Military Service Structure: From Blackhawks to the Battle of the Marne (Full Transcript)

Episode Title: The Late For Changeover Show 5 Jun 2024

Date: Jun 5, 2024

Special event alert. Put on your flight suit and run because you are late for changeover at your weekly Space News and Variety Show. I’m your host Marty Smith and I’m joined by Mr. History Eric Farratt, our man in the closet Jake Wall, and our little mule Juanito Lopez, we’re here to bring you the latest headlines and updates pertinent to all Guardians and to the other Earthbound branches as well.

So take your seats, get informed, and have a laugh as we present late for changeover. Gentlemen, gentlemen, it’s good to see you. We have a special guest tonight.

He’s been on the show before. So let’s welcome back Brigadier General Chris Petty. Yeah, yeah.

Good to have you, sir. Great to be back with you. I hope we can have some more interesting discussions to see.

Well, it is interesting that you would come back on this show. There you go, guys. You’re doing a decent enough job that you got people coming back.

Desperation does horrible things to people. Also, General Petty is going to present a Battle Digest battle analysis of the first Battle of the Marne later in the show. Yeah, that’s freaking awesome.

Yeah, it’ll be pretty good. And you said you were working on that one, or you were working on producing it into the trifold? Right. I’m actually writing, researching, editing right now, so it’s fresh in my mind.

So this is good for both of us. And as a reminder, you can go out to battledigest.com, right, sir? Battledigest.com. One word. Battledigest.com. And he’s got trifold brochures if you’re interested in any of these battle analysis.

Or you can get his book. The 10 battles every American should know. Twelve battles every American should know.

It can’t be only ten. Two bonus battles. Two bonus battles.

Oh, now it’s two bonus battles. There you go, that’s how you can resell it. Marne, seriously, quick pitch for the book.

This is, I mean, this is twelve battles that every American should know, and if you don’t know these battles, you should be actually embarrassed. So this is the simple book to make sure that your family members understand these twelve battles that are just part of our history. And common cultural heritage.

So yes, important book. Yeah, it’s a good book, and we went through one of your battles last time. This one, well, hey, maybe it’s in part two.

Maybe it’s in world battles you need to know, because Americans didn’t fight in this one. But it was the defining battle of World War One. So we’re going to talk about this one.

That’s a good one. And so before we do that, we’ve got some fun and hijinks before we get there. But before we start, I wanted to I went on a motorcycle ride Saturday and I just looked it up and like Friday and I was like, hey, what’s what motorcycle rides are out there? And this one came up.

It was up in Denver. It’s by the V.A. I don’t know if they pronounce it that way, but it’s the Veterans Association of Real Estate Professionals. So I guess it’s the national organization.

They got chapters all over. I know they got one down in the Springs and this was the first poker run they put on. So it was very organized.

It was much more organized than any kind of motorcycle club poker run I’ve been on. I mean, they’re they’re sheets of paper that they handed out were like card stock. They were really nice.

And they had sponsors and I was like, wow, they gave out coins. They had a coin debt. So but I guess they they get together.

They do a lot of different things. I invited the president on hasn’t got back to me yet, but I talked with him extensively. They use some of the money where they I think for some of the disabled veteran home buyers, they help in buying furnishings for the for the home.

They also provide some kind of I think some kind of kickback if you use the V.A. rep realtors. And I don’t know what that is. So I don’t want to sell them shorter or mislead you.

But they they do a lot of cool things. So that was their first poker run. So I told them I would bring their cause to our show and advertise it.

So I go even though they haven’t called me back about doing an interview. General, Marty, a lot of power, you know, apparently with the listeners, the three minute listeners on Facebook, we got a lot of listeners. Nice.

Seven thousand last time. So all right. General Petty’s helicopter pilot went from active duty to National Guard early and then did the bulk of your career in the National Guard.

So I’ve I’ve wanted to ask you this question. We’ve covered this story a couple a couple of times, a couple of different ways about the proposal that the Space Force, I think it’s a space force doing it, right? Or is it the Pentagon in general? I don’t know. But the Space Force’s proposal is to do away with the National Guard units, the Air National Guard units that are doing space missions right now, because the Space Force has got themselves all tied up in knots, my opinion.

Because they have come out and said the future of Space Force is you can either be full time or part time and they haven’t defined what that means yet. And it sounds to me like it’s Guard or Reserve, even though they go, we’re not having a Space Force Guard or Reserve. So part of that proposal, which is to take these Air National Guard units that are doing space missions and then taking them away and making them active duty, because they don’t want a National Guard for whatever reason.

Now, I think there were at the last count. Do you remember, Eric or Jake, at the last count, how many governors have signed? I think it was at least 12 governors signed off on a letter that said you can’t. We won’t allow this to happen, you know, as much whatever they can do.

Sir, how does the inner workings of that? I’m not talking about whether it’s right or wrong, but how would that decision be made? You’ve been at the Pentagon. How about that decision be made to do that? One, can they legally do that? Can they just take National Guard forces away from a state? Well, yes. I mean, the answer is yes.

The short answer is yes. But I will tell you that. Force structure decisions of any kind are very carefully worked out involving the states and National Guard Bureau, because National Guard Bureau is sort of the, well, not sort of, it is the headquarters that interfaces with the adjutants general in each state, you know, the commander of the guard in each state working for the governors, the adjutant general, typically a two star.

They they lead all the forces in the state, both army and air. So any force structure decisions are really, really carefully managed at Guard Bureau to try to get state buy in. It’s really important in the guard.

So this would be fraught with risk for the Pentagon, for for politicians, for President Biden. I’m telling you, you know, the governors and the congressional delegations of these states, whether you want to believe it or not, are powerful political entities and it doesn’t really do DOD any good to piss them all off. Happened before, and it’s usually a mistake if you want to build, if you want to build for structure and you want to build, if you want to build capabilities, you typically want to include the guard and reserve.

So this is, this would be a really odd decision. And I’m not sure what’s really the underlying driver of this decision. You guys know.

No, I haven’t really explained it too much. So essentially the mission sets. Okay.

What, in what way in, in that most of the space mission sets don’t have a, I guess the guard has a civilian mission set associated in a vague way, right? But most of this mission sets for space, like theater, ballistic missile warning, or electronic warfare, not, not a lot of stateside tie-in argument. I was, I was at clear, I was at clear Alaska working with the Air National Guard. So they were title 32, they’ll get on the system to go title 10.

But the way Alaska justified it, it’s in their own backyard. So by doing the strategic missile warning in their own backyard, they’re protecting their state. So because there is going to be a tech from Russia, it’s going to go over the poles, it’s going to go through there.

So I think with the radars and anything coming in to CONUS, but it’s up in Alaska, you can make an argument, although they don’t have a National Guard, you can make an argument for North Dakota, Massachusetts, California. Yeah, I guess you can make an argument for those radars that are, hey, we’re protecting our state because it’s going to come into our state. Although those states that I just mentioned aside of Alaska don’t have a National Guard for those missions.

But I think there is value there, not only that, but my experience with the Guard and also being an AGR reservist and seeing the value that they bring, the continuity. I think that piece is missing. When I was active duty before I joined the reserves, I even understood it.

I did not like the reserves, like, okay, what’s the point of them being here? I didn’t understand the readiness part of it, what search capabilities were. And once you get on the other side, you understand the value that they bring and the continuity. Even them being, you know, you hear citizenry on the reserve side, understanding what that part citizen meant was like, I took a lot of value from that because a lot of them still work in the stream.

They have that experience. Also, they bring that experience and they just remind you as a military member that, hey, there’s another life out there when you’re a civilian. This is what it is.

But the value that you bring and the experience that you bring, so it’s going part-time. And from what I’ve read and understood, they really don’t know what part-time is going to be, except for the fact that part-time can be like you’re working a part-time job in McDonald’s. Like, hey, you’re going to work four hours here because you’re going back and forth.

And I think what the Space Force wants is more, hey, can I, as a commander, from what I’m understanding, go into search capabilities without needing the signature of a governor or the president. Yeah. One, like I was going to say, being, right, all three of us in this L were AGRs for a long time, right? I think Space Force and Air Force Space had a really, really hard time understanding and managing Guard and Reserve.

They just thought they were normal crew. They didn’t use them as search, ever, right? Like 90% of the time, we were half the training team. We were half the eval team.

Like there was full crews of just dirty reservists, you know? Like, and they needed us. They couldn’t at one eight Swiss, at two Swiss. If all of a sudden all those orders dried up, even if you had all the AGRs, they wouldn’t be able to make it, probably.

So I think it’s also a lack of being able to manage that and not having instant gratification that active duty is reliant on sometimes. Yeah, like the control, maybe. It’s like, yeah, you’re my forces.

Jake, I think you probably hit it on the head. Juan’s experience is right on. I understand it.

I know what the Alaska unit does. I know what the California unit does. The Colorado units have been managing space, both Army and Air for years, doing a great job.

So we’ve already worked through all those wickets and orders and going Title 10 from Title 32 at the drop of a hat or checking into the out center or whatever you guys call it. But those have all been worked out. So I think Jake is actually hitting the nail on the head.

The active duty force is so worried about the concept of that absolute command and control that they are willing to put this ripple in the pond, which I think is going to be a disaster. Yeah, and to be fair, to be fair, it’s not like they’re saying, hey, all National Guard tankers are now going to be active duty. I mean, it’s a small total number of personnel relatively that are doing Air National Guard space missions.

It’s not tens of thousands or something. I mean, it’s probably only like a thousand. It might be.

It might be. But I mean, that fight, I don’t know why it’s being fought. So it’s right.

And while I’m pointing out the continuity, that is something that the Guard and Reserve does add that the active duty force sometimes struggles with. You have to get your career ladder assignments, et cetera, et cetera, in the active duty. We all know that.

We all did that. But in the Guard, you get that stability. You’re there.

You can grow up in a unit and go from console operator to commander and you know everything. Soup to nuts. It’s hard to replace that.

So I think it’s a big mistake on a whole bunch of levels, actually. Yeah, it’s interesting. And that’s and that may be why so many governors have already written the letter saying that they’re going to post.

But I haven’t heard anything about it in a couple of months. So maybe they’re just like, maybe this was a mistake. Let’s back up and figure this out.

The ripples in the pond became undulating waves. So we just hit on a whole bunch of topics that Eric has nothing to do with. He’s just the old man up in the balcony yelling at us.

The most recent article, Marty, was April, what, 29th? Yeah, see, it was a couple of months ago. Yeah, even the title, nearly every governor opposes Guard units moving into space. Because I remember it was a ton of governors.

I don’t know where I got 12 from, but it’s obviously more than that. It’s obviously the governors. First off, it’s going to be the governors that have those Air Guard units.

But you would be smart, even if you didn’t, to jump on that because if they could start there with recruiting, everything’s under this veil of manning shortfalls nowadays. So they’re pulling out all the stops on what they can do. It’s crazy.

They’re doing signing bonuses for Air Force just for finishing basic training. I’m not in any career field, not in anything specific. You finish basic training.

Here’s 12K. Wow. Unbelievable.

They’re like 30,000 short. I mean, we should summarize this here in a couple months. I should go back and summarize all the things that they’ve thrown out there.

I don’t know how much you’ve been paying attention to the news, sir, but they’re talking about the House has proposed doing away with marijuana testing. The Navy already has it. If you test positive for marijuana at basic, they’re not going to kick you out.

They’re just like, go slip it off. So I thought about this. And there’s only one way I see as a way ahead that fixes this problem.

And that is just the quick summary is you have a national commitment to service. Now, you don’t have to do it because these days that would be un-American. You don’t have to.

But if you meet your obligation for national service, most of those recruits, column recruits, would go into a military service, but some would have other options like the old Peace Corps or whatever. But if you choose to participate in this national service obligation for a couple of years, then you get to take advantage of VA home loans or student loans backed by the government or FHA mortgages or you see what I mean? You get government benefits for serving your country. And I think that’s the only way to do this.

Much better incentives for sure. Yeah, incentivize it and make it more. It’s almost mandatory.

So you get this huge net of recruits making a two-year obligation. And some of them are going to stay. You’re going to get a lot more than want to stay because they’re interested in it.

Sure, sure. Well, and then the challenge shifts to retention rather than recruitment. So now you’ve got a thousand people and you only have to retain 100.

You have to make your long-term numbers. I mean, it’s a whole different way. And it’s so piecemeal.

All the things that are like, hey, we’ll let you have more tattoos. We’ll let you have beards. We’ll let you smoke pot.

Well, it’s just all these kind of band-aid ideas that sounded good around the board table, I guess. Yeah, but the population’s shrinking while the demand goes up. It’s a problem.

Yeah, yeah. I don’t know if that would ever fly but honestly, if you look at any kind of public service but government style job like that, like for service, my daughter expressed a little interest in it. So I looked up open jobs on there.

There’s like a hundred. Now the map’s loading. The amount of open jobs was crazy.

Yeah, right. I think you have to incentivize it. Everywhere except for Kansas because of course Kansas doesn’t have trees but 9,291 open jobs in the Forest Service.

The only way to do this is to incentivize it so that people feel compelled. Oh my gosh, if I don’t enter this service program in some way, I’m going to be locked out of student loans. I’ll maybe be locked out of nice mortgages backed by the government.

I’m going to be locked out of X, Y, and Z and it’s going to be a little painful but it’s still voluntary. Don’t tell me I can grow a beard. Doesn’t matter.

That’s a different problem, I guess. Yeah, but as it is now, my intention was to do four years now and then Santa was the GI Bill. Yep, right.

Same concept. That’s exactly where I did it. And then 21 years later from day one, here I am, I retired and it’s like the post-9-11 to make sure that my family could get that.

You had to do another service commitment for four years. That was a great incentive. That was awesome, right? But never it was grow a beard or graduate basic training.

And it’s like that. And right now with my daughter, she’s going to start college. And I asked her, hey, do a semester of ROTC, see what teamwork is, stuff like that.

They’re going to teach you stuff that they don’t teach you in other classes. They’re going to teach you that in physical ed or PE or there’s a different type of team dynamics. And that’s what really does it.

My incentive of staying in the military was everybody here, the camaraderie. So that was good enough for me along with the other. But it’s just like now, you could dangle those carrots.

Everything was great for me, the retirement, everything else. But now, I just don’t understand, those are not incentives that they want now. It’s different.

Can I smoke weed? Can I have tattoos? I think the weed thing is a whole different issue. With everything becoming legal, the federal government’s going to have, and all government employees, they’re going to have a rude awakening and they’re going to have to adjust here soon. Well, it is funny.

Because it’s got to be similar to state authority and be similar to alcohol and dry counties and things like that. And they’re going to have to… Sir, you’ll be interested to know that when we were first starting up Sibbers up at Buckley, we were under the D’Nif rules, and we had to go see the flight docks. And they wouldn’t let us take Sudafin.

That would D’Nif you. Just like a pilot, yeah. You were a pilot, right? You could get high.

But not soon. Well, no, there was that saying, no, right? You know that saying of, okay, I got to put my beer down eight hours prior to shift or six hours. Six hours bottle to throttle or whatever it was, yeah.

No, no, it was 12 hours bottle to throttle. The parties were fixed, but either way, yeah. It’s a space.

It’s just space. Yeah, we’re just cooking. It’d be interesting.

That’d be a great conversation that we could have. We could go all night. I’d love to pick your brain on it.

Before we jump in, before we jump in, Juan and Jake weren’t here last time. Hey, sir, could you just, in a couple of minutes, recount your claim to fame that you told Eric and I about Balloon Boy? You guys remember Balloon Boy? I listened to that episode. You did listen to it.

Okay, I did. I’m not going to give you the satisfaction of letting you know. Okay, so, Juan, you don’t know the story, so I’ll make it very brief since it’s only one.

What year did I say that was, Martin? I don’t remember that. I know, I forgot. Yeah, you remember the Balloon Boy one? Were they the hoax? Remember Balloon Boy? It was the worldwide attention media.

It was a kid that supposedly was on like a chair. The parents said he was out there. Yeah, they strapped a dog balloon.

Sorry, now that you brought up the chair? It was like a big mylar kind of weird balloon. And so the world thought that this five-year-old boy was in the balloon just floating freely in the atmosphere. So my 15-minute claim to fame that I shared and I’ll make it really short was I was the one Blackhawk, the one military Blackhawk chasing the balloon with the job of figuring it out, how we rescued this kid.

So we did. We put a hoist on a Blackhawk and a flight medic and we were getting ready to fly to that balloon and lower a medic and crew chief on a hoist and grab the kid and bring him to safety. I mean, you know, crazy, crazy shit.

Never been done before. The logistics of that. Just don’t even know what you could do.

Yeah, with the rotor wash and a balloon. I don’t even know if you… Exactly. But you know, it’s like, screw it.

We’re going to do it. We’re going to save the world, right? We’re all mission-oriented folks. So it was an exciting day.

And we actually, for my pilot friends, they loved the part where I was a moving TFR, which is a temporary flight restriction. And we shut down BIA. We shut down the entire BIA airport for like an hour and a half as this Blackhawk floats in with Balloon Boy trying to chase Balloon Boy.

Balloon descends and the story has a happy ending, but it was a really interesting day. That’s insane. That is a great story.

Yeah. But take your surprise now. Thank you for listening.

I appreciate that. Why don’t you subscribe? Why don’t you subscribe and help the channel out? Thank you for your service. Okay, we haven’t done this for almost a year.

So it’s time once again to make another selection to our all military team. And for our guest, this time it’s going to be helicopters, sir. We haven’t done helicopters.

It’s very appropriate. Our previous selections were the battleship was a USS New Jersey. That was Eric’s tanks.

Tanks. We chose the M4 Sherman. That was Jake’s fighter.

Jets was the F-15 Eagle rifles was a Spencer rifle. The Air Force General was Hap Arnold. Dogs was Sergeant Stubby.

That was my dog. The military animal was Sergeant Reckless. That was Jake’s horse.

He was a horse. Machine gun was the M2. The propeller bomber was a B-17.

The Marine General was General Smedley Butler. The aircraft carrier was a USS Enterprise and the handgun was the M1911. So that’s our previous selection.

Wow, okay. So we’re going to go down. You’re going to judge our submissions.

Again, like I said in the pre-show. There is no science to this whatsoever. So if you’re expecting a well-thought-out code.

You can’t see all of the science. There’s no science. And you can question this science too.

Yeah, you can definitely question this. You can put us down. But not too deep.

Don’t go too deep on it. We all have a methodology, you know, paragraph to this. No, we don’t.

So it was a bar conversation that turned into a bit onto the shelf. The mistake you made is, I am a helicopter pilot. I know.

That’s why it’s going to be brutal. I know that part. I forgot that part.

So you can either choose, at the end you can choose one of our submissions or if there’s something we left out and you go, no, this is the real helicopter. We all would balance it. Yeah, you know better or not.

Okay, deal. All right. So since I won the last time with the 1911, I’m going to go first.

All right. And then we’ll go Eric and Jake and Juan. I personally don’t see a reason to even have this.

I know, because I’ve got the winner, right? No, I have the winner. Are you kidding me? I chose the Bell UH-1 Iroquois or Huey, right? So few aircraft are as universally recognizable or as closely associated with a specific area in history as a UH-1 Huey helicopter. The genesis of the Huey dates back to the early 1950s when the U.S. Army expressed a need for a new multi-purpose helicopter.

Bell helicopter won the contract in 1955 with their XH-40 prototype, which subsequently evolved into the UH-1. The UH-1, officially known as the Iroquois, but universally known as the Huey due to its original designation HU-1, represented a significant advancement in helicopter design. It was the first turbine-powered helicopter to enter production for the U.S. military, utilizing a single, lycoming T-53 turboshaft engine.

T-53s were now for a combination of power and reliability, two essential features for military helicopters. Over the years, the engine has been upgraded and improved with later models offering over 1,800 shaft horsepower. The T-53 was the first turbine engine to be used in a production helicopter in the U.S., so it paved the way for all you other guys.

Good luck with that. The fact that it’s still- It’s got every movie scene other than the one whole movie. You know, it has the UH-1.

Well, yeah. All Vietnam, everything, Huey. Firebirds.

Fucking, like, predator and stuff like that. That’s right, that’s right. And clear and present danger.

He bought one off of the Colombians down there or whatever. The fact that- The AK-47 from another helicopter. The fact that the Huey is still in use today is a testament to its design.

It featured a two-bladed main rotor and a single two-bladed tail rotor. Its fuselage could accommodate up to 15 personnel, and it could be configured for various roles, including troop transport, medevac, command and control, and as a gunship. It was, in fact, the first gunship.

So, pow, skip the engine stuff. It had a top speed of 135 and a range of approximately 315 miles. It could climb at a rate of 1755 per minute and had a ceiling of over 19,000.

The Huey’s spacious and easy reconfigurable cabin could accommodate up to 14 troops or six stretchers, depending on its mission. It only required a 30-person crew. It’s flown by all the services, except the Space Force, flew in every U.S. war conflict since Vietnam.

This was a comment out on Reddit. Easy to fly, built like a tank, good lifting capacity, reliable, versatile, relatively low maintenance, single pilot, single engine, and they’re still super cheap to build and operate compared to other in-service helicopters. So, that’s my case for the UH-1 Huey approaching 70 years, I don’t know, 70 years in use? It’s like an old man that needs to be retired, sorry.

But can’t. Okay, good case. Okay, Marley, you made your case, good.

All right. Okay, next. Eric.

All right, gentlemen, let’s get down to the bones here, man. We’re talking about a military aircraft. We need to talk about its capability to destroy things.

We’re talking about the AA-64 Apache, manufactured my Boeing, and I’m going to go straight to its armament because it creates a badass picture for you. It has a 30-millimeter M230 chain gun, a Hydra-70 millimeter and CRV-770 millimeter air-to-ground rockets, AGM-114 Hellfire, an AIM-92 Stinger, and a crew of two. It’s got a Stinger on it? It does.

Well, you can put a Stinger on it. Yes, correct, correct. So, it conducts rear close and shaping missions, including deep precision strikes, conducts distributed operations, precision strikes against relocatable targets, and provides armed reconnaissance when required in day, night, and obscured battlefields in adverse weather conditions.

The AA-64 Apache has a four-blade main rotor and a four-blade tail rotor. The crew sits in tandem with the pilot sitting behind and above the co-pilot slash gunner. Both crew members are capable of flying the aircraft, so they have to be multi, both being able to pilot the aircraft.

The crew department has shielding between the cockpits, such that at least one crew member can survive hits. I like it. I wanted to point that out to you.

It’s important. One of the most distinguishing features of the, features at the introduction of the Apache was its helmet-mounted display, the integrated helmet and display sighting system. Among other abilities, the pilot or gunner can slave the helicopter’s 30-millimeter automatic M230 chain gun to his helmet.

That’s very cool. The AA-64 is designed to endure frontline environments and to operate during the day or night and in adverse weather, be it its avionics and onboard sensor suites. These systems include the target acquisition and designation system, pilot night vision system, passive infrared countermeasures, GPS, and the IHATS, which is the helmet.

This thing goes in, kicks butt, destroys, close air support for the troops on the ground and lives and survives. Can’t beat it. That’s my argument, guys.

All right. Nice. Okay.

All right. Okay. All right, that’s not bad.

That was… You didn’t bring up Nicholas Cage and Tommy Lee Jones. Yeah, you did. One of the worst all-time movies I’ve ever seen.

Yeah, but the helicopters in the Apache was bad. True. Jake, go ahead.

I didn’t take into account our judge, but my helicopter is truly the AK-47 helicopter worlds. The MH-60 or H-60, the Skyhawk, the Jayhawk, the Blackhawk, all the same airframe, basically just different mods flown by every branch, including the Coast Guard, except for the Space Force. Right.

Eric said he was very, very excited about his one M230, 30-millimeter chain gun. The Blackhawk’s flown by the Soar Squadron can mount up to two M230, 30-millimeter chain guns. They can do your rocket pods.

They can do your 16 AGM Hellfires. They can do your air-to-air stinger. They can also do, but have never actually done, a Scout 19, a 50-cal.

So that one’s in theory. That one’s going to mount that one, right? So that one’s good. So we can blow stuff up.

We can also take people to places. We can rescue them. The Coast Guard alone has rescued in the Jayhawk’s lifespan.

They have rescued over 11,900 lives. And that is just the Coasties. That’s a good stat to pull off.

The Apache’s probably taken that many lives. I’ve watched some of that stuff on the eyesight, right? We’ve seen them mow down whole villages, including wedding cards. So, you know.

So, not only logistics, like Juan was saying, but can bring firepower to the fight. My vote is the H-60 in all its different uses. Very good.

All right, Jake. Juan, what do you got? All right. So I have the Chinook, or the Boeing CH-47, which was the replacement to the Mojave.

So after 1960, going to 1961, that’s the first time they introduced it. In 1962, that’s when I was given to the Army. Like, here you go.

This is the Chinook. For me, the reason, and I could get into all the stats and everything, it’s a very large airframe, but the capabilities that it has in different variants. Not only that, but the different variants provides use for different missions, right? You could, if there’s a fire, and they’re going to use a helicopter, most likely it’s going to be a Chinook over there, carrying the water, you know, to try and help with the fire support.

There’s a humanitarian who’s going to carry out the supplies. Not only that, but the Chinook’s going to, logistically, it’s going to go into areas where no other aircraft go into, especially if you’re going to take large amounts of supply, food, and everything. Now, in war and in theater, the Chinook’s going to be escorted.

They know the value of the Chinook and what it carries. So if it’s going to have troops, it’s going to have supplies. Also, it’s going to be escorted by some Black Hawk helicopters to get to from point A to point B. So, but yeah, they got to protect mama going into things.

But I just like, you know, every time you watch the news, actually there was a fire in 2020. It was around September. It was a mammoth lake in California.

And the National Guard, Army National Guard responded to it, although they were told, did not go in there. They were specifically told by their commander, it’s too dangerous, did not go in there, but they still went in there, saved over 200 people. But it was two helicopters.

One of them was a Black Hawk. The other one was the Chinook. And not only that, but there was, I believe, five dogs saved from there.

Just a couple broken legs, but they were able to evacuate everything from there. And that’s, but if you think about it anywhere, right, it could be overseas, or it could be nationally. It could be within our own state.

Most likely it’s going to be a Chinook that’s going to save the day. So, and then when it comes to, you know, the pound is like, so it weighs about 24,000 pounds, but it could carry about the same amount of weight, right? And just the different temperatures and altitudes that it could go from, right, so that it’s going to vary, but it’s just, it’s proving itself. And it’s been around since the 60s, and people still use it.

They use it, the Coast Guard uses it, the different services, different nations use it. And not only that, but it’s also used commercially and locally, right, through local services. So my pick is the Chinook.

Well, there’s no real planned replacement for the Chinook either. Right, not that, no, it’s just different variants, right? And the more I dug into it, they’ve even thought about, like even putting weapons systems and therefore like theater missile warning to actually intercept theater missiles. So as I’ve been digging too much into it, but just seeing some of the Kinos that are on there.

So it’s just the different variants that you could do and just how you can modify this plane, right? But it’s just proving its value on just saving people. So my focus has just been there and the logistics of just dropping off aid and value to different nations. One, you’re just talking about a flying hotel.

I’m not impressed. The lumber companies that use Chinooks are freaking, those videos are pretty cool, obviously. Now you can sling load a lot of stuff under that helicopter.

I get that. You can lift 25,000 pounds. I mean, that is massive.

Lift the whole Apache. Yeah, next to that is out on the battlefield we slung them out with Chinooks. Yeah, that’s pretty cool.

Next to that picture of the Huey being the last thing to leave Vietnam on top of the embassy has to be that Chinook in Afghanistan. That picture of that way in Afghanistan. Yeah, yeah.

Trying to do that. I can’t remember what the operation was that rescue. That was amazing.

All right, sir. Submissions are in. Okay, so guys, you obviously all picked remarkable helicopters.

They’re also different. That’s the problem. So I’ve flown three of them, actually.

So I’m very biased on three of them. I never flew the Apache. So that I just know it’s a kick-ass platform because I’ve seen it.

I’ve worked with it. I’ve worked with it in a combat zone and it has escorted me into and out of bad situations. So I respect the heck out of it.

So, boy. Now, Marty, your pick is like a different era. So the three other picks are current, you know, latest and greater technology.

But we’re still flying. Yours is the previous era of classics. So as biased as I am, I’m probably going to do one of these things is not like the others.

And that would be yours. You know, I have fifteen hundred hours in Huey’s. I mean, I love that machine.

That was the Harley Davidson of Army aircraft. Really worth it. It’s classic.

But, you know, in today’s conflict, I’m definitely flying in in the Black Hawk, not Huey. And feeling much better about it because of survivability, redundant systems, speed, power, everything. So two chain guns.

Yeah, everything is different. So the Huey was fantastic and classic. And I’m actually glad I spent a lot of time in that airframe.

But it’s just it’s it’s seen its days. That’s all. So it’s I’m eliminating that one, Marty.

Sorry. Now, the other three should take myself off. The other three.

The problem is the other three are so different. They’re totally different missions. They were designed for different missions.

It’s like it’s like comparing the Air Force like a C-17 to a F-16. It’s a totally different role for the airframe. Or you could pick the one that does both of those roles.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I guess I guess what it’s good. You guys all make great points.

And that’s the thing. They’re really amazing shoes. And sir, I can go get my wallet.

There’s no financial reason. I can’t really preorder 12 battles. Everyone should know about Amazon.

Because you all picked such good airframes, I’m just going to have to go with my personal bias. I’m I love the Black Hawk. I flew it.

I have 350 combat hours in a Black Hawk. And I love that airframe. And it was great survivability, great speed, great at night and gets in and out.

Does its does its mission with a little less signature. Although I will tell you, most of our missions were Chinooks and Black Hawks combined because they do. You can’t beat the Chinook for just at least to put 50 combat troops in the back of that thing.

You want to load that in some bad guys backyard and, you know, game over. Yeah, you drop a platoon of people there. It’s a lot of combat power and rejected quickly.

So, so yeah, the Chinook is amazing. But I’ll just go with my personal favorite because I flew it last. I flew it most is the Black Hawk.

Wildcard, the H-53. I’ve always seen a very famous picture. Yeah, there’s a famous picture of two like a gunner and then another crew member with their legs over the back and the helicopters just lifted off.

I’ve always loved that picture. And I was like, why isn’t this more popular? What’s going on? Why isn’t the H-53 like anything, you know? I don’t know. It was just too expensive and the Chinook did a lot of the role, you know, coming out.

You know, one thing we didn’t mention, sir, is that, you know, the Sea Stallion family. I think those are Sikorskis. Yeah, I don’t know how they compare aeronautically with.

They lift more. Oh, they do. Yeah, they lift more.

They lift more of the sky cranes, the old sky cranes you’re talking about. I guess so. The ones that the Navy flies now.

CH-53s, the old ones. Oh, the old one. No.

The CH-53, the sky cranes. All right, all right. Those ones are freaking awesome to watch.

Yeah, they have the most power of any U.S. Army, or U.S. military helicopter. But you don’t see those anymore. They’re not in service anymore.

So if you are, I grudgingly give a jig to Victor. But if you want to hear more about the General’s time, he ran the High Altitude Helo School up at the, where was it up in the mountains? Well, I can’t take credit for running it. Well, you were.

I was a part of it. Yeah, I was a part of it. And that’s where my unit actually trained.

So we did a lot of cross-pollination all the time. So I was very involved with it. But that high altitude training site, HATS, is actually world famous with special operations, aviators and stuff coming to Colorado to train in the high mountains.

Because helicopters are really limited by power. And all our conflicts seem to be in the high mountains. And that’s where helicopters lose power and get in trouble.

And of course, combat commanders want to load helicopters with everything on Earth. And so they’re always grossed out, gross weight. And so you’re always on the margin.

So it’s a hugely valuable school. Yeah, it’s an interesting portion of his interview. Okay, gentlemen, let’s get into the gem of the podcast here.

Sir, are you ready with your? I’m ready. Can I just, he’s probably like, let’s get on with it. Yeah, yeah.

Well, it’s okay. Well, let me run this little intro for you, sir. And then when it finishes, it’s all yours.

And you call out for whatever maps you want to see. Wow. Hey, all right, guys.

Hey, we’re going to talk about the most decisive battle of World War One. It’s the first battle of the Marne. I think most people have heard of the Marne, right? The Battle of the Marne.

Technically, we call it the first battle of the Marne because there was other battles of the Marne. But usually just people say the Battle of the Marne. Now, even though the battle happened on five to nine September of 1914, I got to set the stage for the first months of World War One.

And it really leads everything up to the battle. So let me kind of set the stage here. After the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, there’s a lot of geopolitical things going on in Europe.

It’s even hard to imagine today how distrustful the European states were the great powers were in Europe at the time after Germany kicked France’s boat, surrounded Paris, forced us French surrender, seized the territories of Alsace and Lorraine, which you’ve heard of because of this over the ensuing century. That taught everyone a lesson. And that taught the lessons of the Industrial Revolution.

We had factories now, mass producing arms. We had increased accuracy on rifled weapons. We had machine guns.

We had much more accurate and heavy artillery. All these things where we had railroads. One of the lessons of the American Civil War.

We had railroads that could rapidly move troops to battlefields far beyond the communities. And we had urbanization. So we had lots of young men available for reservists to plus up our forces quickly.

So the lessons that came out of the Franco-Prussian War were we have to build combat power really, really fast, move it by railroad to the front and undertake offensive action quickly to force a decisive victory and end the war in short order. That was the lessons of the Franco-Prussian War. Interestingly enough, now, with all the things happening between 1871 at the end of the Franco-Prussian War and 1914, the beginning of World War I, you have the rise of Germany.

You have the unification of Germany. So now the balance of power in Europe is really tilting towards German strength. You have the Russian Empire.

You have the French. You have the British. You have the Italians.

You have all these alliances. And there’s still this imperialist mindset going on. People don’t want to miss out on the end of imperialism.

They want overseas possessions and raw materials, et cetera, et cetera. You have all these things happening. Oh, and by the way, you have the slow decline and fall of the Ottoman Empire.

It’s happening too. So you’ve got all these forces at work in Europe coming together in 1914 that create these conditions for what turns into this massive fire storm called World War I. Now, you guys are familiar with the spark that set the world on fire. So in June, I think it was June 28, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, this is Austria-Hungary.

Austria-Hungary is an ally of Germany. I mean, let me back up real quick. Amid all the geopolitical things I was talking about in a really, really abridged version, you have these two alliances that now have formed.

You have the Central Powers, which is Germany, which is Germany and Prussia, Austria-Hungary and Italy. They’ve aligned now in the center of Europe. And now on the outside of them is Russia aligned with France aligned with Britain, okay, the Triple Entente, as it was called.

So you have these two alliances now that are kind of locked in tension with one another. And what I tell you earlier, war plans were now based on all those lessons of the Franco-Prussian work. So they’re quick acting, massive mobilization war plans.

So now you have the two alliances. It’s 1914. Austria-Hungary within that one alliance with Germany sends the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary to Sarajevo for a state visit.

During the state visit, the archduke is assassinated with his wife, Sophia, on the street corner in Sarajevo. I’ve been to the street corner. It’s just a little quaint.

I mean, Sarajevo is not a quaint little town, but you know, it’s not some giant metropolis. And so there it is. It’s marked even to this day, the corner, the corner where he got shot.

That assassination was pretty interesting in itself. Yes, and you guys definitely interrupt me, but I’m going to bring us right back on track because I want this whole thing to last for like a second. But yes, I really do encourage interruption.

So don’t let me discourage you on that. But okay, so the assassination happens by this Serbian nationalist terrorist group, really, that’s how we call them today, terrorist group, Serbian nationalists called the Black Hand. As far as I know, the first terrorist group that we tracked in, you know, in history.

Anyway, so what happens next starts the cascade of events that really quickly launch the entire world into this massive war. So Austria-Hungary, of course, the heir to the throne is just assassinated. So Austria-Hungary mobilizes their army quickly, I’m talking within days, to punish Serbia, this little upstart, cocky, Slavic nation that they’re going to punish.

There’s always been tension between Austria-Hungary and that area of the world because the Ottoman Empire was part of it. There’s a big fault line there that we can still see to this day in the middle of Sarajevo, which I think is fascinating, by the way, architecturally. Anyway, I won’t address too much.

So Austria-Hungary mobilizes their army quickly to punish Serbia. Okay, fine. Serbia mobilizes to counter.

Now we’re talking mobilization, no shots fired again. So this is happening within a couple of weeks. And then Russia feels compelled to come to the defense of the Serbs because there’s an old historical tie to the Serbian people, you know, the Orthodox Christian faith.

Remember that part of the world was also the intersection of Christianity, Orthodox Christianity, and Islam, right? Right there, like 800 years of this stuff, prior to World War One. Anyway, Russia mobilizes their army. Okay, now that’s the big trigger because now you’ve got the two alliances looking at each other, going, uh-oh, we planned for this.

War’s about to break out. So Russia’s now mobilizing. So what happens? Germany, whose entire national survival is based on a two-front war strategy built by Alfred von Schlieffen, and we’re going to talk about the Schlieffen plan, which you guys have heard of, and it’s a famous historical name, but now you’re going to learn what it was.

So Alfred von Schlieffen has put together the German war plan based on, again, the Franco-Prussian war, lessons learned with the French and the German attacks in 1870, et cetera. So they know they’re going to fight a two-front war, so that’s what their plan addresses. We’ll talk about the Schlieffen plan in a minute.

But the key to the Schlieffen plan and German survival is, we can’t give the Russians a head start because our entire plan is predicated on knocking out France first and then moving our armies by railroad east to knock out the slower mobilizing Russians. That’s the higher premise that the Schlieffen plan is built on. So now Russia’s mobilizing, so Germany says, holy crap, our entire national security is in jeopardy because we can’t give them a head start.

We are mobilizing. So the Kaiser, he’s cautioned and he tries to back down a little bit, but he eventually is like, okay, we’re mobilizing. So before that happens, because I don’t want to make it sound like it was just autopilot, but it almost was actually.

So before that happened, Germany issues a warning to Russia, stand down your army and a warning to France that says, don’t mobilize your army to try to deescalate this thing. That’s it. Russia ignored him and France said, we’ll do what’s in our national security basically, I’m paraphrasing.

So with that, the Kaiser said, okay, mobilize now. Now, funny thing to this day, and I love the context of this war is just like today we just scratch our heads like how could they not see this coming? So Germany mobilizes their war plan, the Schlieffen plan. It’s all they got.

They got one plan. Yeah, I know. One of the big lessons of writing in Battle Digest.

They had one plan. Total war. That was it.

The Kaiser says, when the Kaiser says, go, or game, game. When the Kaiser says go, it’s gloves off. The entire German mobilization plan, Schlieffen plan, has started the road to war, two front war.

That’s it. It’s all they got. We got one here.

I know. So Germany mobilizes on, and I’m not going to give you exact dates because I will just distract you and look at my notes, but I’ll be close. Germany mobilizes on like, two August.

They cross into Belgium. And they start the big sweep. Can you pull up the map on Marty, which is the, which is the Schlieffen plan? Okay.

Now, you don’t have to see all the detail on this map to really get my point here. This is actually the Schlieffen plan, not how, not how things transpied. So let me, let me decode this for you real quick.

So you have the German armies. We’re going to talk about up top. You got Klug’s first army.

Von Klug’s first army. You see that at the very top in the red box. You’ve got Bülow’s second army.

You got Hausen’s third army. Albrecht’s fourth army. This big right wing.

This big right wing is supposed to come down. You can see the arc. You can see the arc going, you know, off to the west.

It’s basically going to, it’s a giant single envelopment of France and the French army. It’s going to sweep around Paris. It’s going to close the back door and it’s going to push the French army, essentially against the trapdoor, the anvil, whatever you want to call it, of the death army’s sixth.

You see them in red there. They’re going to basically stay in place and crush the French forces that are getting pushed back against them, against that wall, right? The anvil. Okay.

Does that make sense to you guys? Did you ever see that? So this is actually good strategy. I mean, if you just look at this as a strategist, you say it’s an indirect approach. It’s not something the French would necessarily expect because you’re not coming straight at them.

You’re enveloping them. You’re turning their entire flank. You’re pushing them against strength in the defensive positions against fifth, sixth, and seventh armies.

It’s a good plan. And when you’re fighting two enemies, one on the west and one on the east, you need something like this to actually give yourself a fighting chance. Did the Germans at that time have a mobility advantage that they could sweep that broadly? Well, the only mobility advantage they have was their internal mobility.

Their railroads were better than Belgium railroads and French railroads. But once you’re off the German railroads, you start to struggle with your own mobility problems. But remember, this isn’t the age of armor.

This is still infantry men in trucks. It’s still horses against foot. Yeah, and foot and horses.

Lots of horses. This is still the age of horse, believe it or not. I mean, it died off really quickly, literally, in these battlefields.

But we’re still talking horse-drawn stuff, rudimentary trucks, carrying troops, but armies on foot. Still moving on foot. Okay, so it’s a feasible plan.

And again, you’re stuck between Russia and France. Yeah, you got to do something. You’ve got to fight them both.

So von Schlieffen actually came up with probably the best plan he could have under the situation. Now, the interesting thing about this plan is, most historians say it might have actually worked if the chief of staff of the German army, which is his name is Mölke von Mölke. You’ve probably heard the term Mölke.

Because Mölke was also famous for Mölke, the elder, was also a great Prussian strategist and wrote lots of stuff. And he was a great general. This is his nephew, Mölke, the chief of the German staff for the war, because Schlieffen was too old, basically retired, you know, a couple of years before World War I started.

So Mölke, we’ll talk about him more. He’s the implementer of the plan for the Kaiser. Okay, Mölke made some changes to the plan that actually affected its execution.

Part of the Schlieffen plan was, you see those blue arrows down at the bottom where the French right wing is pushing into Germany. Mölke designed the plan so that the German army would give ground purposefully to let the French take ground and take attrition, but also very importantly, to not be able to reinforce their left flank because the forces were engaged and driving into Germany. Mölke, unfortunately, the Germans changed.

He reinforced the German left flank, which is to the right of your screen, and he took forces away from the big right hammer, the big right wheel. That adversely affected the plan. And then before, as the fighting started, the Russians actually attacked out east and Mölke took some more forces from the right wing and moved them off to the eastern front.

Too late to do any good against the Russians, but it weakened the right flank. So he actually made a couple of critical errors prior to the Schatzberg fire. Okay, so back to the action on the ground.

So in the first few weeks of the war, the Germans are moving through Belgium. The Belgian army is too small to resist really. There are six divisions total of 100,000 men total.

So they really do put up some brave resistance and they have a couple of key fort complexes that really force the Germans to expend some time in reducing the forts with heavy artillery and all that stuff. So the Belgians play their part and they play it well, and they end up escaping and withdrawing back to Antwerp. So they’re a constant threat on Mölke’s rear as he drives forward, which is also positive for the Allies.

But the big right wheel is in motion and it’s massive and it’s difficult to stop. The Belgians aren’t stopping it. They delay it by a couple of days.

You want to put the map back up? Yeah, I want to look at the map just for a minute, just because I’m telling the story. Even though this is the plan, it followed the plan a little bit until I’ll tell you what the deviations were. And I’m not going to, I don’t have time to give you all the detail, which you probably don’t know.

Anyway, so the right wheel is moving. Okay, so Kluck’s first army is driving west, starting a turn. South, south, west.

Buelos army is driving into Belgium and they’re making great gains. They can’t, they’re unstoppable. Now they get in trouble.

Oh, meanwhile, meanwhile, the interesting thing is during the first weeks of the conflict, the French general in charge, General Joseph Joffrey, you’ve probably heard that name because he was the hero of France after this battle, but he really screwed up a lot in the beginning. He redeemed himself at the end and he deserves credit for that, but he really screwed up in the beginning. He was, you know, he was in charge of the entire military of France and France had a war plan too, funny thing, right? It was called plan 17.

Unlike the German plan, the Sleefel plan, which is a nice strategic indirect approach, envelopment, Joffrey’s plan 17 was the frontal assault, you know, not very creative and, you know, just really not really creative and it just drove into German strength and the Germans only gave ground because it was part of their strategy and they took heavy tolls as you can see on the map because it actually played out this way. Third army and second army and first army of the French side, the blue boxes, made their advances into Alsace and Lorraine and the Ardennes Forest area to reclaim that territory. So Joffrey is fixated on plan 17 in the first few weeks of the war while the Germans are doing their right sweep through Belgium and entering, you know, the northern part of France and Joffrey is almost ignoring the German right wing to focus on his war plan driving into those lost territories and driving into Germany, which, you know, he’s kind of thick headed at this point.

You’ve got to be honest with yourself. A student of history would say, okay, you kind of missed the signs here. He’s really fixated.

We’re really fixated on the plan here, there in general, but so be it. It happened. Now, finally, you see the French fifth army there in the middle, the blue box, it says Land Rizik.

So Land Rizik is Joffrey’s northernmost commander as he’s executing his plan in these first weeks of August of 1914. And Land Rizik is getting nervous because he’s hearing the reports from Belgium about the, you know, resistance at the forts and, you know, the brave small Belgian army resistance holding off the Germans coming in and all that stuff because he’s the he’s the furthest left of the French line. So think about it.

Look at those red arrows. And look at the furthest left of the French line. I mean, this German plan is set up to work quite well, actually.

So anyway, as the fighting continues, Joffrey can’t ignore it anymore. There’s too much going on in the north. Land Rizik finally gets permission to do reconnaissance, moves up, moves up to his, what we’re going to say is the left, left, north and left or north and west.

Now, Marty, if you throw up the other slide that I gave you a slide to, you’ll kind of see where things start to make contact. Yeah, okay. So once the French react, once Joffrey realizes, okay, now I know where the Germans are actually doing their main effort.

It’s up north. Hello, I better, I better, I better change my alignment here and my force distribution. So as he’s failing on the right and some of it was the Germans allowing him to succeed and then pushing him back to their original positions.

Fortunately, the Germans, and this is one of the flaws of the Schliebmann plan too, because Mulkey reinforced that, that German left flank, you know, on the right of your screen, the German left flank. And it let the Germans push the French back to fortified defensive positions. So now they can hold off the Germans and reallocate forces to their left wing.

I mean, his classic, you know, Mulkey thinks he’s supporting the German effort. He’s helping the French in this case. Now they can reinforce their left flank, which they did.

So now, now Joffrey turns around his thinking and this is where he deserves credit. He issues a new plan, reorganizes the entire military, takes forces from the east, from his east flank, from his from his right wing and to his left wing, creates a brand new army. See the sixth army there above Paris, creates a brand new sixth army from from other forces off his right wing.

And he’s making all these shifts as the Germans are pushing. You can see where Cluc is, Bülow is, Hasem is, they’re pushing. And the British Expeditionary Force has arrived because that was a pre-combat alliance commitment from Britain.

They’ve arrived and they come up and they hit the Germans unexpectedly at Mons, which I’m not going to bore you with all the points on the map. I’m trying to paint the contours of why this battle is interesting. And so the British arrive, they don’t fall into the right flank as planned because there is no right flank.

It’s being formed as the Germans are pushing. They sort of meet up with fifth army. You’re going to see in the slide, look at fifth army on this slide.

It’s got a new commander. D’Espre because Joffrey replaced his army commander for being too cautious and stuff. It’s typical Joffrey relief, like 40 generals during the first weeks of this.

You know, he’s just one of those old-school idealists. It’s like we will win with offensive spirit. You know, that kind of guy, it’s like, hey, man, we’re facing machine guns now.

This is different kind of work. And so it’s not a calorie charge anymore. Exactly.

So, you know, Joffrey is learning here. And that’s why I think he does redeem himself. He’s created sixth army now.

They’re forming by Paris. There’s a new commander that’s in charge of the Paris not manorite, manorite. He’s in charge of sixth army, but there’s a general called Galliani, who’s like the savior of this battle.

So I’m going to talk about Galliani in a minute. But so Galliani is the military governor of Paris. So he’s in charge of defending Paris.

Fifth army is now with a new commander. You see the BF now they’re under French. It’s confusing because they’re in France, but it’s Sir John French, of course, just to make it confusing for us.

Of course, people that like maps. It looks like a French army, but it’s commanded by French, the BF. So the Germans have now pushed back these flank forces that Joffrey has reorganized and basically sent to the front.

The Germans have pushed them back and they pushed them back so effectively that Bülow, this is one of the critical errors leading up to this battle. And the funny thing, by the way, about the Battle of the Marne is it wasn’t a really climactic battle of like force on force. It was a battle of psychology and positioning where the Germans lost their nerve because they were out of position and the French and the allies took advantage of it at the perfect time.

To turn the Germans around and make them retreat, which is the amazing part of the Battle of the Marne. So we’re getting that real close now. Then you guys, please, bring some questions up because I do want to, I am just kind of hitting my points.

So now you can see Cluck and Bülow are pushing the allies back. They’re pushing the French armies back. They’ve already pushed the BF back.

So these two German commanders are thinking, yes, my lines of communication are strained. My soldiers are hungry. My soldiers are tired.

I am having trouble communicating with Mokey back in the rear. Things are getting blurry, but you know what? We’re kicking butt. We’re kicking butt.

I mean, the French and the British seem to be defeated, sort of defeated. So we’re going to keep moving forward. Bülow is confident enough that he asks Cluck, which unfortunately, I guess, and I’d say for the Germans, Mokey gave Bülow operational control of Cluck’s army at this point, mainly just to save the alignment on the big wheel.

You guys ever been in a parade and you’re trying to do a wheel move? You know, it’s pretty hard just in a formation of like 12 people. So think about armies online trying to create a wheel. So anyway, Bülow had Cluck under his operational control.

He turns Cluck eastward, really a change to the entire sleeping plan. He turns Cluck eastward because he wants to do the finishing blow basically to Fifth Army as they’re up north, you know, where the dots are previously, not where Fifth Army ends up. I can’t do, you know, 10 slides.

So Cluck turns inwards. Mokey actually approves it because he’s got a little fog of war going on too. He’s far back.

He’s in Luxembourg, his headquarters in Luxembourg. He’s not quite seeing things and communications are not good. They’re using radios for like the first time in warfare, but they’re not as reliable, you know, line of sight.

You guys know all that. There’s retrans stuff going on and it’s not easy. Anyway, so Cluck turns inwards.

So now, if you think back to the original picture, Cluck’s supposed to go all the way around west, way sweeping around Paris. Now, Cluck’s forces are tired, hungry, suffering from logistical strain and communications not so good. But he thinks he can help Bülow create the finishing blow to Fifth Army.

So they do. They fight Fifth Army, Fifth Army withdrawals, the BF withdrawals. And again, they think they got him on the run.

They think they got him beat. And Cluck does something on his own now because Mokey recognizes the problem that he’s created with this operational control issue. So he detaches Cluck from Bülow’s operational control, tells him to move back out to the west, take your original track.

We’re going to get this thing back on track. And Cluck makes a decision at the next battle. They reengage the Fifth Army as the Fifth Army’s fallen back.

They reengage at the Sombre River. And I don’t have a slide on this, but it’s happening basically where that middle blue line is to the right, upper right above Paris. So they engage there.

And Bülow asks Cluck to come in on his flank so he can finish off Fifth Army. Cluck voluntarily this time says, okay, I’m turning it. Now, this is the critical point of the Battle of the Mart, actually.

Cluck voluntarily turns in to support Bülow’s attack to finish off Fifth Army and kind of roll up the entire French flame. But Galiani, remember I mentioned him? Galiani sees that, and this is another first in warfare, really, the British have an old-fashioned biplane up in the air. They do air reconnaissance.

They see Cluck’s army turning southeast in front of Paris. And Galiani actually says, ah, we can hit him in the flank. We can actually take this new Sixth Army and hit the Germans in the flank, and it will be decisive.

And Galiani has to convince Joffrey of the plan. And once Joffrey’s convinced, he has to convince the BEF commander, French, and they do. And then it’s all hands on deck.

They orient. And as the Germans are now, re-organizing to sort of revitalize this leafing plan and get Cluck back out there on the western flank, they run into Sixth Army. And Sixth Army hits him in the flank.

And because Sixth Army hits Cluck in the flank, Cluck is forced because Sixth Army’s strong enough now. Cluck doesn’t have a full picture of how big Sixth Army is building in Paris. So Sixth Army is big.

So Cluck is feeding reinforcements, and now you’ll see Cluck has to reinforce with forces from his left flank, on his east. So he’s taking forces, putting him where that blue line is by Paris. He’s trying to reinforce that direction.

And meantime, Fifth Army and Ninth Army attack north because Joffrey put together the counter-attack plan. And when those two units go and the BEF goes, the Ninth Army totally keeps Bülow in check and hits him. So Bülow’s forced to consolidate on his front, and now this gap has opened up between First and Second Army.

Perfect timing. Each one is now focused on an enemy to the opposite direction and south. And so it’s creating this gap in the German line.

And the BEF and Fifth Army move towards that gap. This is all happening now between the Fifth and the Ninth of September, and they move up to the Marne River. And the Germans are nervous enough now, not the frontline commanders as much, because they’re still confident.

And tactically, they’re actually still doing a fine job against the French. They’re kind of holding them back and all that stuff. But Moulke back in his headquarters is like having a mental breakdown.

Like, oh, my God. There’s a giant gap in the entire right wing, and the BEF and Fifth Army are now moving into this gap. It’s a huge emotional breakthrough for Moulke going, we’re doomed.

Our plan is ruined. And that’s all it took for the Germans to withdraw. And they withdraw to the Azni River.

And that sets the entire battle lines, trench warfare, for the next four years. Wow. It all happens because the French stop the Germans because the Germans allow this gap to open up.

And Galley army is smart enough to see it and Joffrey smart enough to reorient the entire French plan quickly to capitalize on that gap. And at the key moment, the German commander, Moulke loses his nerve because of his separated armies. And he halts, and they retreat to that river.

The French regroup, they don’t exploit that success like they should have, but then again, the Germans did a very well organized retreat. But anyway, that set everything for the entire war. And then we were stuck in these trenches, basically at that river for the rest of the war.

Now, the weeks following, they did what’s called the Race to the Sea. They tried to outflank each other, moving, you know, moving north. But basically it was sad.

So that, I mean, that’s why the battle is so important. It stopped the Germans from winning World War One, essentially, and created this whole static front for the next four and a half years. Wow.

Yeah. What kind of discussion you want to get into? Sir, do you want that third? We had that third map of the Battle of the Marne map. Oh, yeah.

Give me the Battle of the Marne. I should have showed that. That’s, yeah, I should have played that.

Yeah, that’s the gap. Yeah, that would have been better. Sorry, Marty, you’re right.

So you could see the B.F. and the Fifth Army, those blue arrows go into that gap and and Mokey’s armies are separated. There is definitely a gap there now and they’re worried. And that’s all it took.

Lost his nerve. And battle was over. They retreated to that.

You could see the Izney River up there. You know, it’s, whatever, 10 miles or 20, maybe 30, maybe 30 miles north. But they’d retreat to that and that forms their line for the rest of the war, basically.

I had no idea of the early part of World War One. You know, all you think is, you got the assassination and then you got trenches. And that’s all you kind of know.

Yeah, yeah. But this is fascinating how they got there. I gotta tell you, you know what stands out to me? Even through this battle, World War One and into World War Two, it appears, correct me if I’m wrong, that the German commanders were better at planning.

You know, there were a number of things that the German could have done in this battle and actually pushed the French out, in my opinion. I think their commander and leadership was much better prepared for this little, even though the plan, the stuff and plan was the only one they had. I believe their commanders were better.

Yeah, I think you can make the case. Now, remember, historically, we really do give credit to the Prussians and the Germans for developing the whole idea of the general staff. They were the first ones that really developed a general staff nationally to manage and equip and train and resource a military and plan operations.

So, yes, they were good at it. The Schlieffen Plan, like I said in the beginning, was actually a good plan based on trying to optimize where you are in the world and what you’re dealing with. So, yes, I totally agree with you.

Joffrey’s plan was not creative. It was Plan 17 was very uncreative. The Russians, same kind of thing.

They didn’t really have much of a plan except go force, rise and go attack. This is Creo. It’s interesting, too.

You don’t normally see within the course of one battle, Joffrey making kind of the tactical air at the beginning, but able to capitalize on the Germans’ openings and weaknesses later. So, you don’t usually see that he did bad first good later. I can’t imagine the change in mentality and the logistics involved in creating a whole shift and moving that into a whole organized army.

In the sixth. And then the coordination between them and Paris, all while German forces are pushing through Belgium. It’s a great point, Jake.

That was a massive undertaking. And they could have done it without railroads. I mean, railroads enabled the whole thing to happen.

That gamble from him. I mean, yes, okay. Looking at it now, it didn’t look like a gamble.

Looking at it back then, limited intel, limited surveillance, real time. He’s like, okay, can we hold Germany at their southern western border? Fuck it. Let’s move a whole group up to Paris.

Let’s go, guys. It’s a great point. That’s why I give Joffrey a lot of credit because he did screw up in the beginning.

There’s no question about it. But he did correct it and corrected decisively enough time to make this thing happen. The German logistics on that outside loop, those are always going to be a difficult one, right? Like that fifth army area.

That’s keeping them informed and keeping them in supplies all the way through Belgium. It’s going to be a key point. I don’t want to sell this out, but did the Germans kind of just march right through the Belgium army? I mean, I know they held them up a little bit.

Well, they did. I mean, they march right through the Belgian army, but the Belgians did good at the forts. There was a special brigade attached to these fort complexes they had built, and they did man the forts and defend the forts admirably.

And more importantly, they really did a lot of disruptive activities in the rear. You know, sabotage and snipers and ambushes. And I mean, they were these German supply lines were down to a trickle because they were going through Belgium.

Hostile country. They they’re good at the guerrilla warfare. I mean, World War II, they were great at it.

That resistance in that area is awesome. Yeah, they did their part. And you know, at the time, they were very lauded in the press as being brave for a small army.

They did a lot. But I think Jake’s point is a good one. A lot of critics of the Schlieffen plan despite the changes that Mulkey made that doomed it to failure, it would have struggled anyway because of logistics.

You know, you start, you pinch off those arteries and you try to supply those forces moving on such wide arcs. You’re going to have problems. Yeah, yeah.

Like the easiest line would have been straight across the front to get to the other. But then you totally do avoid all the other stuff going on. You would have to arc it over.

That’s just extra time, extra vulnerability, everything, you know. Was Mulkey’s replacement? What’s his name? Balkan Hain? Yes. He prepared the counter plan.

And I think that was a pretty good job as well. Once again, I’m talking about a German commander doing a good job. Right.

Where he understood and expected, based on what he was looking at, created a great counter. Yeah, you’re talking about after the lines had settled into after they said. Yeah, yeah.

Falken Hain. Yeah, I mean, did as good a job. Probably anyone could have done.

I can’t, I can’t argue with you. Yeah, because that was back. I mean, that was already down in September, I believe.

When he was, he replaced Mulkey. Yeah, I think he did a great job with counter plan. Yeah, what these commanders didn’t appreciate yet is because they hadn’t lived it yet like any warfare.

You know, it evolves and they hadn’t lived it yet is these lines were going to be static. They didn’t have enough counterpunch to go through and sustain movement maneuver through the counterpunch. Even if you get through the lines, it was impossible.

You couldn’t mass enough troops to do it. So they were really stuck in a new kind of warfare that they they just had to grope through for four years, unfortunately. And it was so costly.

It’s just it’s a shame. Well, even with this battle being in September, I mean, you got a couple months and now you’re you’re into the winter months. Yeah, which limits your mobility anyways.

Right. Fascinating. I never knew that.

Once you’re once you’re dug in, once you’re once you’re dug in with machine guns and artillery and there’s no tanks and jet fighters to help you out. You’re you’re really screwed. It’s a defensive war.

It’s a static war and you can’t break through those things. Yeah, neither side could. What what do you think the biggest lesson is to take away from this battle, sir? Well, on a strategic side, it’s, you know, military planning has to give your leadership options.

I mean, I just don’t I mean, I shouldn’t laugh. You know, so many millions of people died. But you know, it’s like Germany had one war plan.

It was like, yeah. Okay, okay. The Russians are mobilizing.

We’re going to war. We’re going to attack France. I mean, you know, it’s just it was crazy.

Actually, if you look back at it, but I mean, at the time, I understand it made sense. That’s a big lesson, though. Strategic planners create create flexible plans.

So I imagine over this, there’s like aha moments, right? Because you mentioned a couple first. One of them saying that there was a plane that went over and saw where some of the troops were flanking. So were those like, after that aha moments are like, okay, you know what? Now we know this and we could use this capability, this domain, to basically see what they’re doing and how fast they catch on to that to.

Yeah, like air reconnaissance with the you know, the early World War One biplane, you know, picture those Red Bear and Tuck planes, you know, biplane triplane. They were vulnerable. But easy, good platform for reconnaissance.

So that that took off, literally took off quickly. Radios, like I mentioned, radios were used really in the first large scale warfare in this conflict. And of course, they worked and they stuck with us for to this day.

But yeah, those were those were good lessons. But I think the strategic lesson I talked about flexibility is an important one. I think there’s always leadership lessons, you know, you guys have even commented on Joffrey, especially Jake’s comment.

You know, he did. He really did adapt and it was an amazing adaptation in a relatively short period of time. So he does deserve a lot of credit.

Mulkey, you know, leadership questions about Mulkey and messing with the plan without seeing the implications of messing with the plan. He weakened it from the beginning. You know, just and then, you know, there’s normal lessons of fog of war.

Fog of war is a big one here. You know, Clausewitz warned us all about that and we’ve all seen it. But boy, did it play a big part in the Battle of the Marne because Mulkey back in his headquarters way back in Belgium.

I mean, Luxembourg, he just couldn’t keep a really clear picture of what was going on in the front. And that haunted him. So, you know, C2 location of your command stuff matters.

So there’s a lot of lessons in here. I don’t know about you guys. It’s but I look at this map and I see those big sweeping arrows and I look at the this battle was five days.

Yeah, this is five days. Now the entire campaign was, you know, like to August and went to nine September. So still, can you imagine starting in Germany, walking that outside ring all the way to northern Belgium and down in five days? Yeah, and we bitch about walking from the portal to the building, right? I mean, when they were pushing, when they were pushing the French back, wow, when they had made first contact with the French on the 2020th of August, they were pushing the French back and the British back at like 25 miles a day.

Wow, that’s crazy. Hitting and pushing 25 miles a day. So yeah, heavy lifting here.

Yeah, he took those. He took those troops out from the French right front, you know, and pushed them back to Paris. It’s like, hey, I need you to go from Denver and I need you to go over to Kansas City.

Alright, the next couple of days. Can you guys do that? That’s right. I guess so.

That’s right. That’s amazing. And I don’t know what would happen if Galiani didn’t see.

That’s amazing. Yeah, Klooks Klooks turn to the southeast in front of Paris was critical, so he saw it and he was smart enough to actually push Joffrey into accepting his plan. That was critical.

Yeah, there’s always that guy in every campaign, every battle that’s not necessarily the main character that kind of makes the entire thing work. Galiani was actually that guy in the Battle of Mars. Fascinating.

Yeah, that’s great. You guys good? Any more questions? Thank you, sir. That was amazing.

My pleasure. Thank you. I always come up with some suitable ending for it.

Yeah, I like your intro. Well, and I work with it. I was looking at your different trifolds and I liked how you you’ve adjusted the background pictures to them and the colors to them.

So I only had that. I only stole that off your website picture. So I’ll give you whatever you want.

Great. Alright, let’s close this pile out. Eric, you have history.

You got something to compete with that? Nope, I don’t. Because we’ve been going so long, I just I’ll do it real quick. And I know General Petty is very aware of this campaign.

Of course, D-Day was in the planning. The planning for an invasion in Northeast Northwest Europe began years in advance, although it wasn’t until December 43 when Eisenhower was appointed Supreme Commander. Of the Allied Expedition Force of Preparations for the future operation code named Overlord and tips fighting.

So D-Day was scheduled initially for June 5th. Weather became a delay and with a small window of opportunity in the weather, Eisenhower decided to go D-Day would be on 6 June. And that’s what started the end to World War II.

And I’ll keep that real short. That article I sent you, I thought it was fascinating. I can’t remember what division they were talking about.

Do you remember the division was but they were talking about the rehearsals for D-Day. They took three times as many casualties as she actually did in D-Day. Just on the rehearsals for D-Day.

She was like, I didn’t even think about that. That was past 90. Yeah, that was a big one.

We’ll talk about that one Sunday if you want to. Alright, next time you come back. Well, unless you come back on before the six.

Well, thank you, sir. Gentlemen, I think we’re at in depth. So, on behalf of all of us here, I’d like to thank you for listening today.

Please like, share, subscribe, and let us know how we did in the comments and make sure next week that you are not late for changeover. And thanks for the week. Sir, thanks for coming on and presenting that.

That was fantastic. Yeah, that was awesome, sir. Appreciate it.

And we’re looking forward to the next one. To all those listening, thanks for listening and we’ll see you next week. Alright, guys.