Who do you Consider to be America's Greatest War Hero?

[ddjkdg]

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<< by the time America was in Europe/North Africa, the war was decided >>


Huh? You need to lay off the crack this early in the day... >>



Where was that said? you could say that the war was already lost. Germany never got the initiative after Stalingrad. It was downhill from there. Overlord and other operations certainly made Germany fall faster, but they would have been defeated regadless.

But let's not turn this to another "who won the war"-thread. We have been through that so many times already, >>



Novgrod said that near the top of the thread. Check your history, Operation Torch commenced on Nov 8 1942, and Operation Uranus did not begin until the 20th I think. You never know what could have happened. Also, Patton served in both North Africa and Europe... if anyone thinks that Germany was getting a massive smackdown and then we just decided to throw Patton in there for good measure, they need a reality check.

 

[b0mbrman]

Yep...no question that Audie Murphy was badass. His story was a great one...

But I think you're gonna have to point to one of our great generals if you want to find someone who made the *biggest* difference in American history

 

[ddjkdg]

<< I'd put in a vote also for Chuck Yeager. Shot down over Europe, evaded capture, talked Eisenhower into letting him stay and fight some more.(escapees were sent back home so if they were shot down again and captured, they couldn't be tortured into telling about the French resistance fighters)
Broke the sound barrier.
Flew missions in bombers in both Korea and Vietnam.
Possibly the best pilot ever. >>



I know this thread is supposed to be about Americans but since you said best pilot ever, I'm going to have to disagree with you there. Check out Hans-Ulrich Rudel. No one, and I mean no one can beat that guy.

 

[datalink7]

<< There's so many its hard to pick one. I like Douglas MacArthur a lot. He basically fought alone in the Pacific why while we concentrated in Europe. He drove the the NKs all the way to the Chinese border, the landing at Inchon was brilliant, and there's his unprecendented speech before a joint session of Congress, something no other military leader has done before. >>



While I agree that his landing at Inchon was really well concieved, he kind of screwed up the the pacific. Pear Harbor was bombed 6 hours before his position in the Phillipines was bombed. Yet, he did not give the order to mobilize his aircraft so they were still caught on the ground when the Japanese finally got there. Then, he lost the islands, took tail and fled to Austrailia while leaving his troops to get captured. They called him "Dug out Dough" because, while the fighting was going on, he was hiding in a bunker on a different island.

He did do a great job with the occupation of Japan. And he did some good stuff in the Korea war (though he did screw up with the Chinese. He ignored intelligece saying that they were coming across, so his troops were caught unawares).

 

[Jimbo]

<< I'm sure this is a two-sided coin here, but wasn't he a founding member of the KKK?
Not a founding member. He was the first Imperial Wizard, a play on his being called the Wizard of the Saddle during the War. He dissolved the Klan after the union army was forced to return authority to civilian control, saying that it's job was done. >>



Nathan Bedford Forrest was probably the best cavalry officer that ever lived. It is kind of funny how the ?Politically Correct? history revisionists change events for their own purposes. What does sour me on ole? Nathan was that massacre of Union POWs at the capture of Fort Pillow in Jackson, Tennessee in April 1864. The fort contained 262 African American and 295 white soldiers. It was afterwards claimed that most of these soldiers were killed after they surrendered. However no one was ever prosecuted for that crime.

The KKK that Nathan Forrest was part of IS NOT THE SAME KKK THAT WE SEE TODAY. The KKK that we have today was reconstituted in 1915 with a very different agenda. The original KKK was disbanded in 1877. The two different Klans also had radically different purposes. The original KKK was to be a counter weight to the presence of Federal troops and Northern opportunists (Carpet Baggers) in the South during the period or reconstruction. The persecution of former slaves was pretty much limited to those they felt were cooperating with the Northerners at the expense of Southerners. The original Klan also shot a fair share of white Northerners. The first KKK was much more concerned about ?The Yankee Presence? and did not give much thought to most of the black populace. Remember that the concept of the Civil War as a mechanism to free the slaves was not well subscribed to by most of the people, North or South at that time, although the ?Emancipation Proclamation? hinted to it. That was well after the war started. Also you have to remember that all of these Southern KKK members also grew up around blacks and really paid little attention to their presence. That does not mean that they were ready to form the NAACP or begin an affirmative action program but the rabid hatred of blacks by the KKK only began with the KKKs reemergence in 1915.

 

[Pacfanweb]

<<I know this thread is supposed to be about Americans but since you said best pilot ever, I'm going to have to disagree with you there. Check out Hans-Ulrich Rudel. No one, and I mean no one can beat that guy. >>

I said POSSIBLY the best pilot ever. Read the book about what Yeager did all his life in planes and you might rethink your position.

Any pilot that ever flew with Yeager will tell you that they couldn't beat him in a dogfight.

There are many pilots with more kills, but the German and Jap pilots with huge kill totals were mostly achieved against inferior opposition, before the Allies went to war against them.
Not to diminish the huge kill totals some of the German pilots had, but a huge number of them were attained against Spain, before WW2.

Rudel was great at what he did. That is undeniable.

 

[Amused]

Any man who selflessly gave up his cushy life at home to go fight for our freedom is the greatest hero to me.

For every verifiable "act of bravery" listed in our history, there are literally thousands more people will never hear about.

 

[Moonbeam]

Walt Whitman.

 

[AaronP]

Luke Skywalker

 

[Extrarius]

The greattest soldiers are those that you never hear of. All the great leaders have been given their praise, but what about the soldiers they commanded? Many of them died without ever being mentioned anywhere other than maybe on a death certificate.
"Anonymous" is the least appreciated, least known, and most helpful entity that ever was.