China and Vietnam.After the Sino-French War, it was reduced to a French colony, and Sino-Vietnamese clan relations ended. In the eleventh year of Guangxu (1885), the Qing government and France signed the "Tenth Clause of the Vietnam Treaty by the China-France Association" signed after the war: "From the contract of this contract, it will be limited to 6 months. Officials from various factions in France and France went to the border between China and Beiqi to determine the boundary together. If the boundary is difficult to identify, a mark shall be set up in the place to indicate the location of the boundary. The current boundary has been slightly corrected in the hope that the two countries are mutually beneficial. If they disagree with each other, they should each ask for instructions in their own country.” Soon, the Chinese and French envoys met at Zhennanguan and began demarcation.On June 26, 1887, China and France signed the "Special Article on China-France Renewal of Boundary Affairs", delimiting the border between China and Vietnam. Its third paragraph reads: "Guangdong Boundary Affairs is now determined by the Ministers of Boundary Survey of the two countries. Outside the border, east and northeast of Mang Street, all undecided discussions are under Chinese jurisdiction. As for the islands in the sea, According to the red line drawn by the two countries’ border demarcation ministers, it is drawn to the south. This line is crossing the east side of the mountain of Chagushe, that is, it is bounded by this line (the Chinese name of tea is Wanzhu, southwest of Zhushan, south of Mongjie). To the east of the line, the islands in the sea belong to China; to the west of the line, Jiutoushan (Yueming Geduo) and the small islands in the sea belong to Vietnam." The clause is clearly written, the so-called "red line" is the ownership of the coastal islands near Mong Cai line.The visionary leader of the Westernization Movement, Zhang Zhidong, once participated in the Sino-Vietnamese demarcation affairs. During the negotiation, Zhang Zhidong rushed to instruct Guangxi’s Minister of Demarcation Affairs Deng Chengxiu to "three respondents", one of which was: "The sea boundary can only indicate that there are islands and oceans near the coast, and it has nothing to do with the ocean outside the island. , Xiang Feiyue can have it. If it is clear that it belongs to Yue, somewhere south or west of a certain place, the law will cover the ocean with many stalks and huge damage, so restrictions should be added. The sea is still there, so there is no need to incur more exposure." It can be seen that at that time, China and Vietnam did not divide the Beibu Gulf waters.Although there is no demarcation, on the official map of China, a demarcation line has appeared in Beibu Gulf. After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, the Chinese Navy recovered the islands of the South China Sea. In 1947, the Fangyu Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of China printed the "Location Map of the Islands in the South China Sea", using 11-segment lines (U-shaped lines) to delineate the waters of the South China Sea, extending from the waters near Vietnam from the north down like a tongue to Taiwan Two sections of the waters near Lanyu are delimited on the Beibu Gulf. This is an important legal basis for China to safeguard its territorial sovereignty in the South China Sea.Later, in 1953, the two-segment line of the Beibu Gulf was deleted, which turned into the 9-segment line advocated by China. The specific reasons and rarely disclosed information.

Yes, is the simple answer. but the leaders had already decided the outcome of this war before it began.We know the USSR had 12,000 tanks ready to invade Europe in 1936, we know after the war the ‘Allies’ teamed up with the USSR, and the ‘Allies’ allowed Poland be given to the Russian and half of Germany an yet we’re told the ‘evil’ nasty Germans invaded Poland so we had to go to war with them and Britain declared war on Germany, yet Germany only did this to save the Germans in Poland and to fend of the coming USSR attack.How Franklin Roosevelt/Rosenfelt Lied America Into Warby William Henry ChamberlinAccording to his own official statements, repeated on many occasions, and with special emphasis when the presidential election of 1940 was at stake, Franklin D. Roosevelt's policy after the outbreak of the war in Europe in 1939 was dominated by one overriding thought: how to keep the United States at peace. One of the President's first actions after the beginning of hostilities was to call Congress into special session and ask for the repeal of the embargo on the sales of arms to belligerent powers, which was part of the existing neutrality legislation. He based his appeal on the argument that this move would help to keep the United States at peace. His words on the subject were:Let no group assume the exclusive label of the "peace bloc." We all belong to it ... I give you my deep and unalterable conviction, based on years of experience as a worker in the field of international peace, that by the repeal of the embargo the United States will more probably remain at peace than if the law remains as it stands today ... Our acts must be guided by one single, hardheaded thought -- keeping America out of the war.This statement was made after the President had opened up a secret correspondence with Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty and later Prime Minister in the British government. What has been revealed of this correspondence, even in Churchill's own memoirs, inspires considerable doubt as to whether its main purpose was keeping America out of the war.Roosevelt kept up his pose as the devoted champion of peace even after the fall of France, when Great Britain was committed to a war which, given the balance of power in manpower and industrial resources, it could not hope to win without the involvement of other great powers, such as the United States and the Soviet Union. The President's pledges of pursuing a policy designed to keep the United States at peace reached a shrill crescendo during the last days of the 1940 campaign.Mr. Roosevelt said at Boston on October 30: "I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again and again: Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars."The same thought was expressed in a speech at Brooklyn on November 1: "I am fighting to keep our people out of foreign wars. And I will keep on fighting."The President told his audience at Rochester, New York, on November 2: "Your national government ... is equally a government of peace -- a government that intends to retain peace for the American people."On the same day the voters of Buffalo were assured: "Your President says this country is not going to war."And he declared at Cleveland on November 3: "The first purpose of our foreign policy is to keep our country out of war."So much for presidential words. What about presidential actions? American involvement in war with Germany was preceded by a long series of steps, not one of which could reasonably be represented as conducive to the achievement of the President's professed ideal of keeping the United States out of foreign wars. The more important of these steps may be briefly listed as follows:The exchange of American destroyers for British bases in the Caribbean and in Newfoundland in September, 1940. This was a clear departure from the requirements of neutrality and was also a violation of some specific American laws. Indeed, a conference of top government lawyers at the time decided that the destroyer deal put this country into the war, legally and morally.The enactment of the Lend-Lease Act in March, 1941. In complete contradiction of the wording and intent of the Neutrality Act, which remained on the statute books, this made the United States an unlimited partner in the economic war against the Axis Powers all over the world.The secret American-British staff talks in Washington in January-March, 1941. Extraordinary care was taken to conceal not only the contents of these talks but the very fact that they were taking place from the knowledge of Congress. At the time when administration spokesmen were offering assurances that there were no warlike implications in the Lend-Lease Act, this staff conference used the revealing phrase, "when the United States becomes involved in war with Germany."The inauguration of so-called naval patrols, the purpose of which was to report the presence of German submarines to British warships, in the Atlantic in April, 1941.The dispatch of American laborers to Northern Ireland to build a naval base, obviously with the needs of an American expeditionary force in mind.The occupation of Iceland by American troops in July, 1941. This was going rather far afield for a government which professed as its main concern the keeping of the United States out of foreign wars.The Atlantic Conference of Roosevelt and Churchill, August 9-12, 1941. Besides committing America as a partner in a virtual declaration of war aims, this conference considered the presentation of an ultimatum to Japan and the occupation of the Cape Verde Islands, a Portuguese possession, by United States troops.The orders to American warships to shoot at sight at German submarines, formally announced on September 11. The beginning of actual hostilities may be dated from this time rather than from the German declaration of war, which followed Pearl Harbor.The authorization for the arming of merchant ships and the sending of these ships into war zones in November, 1941.The freezing of Japanese assets in the United States on July 25, 1941. This step, which was followed by similar action on the part of Great Britain and the Netherlands East Indies, amounted to a commercial blockade of Japan. The warmaking potentialities of this decision had been recognized by Roosevelt himself shortly before it was taken. Addressing a delegation and explaining why oil exports to Japan had not been stopped previously, he said: "It was very essential, from our own selfish point of view of defense, to prevent a war from starting in the South Pacific. So our foreign policy was trying to stop a war from breaking out down there.... Now, if we cut the oil off, they [the Japanese] probably would have gone down to the Netherlands East Indies a year ago, and we would have had war."When the Japanese Prime Minister, Prince Fumimaro Konoye, appealed for a personal meeting with Roosevelt to discuss an amicable settlement in the Pacific, this appeal was rejected, despite the strong favorable recommendations of the American ambassador to Japan, Joseph C. Grew.Final step on the road to war in the Pacific was Secretary of State Hull's note to the Japanese government of November 26. Before sending this communication Hull had considered proposing a compromise formula which would have relaxed the blockade of Japan in return for Japanese withdrawal from southern Indochina and a limitation of Japanese forces in northern Indochina.However, Hull dropped this idea under pressure from British and Chinese sources. He dispatched a veritable ultimatum on November 26, which demanded unconditional Japanese withdrawal from China and from Indochina and insisted that there should be "no support of any government in China other than the National government [Chiang Kai-shek]." Hull admitted that this note took Japanese-American relations out of the realm of diplomacy and placed them in the hands of the military authorities.The negative Japanese reply to this note was delivered almost simultaneously with the attack on Pearl Harbor. There was a strange and as yet unexplained failure to prepare for this attack by giving General Short and Admiral Kimmel, commanders on the spot, a clear picture of the imminent danger. As Secretary of War Stimson explained the American policy, it was to maneuver the Japanese into firing the first shot, and it may have been feared that openly precautionary and defensive moves on the part of Kimmel and Short would scare off the impending attack by the Japanese task force which was known to be on its way to some American outpost.Here is the factual record of the presidential words and the presidential deeds. No convinced believer in American nonintervention in wars outside this hemisphere could have given the American people more specific promises than Roosevelt gave during he campaign of 1940. And it is hard to see how any President, given the constitutional limitations of the office, could have done more to precipitate the United States into war with Germany and Japan than Roosevelt accomplished during the 15 months between the destroyer-for-bases deal and the attack on Pearl Harbor.Former Congresswoman Clare Boothe Luce found the right expression when she charged Roosevelt with having lied us into war. Even a sympathizer with Roosevelt's policies, Professor Thomas A. Bailey, in his book, The Man in the Street, admits the charge of deception, but tries to justify it on the following grounds:Franklin Roosevelt repeatedly deceived the American people during the period before Pearl Harbor ... He was like the physician who must tell the patient lies for the patient's own good ... The country was overwhelmingly noninterventionist to the very day of Pearl Harbor, and an overt attempt to lead the people into war would have resulted in certain failure and an almost certain ousting of Roosevelt in 1940, with a complete defeat of his ultimate aims.Professor Bailey continues his apologetics with the following argument, which leaves very little indeed of the historical American conception of a government responsible to the people and morally obligated to abide by the popular will:A president who cannot entrust the people with the truth betrays a certain lack of faith in the basic tenets of democracy. But because the masses are notoriously shortsighted and generally cannot see danger until it is at their throats, our statesmen are forced to deceive them into an awareness of their own long-run interests. This is clearly what Roosevelt had to do, and who shall say that posterity will not thank him for it?Presidential pledges to "keep our country out of war," with which Roosevelt was so profuse in the summer and autumn of 1940, could reasonably be regarded as canceled by some new development in the international situation involving a real and urgent threat to the security of the United States and the Western Hemisphere.But there was no such new development to justify Roosevelt's moves along the road to war in 1941. The British Isles were not invaded in 1940, at the height of Hitler's military success on the Continent. They were much more secure against invasion in 1941. Contrast the scare predications of Secretary Stimson, Secretary Knox, and General Marshall, about the impending invasion of Britain in the first months of 1941, with the testimony of Winston Churchill, as set down in his memoirs: "I did not regard invasion as a serious danger in April, 1941, since proper preparations had been made against it."Moreover, both the American and British governments knew at this time that Hitler was contemplating an early attack upon the Soviet Union. Such an attack was bound to swallow up much the greater part of Germany's military resources.It is with this background that one must judge the sincerity and realism of Roosevelt's alarmist speech of May 27, 1941, with its assertion: "The war is approaching the brink of the western hemisphere itself. It is coming very close to home." The President spoke of the Nazi "book of world conquest" and declared there was a Nazi plan to treat the Latin American countries as they had treated the Balkans. Then Canada and the United States would be strangled.Not a single serious bit of evidence in proof of these sensational allegations has ever been found, not even when the archives of the Nazi government were at the disposal of the victorious powers. The threat to the security of Great Britain was less serious in 1941 than it was in 1940. There is no concrete evidence of Nazi intention to invade the American hemisphere in either year, or at any predictable period.One is left, therefore, with the inescapable conclusion that the promises to "keep America out of foreign wars" were a deliberate hoax on the American people, perpetrated for the purpose of insuring Roosevelt's re-election and thereby enabling him to proceed with his plan of gradually edging the United States into war.From The Journal of Historical Review, Nov.-Dec. 1994 (Vol. 14, No. 6), pages 19-21. This piece is excerpted from the anthology, edited by Harry Elmer Barnes, Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace (1953), Chapter 8, pages 485-491.About the AuthorWilliam Henry Chamberlin (1897-1969) was an American historian and journalist. He was Moscow correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor in Moscow, 1922-1934, and Far Eastern Correspondent for the Monitor, 1939-1940. He contributed important reports and articles to leading American newspapers and periodicals, and for a time wrote a regular column for The Wall Street Journal. Among his books were Soviet Russia (1930), Russia's Iron Age (1934), The Russian Revolution , 1917-1921 (in two volumes; 1935), Japan Over Asia (1939), The European Cockpit (1947), and America's Second Crusade (1950)."Poland wants war with Germany and Germany will not be able to avoid it even if she wants to."- Polish Marshal Rydz-Smigly as reported in the Daily Mail, August 6th, 1939)This article appeared in the Polish newspaper Die Liga der Grossmacht in October, 1930:A struggle between Poland and Germany is inevitable. We must prepare ourselves for it systematically. Our goal is a new Battle of Tannenberg. However, this time, a Tannenberg in the suburbs of Berlin. Prussia must be reconquered for Poland, and Prussia, indeed, as far as the River Spree. In a war with Germany there will be no prisoners…Also, Von Ribbentrop defended the attack of Poland by stating that between 1919-1939, one million Germans had been expelled from Polish territory accompanied by numerous atrocities, and that complaints to the World Court in The Hague and the League of Nations in Geneva had been ignored.further reading:the book: "Dokumente polnischer Grausamkeiten. Verbrechen an Deutschen 1919-1939 nach amtlichen Quellen" (Documentations of Polish Cruelties. Crimes Against Germans 1919-1939 According to Official Sources).