The Commentariat -- May 28, 2014

Peter Baker of the New York Times: "President Obama plans to use a speech at the West Point military academy on Wednesday to lay out a foreign policy vision for his final two-and-a-half years in office, defending his approach against a wave of criticism that he has been too passive on the world stage."

Mark Landler of the New York Times: "President Obama said on Tuesday that he planned to withdraw the last combat troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2016, declaring that 'it’s time to turn the page on a decade in which so much of our foreign policy was focused on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.' Under the plan, outlined by Mr. Obama in the Rose Garden, the United States would leave 9,800 troops in Afghanistan after 2014, but cut that number by half in 2015. By the end of 2016, it would keep only a vestigial force to protect the embassy in Kabul and help the Afghans with military purchases and other security matters":

Unwarranted Optimism Trumps Reality -- Again. Michael Shear of the New York Times: "President Obama has directed the secretary of Homeland Security to delay until after the summer a deportation enforcement review that officials feared would anger House Republicans and doom any lingering hopes for an immigration overhaul in Congress this year, officials said Tuesday night. Jeh Johnson, the secretary of Homeland Security, has spent the last two months searching for ways that the president could legally shield some of the 11 million immigrants in the country illegally from deportation."

Robert Barnes & Matt Zapotosky of the Washington Post: "The Supreme Court gave greater protection Tuesday to death row inmates seeking to prove they should not be executed because they are intellectually disabled, and it ruled that laws such as those in Florida and Virginia are too rigid. The court ruled 5 to 4 that state laws that draw a bright line on IQ-test results are unconstitutional. Under those laws, an inmate who scores above 70 on the test does not meet the first step of proving that he or she is intellectually disabled and thus ineligible for the death penalty." ...

... Lyle Denniston of ScotusBlog: "The main opinion relied heavily upon medical learning about the nature of intellectual disability -- the phrase the Court adopted from that community, replacing the traditional phrase it had previously used, 'mental retardation.' The ruling ... stressed that any use of [IQ] scores must always take into account the 'inherent' imprecision of such scores, and commended those states that go beyond test scores to use more standards of clinical measure to determine such incapacity." ...

... The decision by Justice Kennedy, & Justice Alito's dissent are here. Alito is appalled that "elites" now have the power to make life-&-death decisions when these should be left up to the bloodthirsty "American people" & their vengeful/afraid-to-lose-the-next-election representatives. ...

... Noah Feldman in Bloomberg View: "The trouble is, each time the Supreme Court limits the death penalty, it offers an implicit justification for preserving it in most cases. The decision in this case accepts the argument that it's inhumane to execute people who don't fully comprehend what they've done or why they're being punished. In so doing, it implies that a murderer who does comprehend his crimes deserves to die."

Lyle Denniston: "In an opinion filled with chilling, repeated references to being within shooting or grenade-throwing distance of the president, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Tuesday that the Secret Service did not engage in unconstitutional censorship when its agents moved protesters out of range of a president [Bush II] as he dined on an outdoor restaurant patio."

Eric Cline in a New York Times op-ed: "... climate change has been leading to global conflict — and even the collapse of civilizations -- for more than 3,000 years. Drought and famine led to internal rebellions in some societies and the sacking of others, as people fleeing hardship at home became conquerors abroad. One of the most vivid examples comes from around 1200 B.C. A centuries-long drought in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean regions, contributed to -- if not caused -- widespread famine, unrest and ultimately the destruction of many once prosperous cities, according to four recent studies.... But there is one important difference. The Late Bronze Age civilizations collapsed at the hands of Mother Nature. It remains to be seen if we will cause the collapse of our own." Also, Jim Inhofe is an idiot.

** Ezra Klein: "As appalling as the wait times are for VA care, the people living in states that refused the Medicaid expansion aren't just waiting too long for care. They're not getting it at all. They're going completely uninsured when federal law grants them comprehensive coverage. Many of these people will get sick and find they can't afford treatment and some of them will die. Many of the victims here, by the way, are also veterans." Klein lists the states that are denying healthcare coverage to poor citizens & estimates how many are eligible for coverage they are not receiving; e.g.,Florida: "Obamacare's Medicaid expansion would provide 1,212,000 poor Floridians with comprehensive health insurance, including 41,200 veterans. But the state has refused to let the expansion go forward."

Kimberly Kindy of the Washington Post: Richard Martinez, the father of Christopher Michaels-Martinez, one of the victims in the Isla Vista/Santa Barbara rampage, is "asking members of Congress to stop calling him to offer condolences but nothing more for the death of his only child.... 'I don't care about your sympathy. I don't give a s--- that you feel sorry for me,' Richard Martinez said during an extensive interview, his face flushed as tears rolled down his face. 'Get to work and do something. I'll tell the president the same thing if he calls me. Getting a call from a politician doesn't impress me.'" Here are excerpts from the interview.

Cliff Schecter of the Daily Beast: "The firearms fanboys have been more creative than usual, scrambling to defend their precious weapons in the wake of the massacre in Santa Barbara. It's only made their excuses lamer." CW: an excellent piece that destroys the usual gun-nut arguments. Of course facts & reason won't shut 'em up ...

Your dead kids don't trump my Constitutional rights.... Any feelings you have toward my rights being taken away from me, lose those. -- Samuel "Joe the Plumber" Wurzelbacher in an open "letter of condolence" to the parents whose children died in the Santa Barbara killings ...

... AND, thanks to a comment by Akhilleus, I guess we should hear from Todd Kincannon, South Carolina mole person.

** Craig Timberg of the Washington Post: An FTC report, issued Tuesday, "provided an unusually detailed account of the system of commercial surveillance that draws on government records, shopping habits and social-media postings to help marketers hone their advertising pitches. Officials said the intimacy of these profiles would unnerve some consumers who have little ability to track what's being collected or how it's used — or even to correct false information. The FTC called for legislation to bring transparency to the multibillion-dollar industry and give consumers some control over how their data is used." ...

... CW: While governmental domestically spying is potentially more dangerous to individuals than is commercial spying, the current level of legal "commercial surveillance" certainly has a more direct impact on people's lives.

Annals of Journalism, Ctd.

Washington Post critic Ann Hornaday responds to criticisms of her column:

Ken Auletta of the New Yorker is not giving up. He does a forensic analysis of the he-said/she-said re: the New York Times' firing of executive editor Jill Abramson. Auletta doesn't buy the claim that publisher Arthur Sulzberger fired Abramson because she lied about telling another top editor about a hiring decision.

Margaret Sullivan, the New York Times' public editor, & Pamela Paul, the Times Book Review editor, kind of get into it over Michael Kinsley's negative review of Glenn Greenwald's book.

As long as I'm attorney general, no reporter who is doing his job is going to go to jail. As long as I'm attorney general, someone who is doing their job is not going to get prosecuted. -- Eric Holder, in a meeting with reporters yesterday ...

... Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. hinted Tuesday that the Justice Department might choose not to jail a New York Times reporter [James Risen] for defying a subpoena forcing him to discuss his confidential sources -- even as the Obama administration continues to pursue the right to do so before the Supreme Court."

... Tracy Connor of NBC News: "Edward Snowden, in an exclusive interview with 'Nightly News' anchor Brian Williams, blamed the State Department for stranding him in Russia, saying he 'never intended' to wind up there....Secretary of State John Kerry hit back in a live interview on 'Today.' 'For a supposedly smart guy, that's a pretty dumb answer, frankly," Kerry said. "If Mr. Snowden wants to come back to the United States today, we'll have him on a flight today.'" ...

... Sean Sullivan of the Washington Post: "Fugitive former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden said in his first U.S. network television interview that he was 'trained as a spy' and rejected the notion that he was a low-level operative."

Ed Pilkington of the Guardian: "Hector Xavier Monsegur, who by the US government's calculations participated in computer hacker attacks on more than 250 public and private entities at a cost of up to $50m in damages, was released from a Manhattan courtroom on Tuesday after the judge saluted his 'extraordinary cooperation' with the FBI. Monsegur, or 'Sabu' as the celebrated hacker was known, was sentenced to time served -- equivalent to the seven months he spent in prison last year -- plus a year's supervised release, in reward for having spent much of the past three years working as a federal informant. He had been facing a maximum sentence according to official guidelines of more than 26 years."

Jay Newton-Small of Time: "In one of the most overtly political speeches during her tenure as First Lady, [Michelle] Obama slammed Republicans on Tuesday for trying to weaken school nutritional standards, one of her key policy achievements." ...

... CW: I can't listen to it, but I think this video includes Obama's remarks.

The State of Republican "Leadership." Sean Sullivan: "Phil Robertson, the controversial star of the hit TV show 'Duck Dynasty' will address the upcoming Republican Leadership Conference on Thursday."

Randall Balmer in Politico: The real origins of today's religious right was not Roe v. Wade, as fundamentalists now claim; the movement began for the purpose of protecting the private, white segregated schools that were the response to Brown v. Board of Education. ...

... Remembering Reagan. When the [segregated Bob Jones University's] appeal finally reached the Supreme Court in 1982, the Reagan administration announced that it planned to argue in defense of Bob Jones University and its racial policies. A public outcry forced the administration to reconsider; Reagan backpedaled by saying that the legislature should determine such matters, not the courts. The Supreme Court's decision in the case, handed down on May 24, 1983, ruled against Bob Jones University in an 8-to-1 decision. Three years later Reagan elevated the sole dissenter, William Rehnquist, to chief justice of the Supreme Court. -- Randall Balmer

Reagan's fallback position is a perfect example of employing the "states' rights" or "Tenthers" argument to provide cover for all manner of bigotry, cruelty & anti-social policy. Just as Southerners claim states' rights were the "real reason" for the Civil War, Justice Alito -- in his dissent in Hall v. Florida published yesterday -- argued that "laws enacted by state legislatures" should determine who gets the death penalty, while Chief Justice Roberts decided a few years ago that individual states should decide who gets life-saving health insurance & who doesn't. (See Ezra Klein's column, linked above.) -- Constant Weader

Senate Races

Say Anything, Do Anything. Joe Sonka of LEO Weekly: Mitch McConnell doubles down on his outlandish, fact-averse claim that Kentucky's health exchange is "unconnected" to ObamaCare & could survive if the GOP is successful in repealing the Affordable Care Act. "... this might also be a good opportunity for Alison Lundergan Grimes to get off of the sidelines and actually talk about health care with the media and voters so they know exactly what McConnell is trying to do, and have an honest conversation about what she would do. Or, she can continue staying out of this fight, and just hope for the best. Your call, Alison.

Tom Kludt of TPM: Long-shot South Dakoka GOP Senate candidate Annette Bosworth covered the room where she held a press conference with sexist epithets critics had used against her. Bosworth said, in a statement, "The Democrats talk about a war on women, but much of what you see is written by the supposedly tolerant liberals. Their message is clear: conservative women are fair game. If you are a female and a Republican, anything goes." ...

... Erin Ryan of Jezebel comments.

Congressional Race

Nolan Feeney of Time: "The oldest elected politician in Washington lost a runoff election in a Republican primary Tuesday night. Texas Rep. Ralph Hall, 91, was ousted by 48-year-old John Ratcliffe, who emphasized the importance of new leadership after Hall's 34 years in office...."

Gubernatorial Race

Payback. Brendan Fischer of PR Watch: "The federal judge who ordered a halt to Wisconsin's 'John Doe' criminal investigation into [Scott Walker's] spending during the 2011 and 2012 recall elections has regularly attended all-expenses paid 'judicial junkets' funded by the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, and other ideological and corporate interests.... Judge [Rudolph] Randa ... ordered prosecutors to destroy all evidence gathered in the investigation, an extraordinary edict in a criminal case made even more astounding by the fact that it came in the context of a preliminary injunction. The Seventh Circuit has blocked this part of his ruling; an appeal of the remainder of his decision is pending.... The Bradley Foundation's President and CEO, Michael Grebe, chaired Scott Walker's 2010 and 2012 gubernatorial campaigns. Walker's 2012 campaign is under investigation in the John Doe for allegedly illegal coordination." CW: Randa is a Bush I appointee.

Texas Primary Elections

Brandi Grissom of the Texas Tribune: "Tea Party-backed candidate state Sen. Dan Patrick became the Republican candidate for Texas lieutenant governor on Tuesday, soundly defeating three-time incumbent Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst in a bitterly fought runoff election." Grissom also reports the results of other Texas elections.

Beyond the Beltway

Monica Davey of the New York Times: "A task force convened by the Obama administration issued the most detailed study yet of blight in Detroit on Tuesday and recommended that the city spend at least $850 million to quickly tear down about 40,000 dilapidated buildings, demolish or restore tens of thousands more, and clear thousands of trash-packed lots. It also said that the hulking remains of factories that dot Detroit, crumbling reminders of the city's manufacturing prowess, must be salvaged or demolished, which could cost as much as $1 billion more."

News Ledes

New York Times: "Maya Angelou, the memoirist and poet whose landmark book of 1969, 'I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings' -- which describes in lyrical, unsparing prose her childhood in the Jim Crow South -- was among the first autobiographies by a 20th-century black woman to reach a wide general readership, died on Wednesday in her home. She was 86 and lived in Winston-Salem, N.C."

New York Times: "The Army ousted the commander of one of its busiest hospitals and suspended three top deputies on Tuesday after two patients in their 20s unexpectedly died in the past 10 days, shortly after they sought treatment at the hospital's emergency room."

The Commentariat -- May 27, 2014

Internal links removed.

Coral Davenport of the New York Times: "President Obama is expected to announce on Monday an Environmental Protection Agency regulation to cut carbon pollution from the nation's fleet of 600 coal-fired power plants, in a speech that government analysts in Beijing, Brussels and beyond will scrutinize to determine how serious the president is about fighting global warming. The regulation will be Mr. Obama's most forceful effort to reverse 20 years of relative inaction on climate change by the United States, which has stood as the greatest obstacle to international efforts to slow the rise of heat-trapping gases from burning coal and oil that scientists say cause warming." ...

... Jonathan Cohn of the New Republic provides "a quick guide to what's going on [re: the EPA regs] and why it's so important."

Ed Pilkington of the Guardian: "President Barack Obama is preparing to set out his vision for America's role in the world following the final withdrawal from Afghanistan, in a commencement address to the US military academy at West Point on Wednesday. In a speech that is being seen as the president's rebuttal to critics who have attacked his foreign policy as perilously adrift, Obama is expected to articulate his vision of a 'new stage' in America's relations with the world post-Iraq and Afghanistan."

Mark Landler of the New York Times: "President Obama, just back from a surprise visit to the troops in Afghanistan, honored America's fallen warriors in a solemn Memorial Day ceremony on Monday and acknowledged the need to confront the widening scandal at the nation's veterans hospitals":

President Obama takes a walk in Washington:

Another surprise visit:

Dissing Veterans on Memorial Day Weekend. Classy. Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times: "Senator Richard M. Burr of North Carolina, the ranking Republican on the Veterans Affairs Committee ..., angry that only the American Legion has called for the resignation of the veterans affairs secretary, Eric Shinseki, accused [other veterans] groups of being 'more interested in defending the status quo within V.A., protecting their relationships within the agency, and securing their access to the secretary and his inner circle' than in helping members. The ;Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Disabled American Veterans and the Paralyzed Veterans of America hit back hard."

Ann Hornaday of the Washington Post: Elliot "Rodger’s rampage may be a function of his own profound distress, but it also shows how a sexist movie monoculture can be toxic for women and men alike.... Movies may not reflect reality, but they powerfully condition what we desire, expect and feel we deserve from it. The myths that movies have been selling us become even more palpable at a time when spectators become their own auteurs and stars on YouTube, Instagram and Vine.... When the dominant medium of our age -- both as art form and industrial practice -- is in the hands of one gender, what may start out as harmless escapist fantasies can, through repetition and amplification, become distortions and dangerous lies." ...

     ... Gee, Seth Rogen & Judd Apatow didn't much care for Hornaday's column. Taking responsibility for the side effects of your own success is hard to do. ...

... Brittney Cooper in Salon: "Our society is fundamentally premised on making sure that straight, middle-class (upper class in Rodger's case) white men have access to power, money, and women. And while we have no problem from President Obama, down to Paul Ryan, down to the preacher in the pulpit talking about pathological Black masculinity, we seem wholly uninterested in talking about pathological white masculinity, which continues to assert itself in the most dangerous and deadly of ways." ...

... Jennifer Medina of the New York Times: "... many women interviewed on [the UCSB] campus and commenting online said they believed that some of the attitudes toward women expressed by the gunman, Elliot O. Rodger, in his perverse manifesto of rage and frustration reflect some views that are echoed in the mainstream culture. This conversation comes as college administrators nationwide are confronting increased attention, including from the White House, over reports of sexual abuse against female students." ...

... Los Angeles Times: "Elliot Rodger, the man behind the deadly attacks in Isla Vista near UC Santa Barbara, was able to legally obtain three guns despite a history of depression and having been under the care of a therapist for some time.... Adam Winkler, a UCLA law professor and expert on gun laws, said that, in general, a diagnosis of mental illness doesn't affect a person's right to own a gun in California unless the matter has been adjudicated by a court or the person has voluntarily checked into a mental facility." ...

... CW: Yesterday a couple of readers recommended Charles Pierce's essay on Memorial Day. I skipped it for two reasons: (1) Wendy's doesn't let me read that filth! (2) I had a feeling Pierce would elide or ignore the sexual exploitation component of the Isla Vista story. He did. Pierce is a little like Thomas Jefferson. When he is good, he is very, very good. But he has a very big blind spot. In Pierce's case, it's women. He doesn't think we count for much.

Why did they start with abortion clinics? Because it begins with the letter 'A'? -- Appeals Court Judge Richard Posner, asking why a Wisconsin law required doctors to have hospital admitting privileges at clinics that provided abortions but not at other outpatient clinics that performed procedures with higher complication rates ...

... "Undue Burden." Emily Bazelon of Slate: "We've reached the Rubicon, and if we cross it, abortion clinics will disappear from parts of the U.S. map. The weirdest thing is that the whole script has been written for an audience of one -- Supreme Court swing voter Justice Anthony Kennedy."

Eric Schmitt of the New York Times: "United States Special Operations troops are forming elite counterterrorism units in four countries in North and West Africa that American officials say are pivotal in the widening war against Al Qaeda's affiliates and associates on the continent, even as they acknowledge the difficulties of working with weak allies."

Joan Walsh of Salon: After Obama, the GOP has nowhere to go: "Having ceded to the far right on issues like immigration reform, health care, climate change, tax reform, infrastructure spending and the minimum wage -- often repudiating historically Republican ideas in the process -- they are left with no way to reach out beyond the confines of the 48 percent of the voters -- albeit 60 percent of white voters -- they seem to have consolidated." ...

... CW: Liberals so often underestimate the adaptability of the GOP. It's crazy now, because Republicans know they can win with crazy. Despite the final count (& Electoral College rout), they even came close to winning the White House in 2012. When their Tea Party strategy quits working, most will go back to being "reasonable" on some social issues. That's true even now: in the Northeast you get a Chris Christie & a Kelly Ayotte. ...

... Juan Williams, in the Hill, on the women's vote in 2016. CW: Pretty interesting. I especially enjoyed the war of words between Elizabeth Warren & that snarling, wire-haired terrier Tim Geithner (my apologies to actual dogs).

Conservative (definition): Screw the Poor. Matt Bruenig of Salon the the latest conservative policy "reform": "... the biggest horror show of all is the tax reform proposal, which is nothing more than the usual screw-the-poor pablum.... The net affect of all of this is that, under the proposal, a family making $70,000 per year who had twins would receive more than $7,000 per year in child welfare payments via the tax code. A family making $10,000 or $15,000 per year who had twins might receive a few hundred dollars in child welfare payments, if any at all. They'd also have the pleasure of seeing their current federal income tax rate of 10 percent bump up to 15 percent.

Toby Harnden of Real Clear Politics: Glenn Greenwald "is to reveal names of US citizens targeted by their own government in what he promises will be the 'biggest' revelation from nearly 2m classified files.... Greenwald said the names would be published via The Intercept, a website funded by Pierre Omidyar, the billionaire founder and chairman of eBay."

Driftglass: Apparently NBC has a new plan to improve "Meet the Press": pre-empt it with road races. ...

     ... CW: BTW, I skipped the last Ben Carson outrage when I saw it yesterday on Crooks & Liars, but Driftglass does reprise it. It goes without saying that being a brilliant surgeon does not make you a decent human being.

Senate Race

Mitch McConnell says dismantling ObamaCare -- which he continues to propose -- is "unconnected" to Kentucky's popular version of ObamaCare -- called Kynect. Joe Sonka of LEO Weekly: "Saying that Kynect is unconnected with the ACA or its repeal is just mind-numbingly false. The ACA and Kynect are one in the same." Via Greg Sargent.

Congressional Race

Tony has been a longtime supporter of the rights of citizens to keep and bear arms and will continue to oppose, and actively fight, any legislation that would take away our 2nd Amendment right to bear arms. As the founder of the Freedom Firearms Coalition and with a lifetime 'A' rating from the NRA, we can count on Tony Strickland to protect our constitutional rights. On June 3rd, vote for Tony Strickland for Congress. This call was paid for by Strickland for Congress. -- Part of a new robocall campaign by Tony Strickland (R), candidate for Congress & former state senator for Santa Barbara & Isla Vista; the calls began the day after the mass killing in the area

Beyond the Beltway

Yes, this is still the Mississippi state flag.Jerry Mitchell of the Jackson, Mississippi Clarion-Ledger: " In an echo of Mississippi's past, a Justice Court judge [in Canton, Mississippi,] is accused of striking a mentally challenged young man and yelling, 'Run, n-----, run.' The family has filed a complaint with police against Madison County Justice Court Judge Bill Weisenberger, who is white, alleging he struck their 20-year-old African-American son, Eric Rivers, on May 8 at the Canton Flea Market." CW: Mississippi's past? The racial animus among the state's white population is pretty much the same, past, present and -- likely -- future.

News Ledes

Washington Post: "Pro-Russian separatists said Tuesday they sustained big losses in a gun battle Monday for control of this city's international airport as sporadic shooting continued around the airport. A top Donetsk separatist leader, Pavel Gubarev, posted on his Facebook page early Tuesday that a rocket-propelled grenade hit a truck that was carrying wounded separatists from the battle at the airport, killing an estimated 35 and injuring 15. His claim could not immediately be confirmed." ...

... Guardian: "An insurgent rebel has claimed at least 30 fighters' bodies have been brought to a hospital following a day of heavy fighting in Donetsk in eastern Ukraine."

Washington Post: "Narendra Modi became India's prime minister Monday, a little more than a week after his party scored a decisive victory at the polls."

Wall Street Journal: "Analysis of the final ping transmission between Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 and an Inmarsat PLC satellite found the missing jetliner was likely descending after running out of fuel, according to Australian air-accident investigators." ...

... Guardian: "Satellite data used to narrow down the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines plane, MH370, has been released after demands from relatives of the passengers. The data [pdf], which was drawn up by the British company Inmarsat, was released 80 days after the Boeing vanished with 239 people on board."

Remembering Frank Waterhouse

Following is a portion of an oral history I took several years ago regarding my uncle Frank Waterhouse's service in the 1948 War for Israeli Independence. This portion, unrelated to the Israeli war, is about Frank's flights out of Tibenham (a/k/a Tivetshall) near Norwich in Norfolk, England in 1944. Tivetshall was home to the United States Eighth Air Force 445th Bombardment Group (Heavy). The quotations are Frank's. -- Constant Weader

Frank flew four or five missions before D-Day, bombing inside of France. On D-Day, Frank’s crew took off at 2 a.m. in a formation of 36 B-24s. Frank and the pilot, named Beckham, thought they were following the lead element. But “when the sun came up, we didn’t see anybody; we couldn’t find our group. We had been following a light, but the light was some other group. It’s a wonder a whole mess of people didn’t run into each other that night. We unloaded our bombs after daylight close behind the lines.” Frank was 19 years old on D-Day.

“In later missions, we went to Munich, and to Ulm, which we bombed three days in a row. On one mission, we started to go to Berlin, but the weather was bad. One time we hit an oil storage facility – there was smoke and fire up to our altitude.”

Despite the months of training in the States, it seems the Army Air Force shorted the pilots on some pretty basic training – like how to land the planes they were to fly into combat. Frank said, “In Boise, they had allowed me to try one landing, which I did with an instructor who had ultimate control of the plane. I really couldn’t tell who landed that plane – he or I. That was my only landing before I got to England. In England, I did some test runs of the B-24 so I could get some landings in. I made maybe four or five landings on tests.”

Groups who had arrived before Frank’s had a requirement of 25 missions. The famous Memphis Belle (a B-17) flew with Frank’s group on one mission: “she hadn’t got her 25 by then.” As American forces “broke the Germans’ back” and their air defenses “weren’t as severe, they extended the tours to 30 missions. But the German ack-ack had radar, and when we would make evasive maneuvers the ack-ack would start.”

The formation of 36 planes had four “elements,” with one flying above, one below to the left, one below to the right and one behind. “When you’re in the lower left element the pilot couldn’t see the lead, so it was up to the co-pilot to fly the plane and the pilot would relieve me temporarily. I didn’t have to worry about being cold because I was sweating so much.

“But it was cold. We wore heated gloves and heated boots. We called our seats coffin seats; they were shaped like a coffin top facing forward so we could see where to fly. They protected us underneath and behind, but we wore flak suits on our chests and helmets like ground soldiers to protect us from German ack-ack. One day we were flying a mission near Paris and I thought I’d been hit. I shouted to Beckham, ‘I think I’ve been hit.’ But I hadn’t been hit at all. A heated glove had shorted out.

“The German ack-ack would follow us. Unless you were the lead ship, they didn’t use a navigator, so our navigator became the lead bombardier. The others would drop their bombs when he dropped his. On a mission to Hamburg, the ack-ack was coming within two feet of the nose and I couldn’t tell what was going on in the rear. I called to Finley, a bombardier, who was a Texan, ‘Are you okay, Finley?’ He didn’t answer, and I kept calling. Finally I heard, ‘Shut up, Waterhouse.’ Finley was okay.

“I don’t think our plane was ever actually hit.

“After awhile, they upped the tours to 35 missions. Toward the end of my tour, the rest of the crew went home except Johnson, who was the navigator, and me. I flew with another crew and a pilot named Bruland. He was shot down after I left, but I later found him listed as a member of the Second Air Division, so he made it. In formation, we led the lower left element. Flying the lead in a lower element was called ‘flying with your head up.’ On my military record there’s a little blurb that says, ‘Element lead on 20 missions.’"