Audie Murphy's To Hell And Back - A Great Book by a Great Man

Sixty-one years ago, a young American who’d fought in the war published an unpretentious book, “To Hell and Back.” It was the story of his experience in World War II as a combat infantryman. Nowhere in the book does the author mention that he was the most decorated US soldier in the Second World War, or that he’d won the Congressional Medal of Honor, along with 21 other medals. He barely notes that he rose from buck private to lieutenant (though he never says if he became a First Lieutenant, though it’s hard to imagine that he didn’t).

On V-E Day, the author – Audie Murphy – was not yet 21, though he’d seen almost nonstop combat from the first wave of the Sicilian invasion to the end of the war outside of Munich two years later. An orphan who grew up on a hardscrabble Texas panhandle farm during the dust bowl depression, he’d volunteered for the Marines as soon as he’d turned 18. “Too small,” said the recruiter to the scrawny, baby-faced young man. So he volunteered for the Airborne, and was again rejected. “Too small, Murphy.” And he was small, but he wanted to fight – to fight for his country, and perhaps, to fight to prove that he wasn’t really too small after all.

Having failed to enlist in the two “fightingest” units of the American military, Murphy joined the Infantry. He arrived in North Africa right before the end, but the Germans and Italians surrendered the day he was going into the line to see combat for the first time, forcing him to wait for Sicily two months later.

There isn’t an ounce of braggadocio in Audie Murphy’s chronicle of war, and though he was scarcely educated, even by the standards of the day, he wrote his unpretentious memoirs in the most literate and evocative style I’ve encountered. All of those fabled “writers” who went off to war, seeking to learn some deep inner truth and share it with the world, how they must have envied Murphy’s honest, moving words.

Within minutes of landing on Sicily, his unit took their first fatality, courtesy of German artillery – and from the start, Murphy began learning the lessons that kept him alive. He realized that the dead man had let his guard down, and in two years of hard fighting, Murphy never did.
In combat, Murphy soon had to fight two opposing forces – the need and want to be close to the men who shared life and death with him, and the need to remain distant from men who were doomed to die or be disfigured or dismembered. Not one of the men Murphy landed with in Sicily were still in combat with him when his war ended in the occupation of Munich. He lost so much – but he did not lose his soul. He indeed went to Hell and Back, but the important thing is, he did come back.

As a soldier, Murphy was a hard man. He knew that a wounded German was a dangerous German, and if they would not surrender, he had no qualms about shooting them as often as he needed to until the risk went away. He could never forget that his best friend was gut-shot and murdered as he stood to take the surrender of eight German soldiers – men whose fanaticism was such that they’d betray that most basic of trusts, the one that allowed men to surrender to others who’d just tried to kill them – and whom they’d just tried to kill. An instinctive shot, he seldom had to shoot them very often. But he was not a war criminal, or a murderer in any sense of the word. Germans who surrendered to him were treated honorably and well, and the wounded he took prisoner got the same rough-but-gentle medical care as did his own men.

Yet he was also a gentle man. For those of his comrades who – after all the heroism and courage they could give – cracked under artillery fire, or after the sight of one more friend eviscerated by a German mortar shell, Murphy was solicitous, understanding and caring. One man, who couldn’t bear to be thought a coward, kept cracking, and being evacuated, then coming back. To save his friend, Murphy called the Colonel and read him the riot act about sending this man back. Lieutenants did not read Colonels the riot act, but to save a friend who’d given more than he’d had to give, Murphy would fight bureaucracy as sternly and as effectively as he’d fight the Germans.

In combat, Murphy earned 22 medals, including the Medal of Honor. Yet the reader is left to guess which distinctive action won him that highest medal. My bet is the time he mounted the rear deck of a burning and abandoned American Tank Destroyer – a kind of thin-skinned tank with no roof on the turret, but with a bigger main gun than could be carried by a more heavily armored tank. On the turret’s top was mounted a .50 caliber heavy machine gun, and standing with smoke swirling around him, and open flames warming his feet for the first time all winter, Murphy single-handedly stopped a German counter-attack. They could never find him to shoot him, for the simple reason that no sane man would stand on the back of a burning TD, one packed with heavy artillery shells and filled with hundreds of gallons of high-test gasoline, all seconds away from fireballing.

But there were at least a half-dozen other incidents that could have won him that most honored of medals, and the reader is left to guess, and to wonder, because Audie Murphy never gives a hint.

In the bitter winter of 1944, while facing down fanatical Germans in the Vosges Mountains on the border between Germany, France and Switzerland, Murphy was shot – apparently the only serious wound he received. He says he was shot in the hip, though his comrades joked that he’d gotten shot in the ass. It took him three days to move from front line to aid station to field hospital, and by that time his wound had infected and turned gangrenous. Doctors had to pump him full of antibiotics and carve away the dead, necrotic flesh as the gangrene ate it, for two full months. This living hell was dismissed in a short paragraph, a few evocative but uncomplaining sentences. All we do know is that, as soon as he could, two months from being shot, he was back in the line, freezing off what the Germans had failed to shoot off.

There were no easy battles for Murphy. Some consider Sicily a cake-walk, but Murphy lost his first friend within minutes of going ashore. Nobody considered Salerno, or the Gustav line, or Anzio a cake-walk, but many considered the invasion of the South of France to be a walk in the park. I should have known better – in 1973, right out of college, I worked with a man who’d won the Congressional Medal of Honor in the South of France when, as a sergeant, and after all of the unit’s officers had been killed, he held together a company of Americans who’d been cut off and surrounded – and held them together as he’d held off the Germans for a week before relief came. This wasn’t Murphy, this was a man I’d known.

So I knew – or should have – that the late-summer 1944 invasion of the Riviera on the South of France wasn’t easy, or safe. It was in France that Murphy paid the highest price in lost friends – those few who were left from the men who’d left North Africa for Sicily 13 months before – of the entire war. It was made more poignant because there were so few left, and because even the replacements of the replacements of the replacements were now so few in number.

At the time that Murphy’s unit breached the Siegfried Line and entered Germany, Murphy had been taken out of combat and assigned as a courier, running messages between the Division’s rear-echelon headquarters. He was safe, secure, and … and he ordered his driver to take him as close to the line as possible. Then dismounting, he walked through the Dragon’s Teeth and bunkers until he found what was left of his own company, cowering in a ditch, as demoralized as he’d ever seen them. Standing on top of the trench, in full view of any Germans who’d cared to look, he cajoled and prodded and kicked and cajoled again, and got the remnant of that battle-shocked company out of their safe trench and on the march. Then he led them through the rest of the Siegfried Line and into Germany. Once they’d accomplished their assigned task – only because of his leadership – he left them and marched back, unprotected, unafraid and unharmed, through the Siegfried Line, back to his jeep, and back to headquarters. They’d never missed him.

Soon enough, he was back with his beloved company, leading them as part of the tidal wave that swept through Germany in the last 8 weeks of war. Finally, he was given a furlough, and was on a train heading for the French Riviera when V-E Day was announced. And it was in France that he forced himself to abandon cynicism and embrace the return of life – and to complete the journey he took, the journey to Hell and Back.

It would take a wonderful book to do justice to this hero’s war, and I encourage you to read it, one of the best and most evocative war books I’ve read in more than fifty years of reading war books. I grew up in that generation just after the war; I remember a legless friend of my father’s coming over to use our backyard swimming pool for exercise. I can still see him – though the last time I saw him was the summer after the first grade – unbuckling his artificial legs, apparently unselfconsciously, crab-walking across the patio and plunging into the water. I can still remember my uncle, whose ship had been Stuka’d in the Med – the scars of shrapnel and fire still mark his face to this day. My father never told me of the four Kamikazes which had attacked his ship (or the one that hit – then bounced off – before exploding). Men of that generation, those who didn’t write books, didn’t talk much about the war. But as a kid, I saw the evidence of war carved into the bodies and faces of men I’d grown up around. I have a sense of what they went through.

But Murphy leaves no doubt. He saw no glory, no heroism worth banners and bugles, though a grateful nation showered him with awards he never even mentioned. He did his duty, led his men, fought his battles, defeated his foes and did his part to win the war and protect the country he so clearly loved. His book tells this story, and it is worthwhile.

After the war, the unquestionably handsome Audie Murphy became a Hollywood film star – even playing himself in the movie adaptation of his memoir. Surely, that must have been surreal. And tragically, after surviving all that the Germans had thrown at him, Audie Murphy was killed in a plane crash in 1971. He was just 46.

That fact brought to mind another soldier – a paratrooper named Carter – who also began his war in Sicily, also fought in Italy and France and Germany – and who died of cancer, of all things, just a year or two after the war ended. Before he died – before, I presume, he knew that he would die, Carter wrote an unforgettable book, “Those Devils in Baggy Pants.” That was a story of paratroopers, of men Audie Murphy was too scrawny to join. Each man gave his all, and it was enough to defeat Germany, but not enough to live in peace for generations after the war ended. They were all heroes, but none more consistently and effectively heroic than Audie Murphy, who fought for his country, gave his all more times than I could count, and indeed, went to Hell and Back.

What Would Joe Foss Do?

What would Joe Foss do?
Commentary by Ned Barnett

Joe Foss was a poor kid from South Dakota, growing up in the Depression, when his dad died.

He had a dream, though - he'd met Charles Lindbergh in 1928 and seen a Marine Fighter Squadron barnstorming through his neck of the prairie in 1930 - and that dream required college - a tough act for a poor orphaned kid, but he managed to do it, earning both a bachelor of business administration and a private pilot's license.

His dream was to be a Marine aviator - but in those pre-war days, the odds against even qualified applicants were two in 100 - he hitchhiked 300 miles to Minneapolis, took the test with 100 young men, and was one of the two.

After completing training and a 9-month tour as an instructor (something only the best trainee pilots were assigned - and few liked) he was assigned to an observation squadron (aka "target") in San Diego instead of a fighter squadron - but he noticed that a lot of trainee aviators were "buying the farm" - he went to the base commander (a Navy Commander who hated Marines) and offered to trade duty as "funeral officer" for stick-time in a fighter. In three months, he racked up more than 150 hours in a Wildcat - that was more than 3 hours per day for 47 consecutive days (all while fulfilling his assigned duties as an observation-unit pilot AND funeral officer).

As the only carrier-qualified Marine aviator in San Diego, he was named Exec of a squadron about to sail into combat, even thought many thought of him as "the old man" - too old for fighter combat (he was 27 - average age of new fighter pilots, 23).

His first combat mission over Guadalcanal he had his engine shot out and made a "hot" dead-stick landing - but only after he'd shot down the first of many deadly Japanese Zeroes to fall under his guns.

The fourth time he was shot down, he realized that "one more and I'll be a Japanese Ace" - but by that time he'd shot down something like 19 confirmed first-line Japanese planes (mostly Zeros, piloted by the cream of the best in the Imperial Japanese Air Force - the Tainan Wing).

One time, after downing three or four Japanese fighters, combat damage to his engine forced him to ditch his Wildcat two miles of the beach of Malaita Island (about 50 or so miles from Guadalcanal). The plane sank fast, his foot caught in his seat, and before he knew it, he was 30 feet under and "breathing" seawater. Convinced he was going to die, instead of panicking, he calmed himself, figured out how to free himself and used his Mae West life preserver to get him back to the surface (breathing more seawater along the way). To tired to swim, he decided to float on his back until his strength came back - until he saw a couple of shark-fins. Then he saw a couple of canoes - convinced they were Japs looking for him, he decided to "face down" the sharks - until he heard an Australian voice and surfaced again. The next day, Major Mad Jack Cramm - the personal pilot to the Marine Air Commander (General Geiger) - taxied his PBY Catalina right up onto the beach to retrieve Foss - and two days later, he was back in combat, shooting down a couple more Japanese fighters in the process.

He finished his tour of duty with 26 confirmed kills - tying Eddie Rickenbacker (WW-I American Ace of Aces) - but unlike some self-centered Aces, Foss led a unit that fought with him - together with Foss, his flight (Foss's Flying Circus) shot down 72 confirmed enemies - literally all of those young-buck grass-green fighter pilots he'd brought into combat (except the two who didn't survive) became aces in their own right under Foss's masterful training and leadership. Aces like von Richthofen often couldn't remember the names of their wingmen - Foss made medal-bedecked aces of them.

His technique was simple - he flew so close to the enemy that he couldn't miss (of course, they couldn't, either, which is why he was nearly a Japanese ace, too) - his flight-members used to joke that he'd leave "powder burns" on his targets by holding fire until he was in slow-pitch softball range of his enemy. The results - 26 confirmed kills leading a team of eight "novice" pilots that together scored 72 confirmed kills - speak for themselves.

Amazingly, Foss did all this while flying a plane considered obsolete even before the war began (the F4F Wildcat was slower in level flight, slower in the climb and much less maneuverable than the Zero - it also had much less range). He was the highest-scoring ace in Marine history, and won the Congressional Medal of Honor - the highest award available to American servicemen (most who earn it do so posthumously).

After the war, a bureaucratic bungle denied him a "Regular" commission in the Marines - so he founded the South Dakota Air National Guard. He served in the regular Air Force in Korea, and retired a Brigadier General.

Retiring from the Guard, he became the Governor of South Dakota, the Commissioner of the American Football League, the host of two TV programs (running, together, for about 10 years) and - late in life (as in, during his 70s) he became President of the National Rifle Association.

At age 87, airport "security" in Phoenix (this was after 9/11) tried to stop him from boarding a plane for a flight to New York (where he was scheduled to address the Cadets at West Point) for carrying a "dangerous weapon" - the five-pointed star of his Congressional Medal of Honor.

What would Joe Foss do? Apparently, he laughed it off (I understand he actually let the idiot security guard live).

Now, when I'm in a tough spot, I ask myself, "what would Joe Foss do?" (hint - move in close before opening fire - never give up - never slow down - and never take "no" for an answer).

Right Lesson - Wrong War

Japan and the Start of World War II – The Right Lesson from The Wrong Wars
By Ned Barnett

Japan started its war with the United States knowing that it couldn’t win a prolonged war of attrition – at least those at the highest levels of the Imperial Navy knew they couldn’t win – yet they were confident of victory nonetheless. Though this isn’t a contraction, it might sound like one unless you understand that Japan learned the Right Lesson from the Wrong Wars. In looking at the United States as a potential adversary, they saw us settling for far less than total victory in the First World War – and if they looked further, they saw the same inclination to settle for less than the crushing defeat of their adversaries in the American defeat of Spain in 1898. What they should have done is look at the American Civil War, the War with Mexico or the American Revolution – if they had, they might have decided to attack a preoccupied Soviet Union (as the Imperial Army wanted) instead of what Yamamoto referred to prophetically as the “Sleeping Giant.”

Japan’s naval strategy against America was simple – quickly and decisively inflict such painful losses – then sustain those losses over such an extended period of time – that the U.S. would choose to negotiate an end to the Pacific War. America would do this either to focus on a war with Germany or merely because, as a “soft” democracy, we couldn’t stomach the ongoing losses in blood and materiel. After all, Japan reasoned, liberating the Philippines – a set of islands we’d already promised to give back to their inhabitants in 1946 – hardly seemed like a reason for America to bleed itself dry. As for fighting and dying in the vast reaches of the Western Pacific to help Europe hang onto its East Asian colonial empires seemed even more far-fetched – American was by nature anti-colonial, and no matter how much it might want to preserve the existence of European democratic trading partners against European fascism, there was little indication that we’d fight at all to preserve Europe’s colonial hegemony over East Asian peoples.

There might even be a measure of truth in that assessment. Perhaps, if Japan hadn’t attacked Pearl Harbor, perhaps if Japan had quickly offered to give back Guam and Wake in the peace negotiations (even as it was conquering those islands) – perhaps Japan had gone easy on the Philippines – and the Filipinos (including repatriating all the Americans captured in their victorious assault), this scenario might have actually worked. After all, for all the anger the American man-in-the-streets felt about Japan’s brutal subjugation of China, few US citizens were ready, in late 1941, to lay down their lives to protect the “freedom” of a remote and faceless people who had never in history been truly free. If we weren’t ready to help defend our “cousins” in England from Hitler, we were hardly ready to defend the Malays or Indo-Chinese or even the Filipinos against Japan.

This was a reasonable conclusion – at least as far as it went – and Japan had to look no farther than World War I to see America’s proclivity to end bloody and expensive conflicts at the conference table. Versailles was an armistice, after all, not a German surrender. The war ended before the first Allied soldier crossed the line into German territory, and while the German army in the West was broken, it had not yet been defeated when peace replaced war. This told Japan that Western-style democracies did not have the stomach for carrying war to its bitter end, especially in the face of extreme losses. And because, to Japanese eyes, “westerners” were as alike as Americans thought Asiatics to be, Japan might also have considered Czar Nicholas’ armistice-like peace treaty ending the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-1905.

However, in reaching this conclusion, Japan drew on the wrong examples – and there were many of these examples to draw from. There were other wars in which America chose to end without victory – the Spanish-American war was fought for limited objectives, and during the entire war, Spain itself was never threatened. Even more, many of Spain’s overseas possessions were left in Spanish hands – something that would never have happened in a fight to the death, which was the Japanese style of warfare (or at least, that’s how the saw themselves).

The lessons were there to be learned, and – by equal measures of wishful thinking and ignorance, the Japanese learned these lessons, not realizing that they were wrong.

Instead of looking at wars in which America voluntarily participated without the extreme provocation of a pre-war attack attack, Japan should have looked at those three previous wars in which America felt it had been attacked: The American Revolution, the Mexican War and the Civil War. In those wars, the American reaction to attack laid the groundwork for our response to Japan in World War II. The outcome need not have been a surprise to those who studied American military history – and, because of the open nature of American democracy, those lessons were freely available to all who approached them eyes-open.

In the first of those examples, America believed that it had been attacked and was being occupied by a tyrannical imperial army – a belief that, thanks to the extreme measures put forth by King George, were not far from the truth. More important, America realized that any compromise would leave those hated British troops in place in the 13 colonies – the only way to rid North America of British military occupying forces was to win. This gave the American colonists something to fight for: a victory so comprehensive that no British soldiers would be standing on North American soil south of the St. Laurence River. Fight they did, and through a fortuitous mixture of remarkable generalship, French naval intervention, a few bad decisions by Cornwallis and more than a soupcon of raw good luck, America’s revolutionary patriots won the war, and the peace. It was no armistice that America signed with Great Britain, but an unequivocal statement that the Americans had won. In this war, America did not invade Great Britain nor did we occupy their capital – neither of these bold steps were necessary for victory to be achieved.

The lesson for history here is plain: When America feels its very survival as a nation-state is at risk, it will fight on without quarter, and it will keep fighting until it wins. Freedom is more important than the blood-price we may have to achieve to win and hold onto that freedom.

In the second example, roughly sixty or so years later, America believed that it was attacked by Mexican soldiers operating inside the boundaries of the American state of Texas (a former Mexican province whose departure from Mexico had never fully been accepted by that superb Mexican General (and “founding father” President) Santa Ana. Latter day historians – as well as many contemporary Whig politicians, including a young Abe Lincoln – believe that the attack on American soil was trumped up, or at least intentionally provoked. But that truth is immaterial to how we fought that war. Having been violated in such a fashion, America was not interested in an armistice, a negotiated peace. Long-term veteran General Winfield Scott – a 300-plus pound giant of a man nicknamed “Old Fuss and Feathers” – led a remarkably successful invasion of Mexico, following the route of Cortez 300 years earlier to capture the Mexican capital, Mexico City, where he dictated terms to a desperate and fearful government. This was a remarkable campaign, fought against great odds, winning for Scott the accolade from no less than Lord Wellington (the victor over Napoleon) that – as demonstrated in his campaign from Vera Cruz to Mexico City, Scott had proved that he was the best general of the age.

The larger conclusion here is simple: when America is attacked on its own soil, America will not rest until that enemy has been crushed in battle and his capital occupied.

Let’s now look at the final and most telling example of what the Japanese could have – and should have – expected from the United States. Barely 15 years after the Mexican War came the American Civil War. That agonizing four-year conflict offers nothing short of THE single most important lesson for Japan. The bloody Civil war – with more than 600,000 American army fatalities and an unimaginable cost in gold – was a conflict so terrible and decisive that it should have shown Japan this: America at war, when attacked, can and will be a formidable and implacable force, and will demand an unrestrained and unremitting outcome to that conflict. The American Civil War began with an unprovoked cannon shot at Ft. Sumter in Charleston harbor, South Carolina – and from Day One, President Lincoln’s war goals had been simple and unambiguous:

• Defeat the Confederate ground armies decisively, completely and beyond recall

• Achieve the complete and utter elimination of the so-called government of the Confederate States of America

• Occupy the territory formerly part of the CSA and force the reintegration of that territory of the USA, eliminating once and for all any possible threat to America’s survival AS the United States of America

Lincoln was so adamant on the latter goal that he never even admitted that the CSA existed – he refused to “treat” with it’s officially-appointed representatives, including his personal friend and former Congressional colleague, who’d been sent North to establish ground rules for a “just peace” that would recognize the existence of the CSA. Lincoln would not bend on defeat – or even on the existence (let alone survival) of the CSA – and Japan should have paid attention

At other times, in other wars, America and American soldiers had expressed other goals far short of total victory – today, for instance, American troops seem more focused on infrastructure rebuilding following a forced regime change than they do on total victory in Iraq. But the Civil War was different, and the beginnings of the Pacific War mirror the Civil War far more than any war we’d fought for “limited objectives.”

In the four years from 1861-to-1865, the prevailing American will – the will for our nation to survive – had been found, largely because of the way that Japan initiated and initially fought the war. In World War II the thought of an armistice, while attractive to a minority of Americans, clearly left the majority of citizens cold. To an almost remarkable extent, Americans supported the war effort in World War II – and because it had the lesson of the American Civil War to guide it, Japan should have seen this result coming, and realized what it meant for them.

In the American Civil War, it was not enough for Lincoln (as it was for the Continental Congress) to gain a treaty recognizing America’s right to exist as a free nation. In that war, it was not enough for Lincoln to occupy the enemy’s capital city and dictate terms of the peace, as had been the case in the Mexican War. In the American Civil War, with our national survival at stake, for Lincoln and the Union Army, only the utter destruction of the Confederacy would be sufficient as an end to this war.

The war began when American Union forces were attacked, on undisputedly American soil (a Federal Fort in Charleston Harbor that had never been turned over to Confederate forces) – by surprise, without warning or a declaration of war – in the pre-dawn hours. That demonstrated a callous disregard for America, and Americans have never been a people to lightly forget that it had been sneak-attacked. The end result of that sneak attack was the total destruction of the nation-state of The Confederate States of America, the complete elimination of its army and the occupation of the total land-mass of enemy territory. Nothing short of this would be acceptable to the majority of Americans, no matter what the blood-price they’d be asked to pay.

THAT is the war the Japanese should have studied in assessing America’s martial policy – and THAT is the kind of outcome that Japan should have expected. No armistice was possible – if Japan couldn’t defeat America’s army and occupy the country’s territory, Japan should have known that American war planners would find a way of destroying Japan’s army, crushing its government beyond recall and harshly occupying Japan’s territory. No other, lesser, outcome could have been (or should have been) anticipated.

Japan knew it couldn’t win so decisively that it could wipe out all US armed forces, move it’s army half-way around the world, march across the continent and sack Washington DC, then occupy the entire land-mass of the United States until decisive regime-change had been achieved. Those goals were literally impossible to a country that had been unable to occupy and subjugate China across a short strait of sea miles. But Japan should have also known that if it could not inflict those harsh realities on America, then America would not rest until it had done all of that to Japan.

Japan’s military leaders had studied the wrong American war and learned the wrong lessons about how America fights wars. America was – as Yamamoto indicated – a “sleeping giant,” and Japan would have been wise to let her remain asleep, dreaming peaceful dreams about isolationism and the impenetrable sea barrier that protected America from potential enemies. The unprovoked attack on Pearl Harbor, followed by the brutal subjugation of the Philippines and the incredibly harsh treatment meted out to captured American soldiers, made it clear to all who’d care to look why Roosevelt – as leaders of the American people – could not and would not settle for anything less than the complete defeat of Japanese armed forces, the total destruction of Japan as a nation,, followed by a brutal and long term occupation of the Empire of Japan.

This, of course, has lessons for today. After 9/11, we imposed regime change on Afghanistan (the nation-state most closely linked with the terrorists), we destroyed the Taliban field army, and we occupied the nation itself. In Iraq, with no such smoking gun of responsibility, we stopped far short – and find ourselves in a position where an armistice would be most welcome. Yet if the terrorists strike again as they did on 9/11, they will awaken a sleeping giant – they will unite the country behind a war-leader and suffer the consequences. Perhaps the terrorists were smarter than the Japanese – perhaps they know this about America. After all, their few and feeble attempts since 9/11 suggest that they know the risks – right now – of giving American war leaders reason and opportunity to once again unite America in an unlimited war against the terrorists.

Using Coal for Jet Fuel - A "New" Innovation Pioneered in World War II Germany

Recently, I was interviewed by Douglas Page for an article in "Airport Business" on what is supposed to be a "new" technology - but which is actually about 70 years old. This involves the use of coal to create aviation fuel ... something the Nazis did in the late 30s and early 40s when they ran short of petroleum during the war ...



January 10th, 2007 02:13 PM EDT
Exploring Coal-Based Jet Fuel
A radical new source of jet fuel that's comparable to jet-A and military JP-8 may become a marketplace reality


While Penn State's JP900 fuel was developed for use in high-performance military aircraft, there are no compelling technical barriers to prevent coal-based fuel from being used in commercial jetliners.

Combustion tests have shown that coal-based JP900 meets or exceeds almost all specifications for military JP8 and commercial Jet A jet fuels.

Tests show that coal-based JP900 has a flash point higher than required for JP8, a lower viscosity and freezing point, and a higher smoke point. The coal-based fuel is also lower in aromatics—compounds such as benzene and toluene—than conventional jet fuels and is almost sulfur-free.

With political and economic forces creating turmoil in the petroleum market, other potential fuel sources are being explored. One is the potential to turn coal into jet fuel for aircraft, explored here. This article originally appeared in our sister publication, Ground Support Worldwide.

University researchers have successfully powered a helicopter jet engine with fuel derived from at least 50 percent bituminous coal, a percentage that could go half again as high.

"We have shown in tests that the mix can go to at least 75 percent coal," explains Harold H. Schobert, professor of fuel science and director of Penn State University's Energy Institute.

The fuel, provisionally named JP900, is produced in one of two processes under investigation by Schobert. Both processes use light cycle oil, a petroleum byproduct, and coal-derived refined chemical oil, a byproduct of the coke industry. The researchers mix those two components and then add hydrogen. When distilled, jet fuel seeps off as a distillate.

Schobert's coal-based fuel provides several advantages over existing military and commercial jet fuel.

"Combustion tests show that JP900 meets or exceeds almost all specification for JP-8 and jet-A," Schobert says. Schobert presented his results at the March meeting of the American Chemical Society in Atlanta.

These tests showed that JP900 has a flash point higher than required for JP-8, a lower viscosity and freezing point, and a higher smoke point. The coal-based fuel is also lower in aromatics compounds such as benzene and toluene, than conventional jet fuels and is almost sulfur free.

From an energy point of view, JP900 produces almost exactly the same BTU as JP-8.

Coal-based fuels could also reduce dependence on imported petroleum for jet fuel purposes by about one-half, a benefit looking all the more attractive now that the price of oil has soared to all-time highs.

A Military Beginning

Schobert's project began originally to develop jet fuel for the next generation of high performance military aircraft that would require thermally stable fuels. The U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research is funding this work, with help from the Department of Energy.

"Initially, the goal of this research was to develop a fuel that could also be used as a heat sink on board aircraft, in addition to the obvious role of providing the propulsion energy," Schobert says.

Such a fuel would be useful for the F-22, Joint Strike Fighter and F-35. However, according to Schobert, in the recent past, the Air Force has suggested that the focus be shifted to the development of a "drop in" coal-based replacement for current JP-8.

While the JP900 fuel was created for and funded by the military, it could eventually find its way into the wing tanks of commercial jetliners.

Tailoring this fuel to meet JP-8 specifications basically means that it would also be equivalent to jet-A or jet A-1. Therefore, it could be used, in principle at least, as a replacement for those current commercial fuels.

Schobert says that commercialization depends on two factors. The first is being able to 'qualify' the fuel for use and the second is economics.

"We do not yet have a solid economic evaluation of this fuel," Schobert explains. One of the refiners in the private sector has said it would want to make 50,000 barrels of fuel, equivalent to running 5,000 barrels per day for ten days, to get reliable engineering data on which to base an economic analysis.

That much production is beyond the present scope of the project.

So far, Schobert has produced only 500 gallons of a prototype fuel, and that was shipped to the Air Force Research Laboratory, Wright Patterson Air Force Base, for testing. The results of that work included the successful operation of a T-63 turboshaft engine.

"I can tell you that two major U.S. airlines have expressed some interest in this fuel and I have briefed some fairly high-level managers from one of them," Schobert says. Schobert declined to name the airlines, but says they are national or international carriers.

A coal-based jet fuel intrigues some aviation experts.

"If JP900 is found to be a proper replacement for jet-A (which is kerosene-based), it is conceivable that the jet fleet could eventually switch over to the new fuel after FAA certification," comments Will Alibrandi, an Aero Gas Turbine Analyst for the aviation market analysis firm, Forecast International.

Alibrandi says the big obstacle will be the cost to produce the fuel, compared to the petro-based jet fuels currently being used.

Schobert says the process that creates JP900 can be carried out in existing refineries with some retrofitting, and small amounts of the leftover components will feed into various portions of the petroleum stream. The lighter portions will go to the pool of chemicals that make gasoline and the heavier ones go to the diesel or fuel oil streams.

"The advantages of JP900 would have to be weighed against the cost and environmental considerations, although the applications for such a fuel could be wide ranging," Alibrandi says.

Socialist Technology

This is not the first time coal has been used to produce fuel. In the late 1930s, one of the ways Hitler's National Socialist Party sought economic self-sufficiency for Germany was to replace imported oil with an alternative fuel derived from domestic coal.

When the Allies bombed German oil refineries, the Germans were forced to put the technology into operation. By the end of World War II, they were producing millions of barrels of coal-based fuels.

"It is amazing that we are only now considering replicating technology that existed in production format 60 or more years ago," comments military technology veteran Ned Barnett. Barnett says that as long as petroleum was relatively cheap and plentiful, there was no incentive to confront the entrenched oil industry with alternative technologies.

"After the second OPEC oil embargo, we flirted with many alternate technologies during the Carter years, but once OPEC's back was broken as an effective price-fixing force, those initiatives died away, even when they worked and made sense," he says.

Since cheap, plentiful oil is a thing of the past, one solution may lie in coal-based fuels.

"We clearly have more coal than oil," Barnett says.

Change Takes Time

Barnett doesn't think a switch to coal-based fuels will happen commercially until the country is faced with a stable price of $5 per gallon for gas, and then only if coal gas could provide the same BTU power at a stable price of about $3 a gallon.

The bigger issue pertains to the infrastructure — getting coal-based fuel into a parallel distribution with petro fuels, assuming the oil-based and coal-based fuels couldn't be mixed for technological or regulatory reasons.

"This will be hugely expensive, at least at first and the government will likely have to fund that," Barnett says.

Any transition to coal-based fuel may in fact be led by Asian or European nations, who have less indigenous oil, more available coal, and a growing demand for fuels of all kinds. One thing is certain: Aviation is not likely to be the leader.

"The aviation industry, whose major focus is on safety, is remarkably cautious," Barnett said.

* * *

Douglas Page is a science/technology writer based in Pine Mountain, CA.

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The Birth of the Military-Industrial Complex - During The Mexican War!

The Birth of the Military-Industrial Complex

Ned Barnett
(c) 2006


As he was preparing to retire from public life, President Dwight Eisenhower famously warned America against the growing power and influence of the “Military-Industrial Complex.” As the General of the Army who defeated Hitler and oversaw the creation of NATO, then as the President who faced down the newly nuclear-armed Soviets for eight long years, Ike knew something about the Military-Industrial Complex.

However, most of his audience – the American people – assumed that this Military-Industrial Complex (MIC) was something new, and dangerous. After all, that’s what the 50s were about – things that were new, and dangerous. H-Bombs. Sputnik. Polaris submarines. Jet bombers and ICBMs. All new, all dangerous.

In fact, the MIC began more than 100 years before Eisenhower was elected President, and indirectly, we owe this all to a man more famous for inventing the cotton gin, Eli Whitney – and more directly, to a former Texas Ranger.

As a young man, Whitney came up with the idea of manufacturing interchangeable parts, and applied that to the production of muskets for the U.S. Army. Before Whitney’s innovation, muskets were hand-made. When a part broke, a skilled gunsmith had to make and carefully fit a replacement part. Whitney changed all that – and started the idea of a production line, which was perfected a century later by Henry Ford.

Whitney died in 1820, but he left a legacy of innovation and a family interest in the manufacture of precision firearms. In this way, he laid the groundwork for the salvation of a bankrupt inventor, and the creation of what we now know as the Military Industrial Complex.

In the early 1830s, inventor Samuel Colt perfected the first practical revolver – a five-shot weapon named the Paterson, after the town in New Jersey where Colt made these handguns. They first became popular in the mid-1830s when US officers fighting in the Seminole War in Florida bought them to replace cumbersome Army-issued single-shot pistols that were little different from what George Washington had used 60 years before.

It wasn’t long after the Seminole war before the Colt Paterson was adopted by the Texas Rangers – not officially, but again, individual Rangers gladly bought them out of pocket. They knew it was worth a man’s life to have firepower close at hand, and a brace of Colt’s revolvers could replace ten single-shot pistols. In 1844, in what became the legendary Hays Fight, a skirmish that included Seminole War veteran Samuel H. Walker, 15 Texas Rangers defeated an 80-warrior Comanche War Party in a stand-up fight – in Walker’s words, “… killing & wounding about half of them. With improvements, I think the Colt revolvers can be rendered the most perfect weapon in the world.”

When the Mexican War broke out two years later, Walker was mustered into the Army as a Captain, and set out to recruit a unit of Dragoons – men who rode into combat on horseback. However – unlike the cavalry, who fought on horseback – Dragoons dismounted to fight. Having carried his personal Paterson Colt into war in Florida and into countless skirmishes in Texas, Captain Walker wanted his men to be armed with this new innovation. Walker scoured the countryside for privately owned Paterson Colts – there were few to be had – and he also contacted their inventor, Sam Colt, asking for more. But in 1842, Sam Colt had gone belly-up – he’d never stopped designing improvements for his Paterson Colt, but he was in no position to manufacture them.

A little thing like bankruptcy wasn’t about to stop Walker, however, and Colt was more than happy to encourage him. Still, there was this little problem of no money – and no factory.

Enter Eli Whitney, Jr., son of the inventor of the cotton gin and the first man to mass-produce firearms. For “a consideration,” Whitney agreed to front Colt the money to get him back into business, and to provide him a corner of Whitney’s production line in Whitneyville, Connecticut. That line was busy making muskets for the Army – there was, after all, a war on – but the factory was not too busy to also manufacture Colt’s revolvers. So the famous “Whitneyville-Walker Colt – officially the US Model 1847 – was born. This was the first repeating handgun purchased by Army Ordnance, and it was revolutionary. In the years to come, Colt kept instituting improvements, until – by 1860 – his Army revolver had become the standard U.S. Army sidearm, one widely used by both sides in the US Civil War.

This massive handgun – the largest ever made for the US Army – tipped the scales at 4 pounds, 9 ounces. It was a five-shot weapon that fired a .44 caliber lead ball, propelled by 220 grains of black powder – a mule-kick that even “Dirty Harry” would love. A contemporary Army report on a test of the Colt revolver said that the Mode 1847 was “as effective as a common rifle at one hundred yards, and superior to a musket even at two hundred.” This was at a time when the standard military musket was never fired at ranges beyond 60 yards, and then only in volleys, since muskets lacked rifling and could not be aimed – at any range.

The government ordered 1,000 of Colt’s Model 1847 at $25 a revolver, plus another $3 for matching powder flasks. Colt actually made 1,100 of these handguns, using the other 100 as VIP gifts. These were presented to the President, senior members of Congress, the Secretary of War and other influential men of the times. Colt knew how to keep the orders coming – and except for laxer laws about gifts to officials, he did nothing different than today’s K-Street bandits do every day of the week for their MIC clients.

Here’s how these remarkably innovative Model 1847s worked in combat. A unit of Dragoons – roughly 100 men – would ride on horseback up to within roughly 100 yards of a Mexican Army unit, then dismount. That 100-yard distance was the effective aimed-fire range of the Whitneyville-Walker Colt. The force they’d attack would be generally from five to ten times as large as the Dragoon unit – roughly 500 to 1,000 well-trained and courageous Mexican soldiers. These enemies were a formidable force, since at that time, the Mexican Army was world-class in every respect. It was a classic “Napoleonic” army of hard-marching, hard-fighting professional soldiers, trained up in the traditional European “continental” system of fighting. However, the Mexican Army had one critical drawback – one shared with all armies of the time. They used a smooth-bore musket with an effective range of just 60 yards – and at that range, these muskets couldn’t be aimed, but only volley-fired.

However, the Colt could accurately fire aimed shots out to 100 yards. Approaching the enemy, the dismounted Dragoons would take careful aim and fire five quick shots per revolver, then mount up and withdraw – and reload. Since Dragoons often carried two revolvers per man, this meant they could loose 10 aimed shots in a matter of seconds. But because the Mexicans were out of range for their own weapons, those brave soldiers could either “take it” or they could fix bayonets and charge, hoping to cross 40 yards of ground, form up and volley-fire before the Americans pulled back. They were brave, and usually charged – however, in full gear, they could never charge fast enough to catch the Americans.

To reload the Whitneyville-Walker Colt, the entire cylinder could be easily removed from the gun’s frame. This meant – if the Dragoons had several pre-loaded cylinders per revolver – that the entire unit could reload their two-per-man weapons in about a minute, then ride back into battle. Again, they’d stop 100 yards out from the winded and increasingly demoralized Mexican soldiers, fire their quick five or 10 rounds of aimed fire, then again withdraw to reload their cylinders. As long as their powder and cast-lead bullets held out, those Dragoons could keep this up indefinitely – without risk of injury to themselves – but with deadly impact on the Mexican soldiers.

That is why Captain Walker so desperately wanted those Colt revolvers for his Dragoons. These five-shot revolvers were the first example of firepower being used as a “force multiplier” – a common concept today, but one totally unknown before 1846.

There’s a sad footnote to this story: Captain Sam Walker died in combat before the revolver that bore his name could be delivered to his unit. Yet Captain Walker lived long enough to create a dual legacy – he re-launched Colt Patent Firearms Company, which still makes precision firearms for the US Army today, and he served as midwife to the birth of the Military-Industrial Complex.

Mexican-American War - 1846

I recently had the opportunity to contribute to an article on the Mexican American War, one that became the basis of a fascinating quiz. You can check it out at: http://www.mysanantonio.com/salife/stories/MYSA051606.01P.mxwar.1162a2d9.html

As you review the answers, you'll note that a fair number of them (but not all, by any means) seem to reflect current Mexican sensibilities - a few of these are worth noting:

1. This war was not triggered solely by the US, though Polk was eager for a variety of reasons to launch the war. Among other factors, Santa Anna was still smarting over Texas independence, and was loathe to admit that the border between Texas and Mexico might be at the Rio Grande, rather than farther north. The article maintains that there was no justification for the Rio Grande border, but the source who claimed that has clearly not studied the war of Texas Independence, which included battles along the Rio Grande (and below). The land was sparsely settled by both sides, and ownership was clearly open to debate.

2. Despite what one source - Sister Maria Eva Flores, director of the Mexican American Studies Center at Our Lake of the Lake University - said in the article, Mexican nationals of Spanish descent were not dispossessed of their land by the outcome of the war. The US had a long tradition (dating from the Louisiana Purchase and the aquisition of Florida from Spain) of honoring land grants made prior to the US acquisition of new territory, and this tradition (and law) was honored both by Texas (when it won independence from Mexico - and freedom from Santa Anna's dictatorship) and by the US after the Mexican-American war. Many of those Spanish landowners (and their families) went on to become wealthy and politically-powerful leaders of society in Texas, in California and elsewhere in former Mexican territory. I am sure that some felt that they'd "lost their country;" however, at that time, Mexico had held independence for barely two decades, and the country (as a country) was still in flux - still in the process of coming together as a nation-state. There was relatively little of what we'd now consider "nationalism" - and a great deal of prejudice and racism ("Spanish" settlers often felt they had more in common with European-Americans than with Indio and Mestiso citizens of Mexico).

3. This war was, to a great degree, about slavery and the Cotton South. The Deep South was painfully aware that, as the number of free states increased, they ran the risk of being out-voted in the U.S. Senate - and they saw the Senate as the bulwark which protected their "peculiar institution." To Southerners (and President Polk was from Tennessee - General Winfield Scott was a Virginian and General Zachary Taylor was a slave-holder from Louisiana), conquest south was a way of ensuring the survival of the Southern Slavocracy. There were other reasons, to be sure, but that was an important reason for the war.

4. California was less of a reason than the article suggested. California was largely settled by US citizens, and had already begun making moves toward becoming - as Texas had done - an independent country, free of Mexican overlordship. Polk knew this - and while some (mostly Hispanic) revisionist historians contend that the war was really about the take-over of the port of San Francisco, I am convinced that the war was really about Texas and the vast expanse of land between Texas and California - terrtory South and West of the Louisiana Purchase, land that included New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and Utah. Some (primarily Southerners) wanted to annex some or all of Mexico below the Rio Grande (General Scott proposed taking it all), but cooler and wiser heads prevailed.

5. The article is right that the US bought the lands it took over. What the article doesn't mention is that Santa Anna - cash-strapped and greedy as ever - actually initiated at least one of the purchases (the Gadsden Purchase, which added to Arizona's southern-most territories), concluded in 1853. He came to us with the offer; and, when the Mexican War was finished, he was no "reluctant virgin" at the negotiating table - he drove a hard bargain for the lands the US acquired, and got top dollar for those lands, and he worked hard to keep the US at the bargaining table until he'd sold off what he considered worthless Indian lands, uninhabitable by whites - which is how most educated people in 1848 viewed most of New Mexico and virtually all of Arizona, Nevada and Utah.

6. The article implies that President Grant called the war unjust late in life - that he did, but he also called it unjust DURING the war, and for the rest of his life. A patriot and soldier, he did his duty in that war (heroically, winning medals for personal bravery), but he had his own views about the justice of that war. In this he was joined by others - including a young Robert E. Lee (chief engineering officer to General Scott) and others who went on to become generals on both sides in the civil war. In fact, as the article pointed out correctly, most generals on both sides earned their combat spurs in the Mexican American war.

All in all, a fascinating article/quiz, throwing light on a little-known aspect of American history - one that, with our current border problems, is apparently becoming more relevant than it's been for the past 150 years.

Bulldog Triumphant!

Ned Barnett
© 2004

This is the true story of the most durable, the most triumphant bulldog in history – the bronze, life-size sculpture of the first mascot of the University of Georgia, “Uga I.”

The university, located on a series of hills above the gentle, wooded banks of the slow-flowing Oconee River in Athens, Georgia – about 75 miles east of Atlanta, had long thought of themselves as the “Bulldogs.” Today, nobody is really sure why this was so, but the bulldog image suited the school and it’s traditionally pugnacious football team.

However, it was only after the Second World War that students finally secured for themselves a living mascot. He was a pure-bred bulldog of course. “Uga I,” he was called, a name created from the university’s acronym, UGA. It was pronounced “ugh-uh,” a name soon to be spoken with pride by students and alumni alike.

This much beloved dog would, in time, go on to sire a line of sturdy and pugnacious bulldog mascots for the university, a line that remains unbroken to this day.

Uga I was fine, well-muscled and noble-featured animal, who, in a long and active life, graced the sidelines at many a football game at the university’s magnificent Stanford Stadium, “between the hedges.” With the arrival of Uga I, it quickly became a university tradition that, every time the home team charged onto the field before the start of a home game, they were led out by their fierce mascot, Uga I. That impressive bulldog-led charge quickly became part of the pageantry of the game, an instant tradition that has now stood the test of time for more than half a century.

The first of the Georgia mascots was a proud-looking bulldog, powerful of shoulder, compact of hindquarters, suitable aggressive and combative – yet beloved of generations of University of Georgia students. It was not surprising, therefore, that when Uga I went to his reward in 1959, a gifted graduate student in the University’s Department of Art created a meticulously-accurate life-size bronze sculpture of this beloved bulldog.

In a solemn ceremony, the proud pup was laid to his rest in a bulldog-sized Georgia granite mausoleum located directly in front of the central campus Student Union building. Atop Uga I’s stone memorial was mounted this life-like sculpture, ensuring that Uga I would be remembered for all time as the first in a line of fiercely proud mascots.

However, this bronze sculpture enjoyed nearly as exciting a life as the bulldog he effectively memorialized. His first adventure involved a midnight dog-napping.

You don’t have to be a native of Georgia to know that the University of Georgia and Atlanta’s own Georgia Tech were long-standing rivals. So you didn’t need to be a psychic to suspect that the students of the “North Avenue Trade School” were behind the late-night disappearance of the bronze bust of Uga I, the night before the two schools’ annual football competition.

Of course, the authorities were called in, though most students at the University of Georgia rightly suspected that the Atlanta police were more than a little partial to the engineers at Georgia Tech. In truth, the big-city police took the theft of this priceless monument as something less than the serious crime it most certainly was. Faced with official indifference, the students at the University of Georgia took the law – or at least the search – into their own hands. Soon, bands of fraternity students roamed the Georgia Tech campus, looking high and low for their dear, departed bulldog. Groups of those students stalked through the campus’ buildings, but found nothing. Then, a clever student – legend has it that he was in the Army ROTC, and had become fascinated with land mines – used a metal detector to locate the bronze bulldog. It had been buried in the center of the Georgia Tech campus, but it was quickly restored to the light, and returned amid pomp and celebration to the University campus.

There was a massive celebration on campus as the bronze Uga I was re-mounted on his rightful throne, atop the granite mausoleum of his namesake. There he remained, honored and left unmolested, for more than a decade. Uga I’s peace remained undisturbed until the anti-war movement arrived at the University of Georgia.

If you knew anything about that sleepy southern campus in the late 60s and early 70s, you’d understand that it was hardly a hotbed of radical student activism. The typical anti-war rally on Georgia’s campus usually swiftly degenerated into an outdoor street party, complete with buckets of fried chickens, beach music and ice-chests filed with cold beer.

In this laid-back atmosphere, the bronze Uga I quickly became the focus of many typically deep-south anti-establishment activities. This generally involved slipping a cigarette between the bronze bulldog’s lips before posing for photos – and for the really radical students, those “cigarettes” were not exactly tobacco. However, Uga I didn’t seem to mind – he didn’t even object when a portion of his anatomically correct posterior was painted a bright, almost florescent electric blue.

That would never do, of course, and the University chose to take bold action. Well, at least they decided to clean up their bronze bulldog. However, as quickly as University authorities would dispatch a worker to remove the paint – a particularly embarrassing task for the maintenance men – these hard-working men were nonetheless treated well by the “radical” student body. The workers’ typical reward for “taking care” of Uga I involved at least a half-dozen cans of cold beer each, eagerly shared by the cheering, partying students.

However, by 1974, “streaking” had replaced painting portions of Uga I in bright blue as the most popular outdoor student sport on campus, and at long last, Uga I settled into a quiet, well-earned retirement. For the past 30 years, Uga I has served primarily as a “mount” for the children and grandchildren of alumni who’ve come back to campus to revisit their days of glory.

Literally thousands of snapshots now grace mantles and photo albums from Savannah to Seattle, showing young boys and girls happily mounted on the back of this noble bronze bulldog. Perhaps they’re dreaming of the time when they’ll be old enough to enroll at UGA themselves, cheering on the school’s team as it charges back between the hedges, led – as always – by the proud latest-generation offspring of that noble bulldog, Uga I.



About Ned Barnett:

Ned Barnett, a '73 graduate of the University of Georgia, is the owner of Barnett Marketing Communications (http://www.barnettmarcom.com). He's a 32-year veteran of high-stakes crisis-management public relations, and is a frequent “source” for print and broadcast journalists. Barnett has advised many corporate and personal clients on effective crisis relations – often stopping a crisis in its tracks, even before it gets started.

As a political consultant and speechwriter, Barnett has worked for candidates and officials from both parties, as well as for public interest advocacy groups in areas involving the economy, the environment and healthcare. As a historian, Barnett is widely published in military history magazines, and has appeared a number of times on the History Channel, discussing military technology.

Barnett has taught PR at two state universities, and has written nine published books on public relations, marketing and advertising. He’s earned PRSA’s coveted Silver Anvil, two ADDYs and four consecutive MacEacherns; in 1978, he was the youngest (to that time) person to earn accreditation from PRSA, and in 1984, he became the first person to earn a Fellowship in PR from the American Hospital Association. But mostly, Barnett provides PR counsel to a range of corporations, authors and advocacy groups.

© 2004 – Ned Barnett
Barnett Marketing Communications