Yeah, there's a song for that...

SO today, August 9th, the Japanese commemorate the bombing of Nagasaki, the bombing that finally convinced them to end the war they'd started. Of course they still see themselves as the victims.


Every time think of it, I recall a song from a particular musical that seems to fit.

Everybody sing:

They had it coming!
They had it coming!
They only had themselves to blame!
If you'da been there,
If you'da seen it...
I betcha you would have done the same!

Airshow pressured by loony left caves.

So because one alleged "artist" from Mexico started an on-line petition reportedly signed by "dozens" of people, the upcoming Dayton Air Show scrapped a pyrotechnic display featuring the B-29 Fifi and a simulated atomic bomb.

Air Show cancels fake bomb drop after outcry
Re-enactment was desitgned to mark the end of World War II

Dammit. This sort of rampmant political-correctness-run-amuck is the sort of thing that I'd expect from spineless government officials, not organizers of a show dedicated to the air power that keeps America, and by extension the rest of the free world, free.

Frankly, who cares what Gabriela Pickett thinks? Before she set up her leftist art center in Dayton, her most relevant job was as a quality control checker at an underwear factory. She's never produced anything tangible or contributed anything to our country except criticism, and now she's used a tribute to the great people who ended a war and preserved world peace as a springboard for her own "hey, look at me" moment. And the airshow, sadly enough, obliged her, even though she could only get a few scattered losers and kooks to sign her petition. And some of those kooks hail from Japan, and they don't deserve a say in matters like this since they started the war and caused world misery on a scale that not only required that atomic bombs be dropped on them as the only way to end it but justified it morally.

Shame on the air show folks for caving. Seriously.

But here at Lagniappe's Lair, Murphy and I will have our own B-29 tribute with pics and video of Fifi shot at last year's Thunder over Michigan show.

There's even video.





Oh, and because I'm all immature and stuff:

Screw every damned one of you America-hating "peace activists" who smugly enjoy the peace and security that our military provides.

B-29 Superfortress

A centerpiece of Thunder Over Michigan was Fifi, the last surviving flying B-29 Superfortress. She was there and stone cold beautiful. We got up close and personal, too.

The question was posed earlier as to whether or not we saw Fifi the B-29 fly. Yes, yes we did.

There's even video.





Yep. Pretty fantastic to see.

Now I know that today is the 67th anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki, Japan by the B-29 Bock's Car. I know that the usual protesters have been making the rounds, including the handful of Japanese former residents of that city who have once again come to Washington, DC to assume the role of "victim" and pretend yet again that they had done nothing to deserve such a whacking. Some of them and their supporters may find this posting today offensive should they see it.

Well frankly, if they don't like these pictures and videos, they probably won't care for my official statement on the day, either:

People of Japan.

It's been sixty-seven years since you made us flatten Nagasaki. Most people on the planet today weren't even alive back then. Since that day, we've made up and become good friends and trading partners, and America has protected your country from foreign aggression.

Now I like to think that you've learned your lesson and we can all let bygones be bygones. But just in case you get any ideas, please take note of the fact that we've kept a B-29 on stand-by, ready to go back over there again if we have to. So please, don't make us have to do that again and let's just focus on a mutually beneficial future together.

Signed: An American.

Anyway, I thought that this statement might be a little better and more tasteful commemoration of the bombing of Nagasaki than my first idea, a catchy little musical number which admittedly might have struck some as being crass and insensitive.

Anyway... Here's to our World War Two vets, and to Fifi.

More B-29s here.

Remember the B-29.

Once there were thousands of these aircraft. 3,970 were built between 1943 and 1946. They pounded Japan into submission and brought peace to the world in 1945.

Now there's just one left that flies. One. And here it is, Fifi, the last flying B-29, starting it's engines and doing it's thing, nearly seventy years after leaving the Boeing plant.




Just imagine hundreds of these in the air at once. Imagine them flying formation overhead. Those were the days when no one doubted America's technological and military might.

Those were the days.

And here's one that doesn't fly any more, but when it did...

The Enola Gay. Now at the Smithsonian Air & Space Annex. This is the one that dropped the first atomic bomb and brought the curtain down in World War Two.




And here's the other famous B-29, Bocks Car. This one dropped the second bomb on Nagasaki after the Japanese didn't take the hint from the first one. This one is at Wright-Patterson AFB Museum.



The world will never see their like again. They're all gone now. All but one.

Of course there would have been two flying today, but for Daryl Greenamyer's carelessness...RIP, Kee Bird, the B-29 that almost made it home.

Japan is a WHAT?!

As I perused a news article on Fox's website recently, I about came out of my chair when I read an article about the atomic bombings of Japan in 1945 and saw this quote:

"The U.S. justifies the bombings saying they saved many American lives," said Nobuo Miyake, 78, ... "It's outrageous for a Japanese politician to voice such thinking. Japan is a victim."

Japan is a VICTIM?

Excuse me, but this is the nation who, in addition to murdering over 2,600 American servicemen in a cowardly sneak attack on December 7th, 1941, gave us the Rape of Nanking and the Bataan Death March, and brought brutality in the form of deliberate sadistic torture and death to every people that it's armies overran until the United States came back in Round Two and kicked their little yellow asses clean back to Honshu. And even then, when they were clearly beaten and their civilian population was starving, they rejected every offer of surrender that we gave them. It finally came down to either invading their home islands and suffering an estimated one million US casualties (and the Japanese death toll would have been off the charts) or demonstrating once and for all the futility of their continued belligerence. So we bombed them once and asked them nicely to surrender, but they refused and we had to bomb them again. It was their choice 100% to catch a second bomb and if the Japanese were a victim of any kind, it was a victim of their own stubborn arrogance.

My only regret is that we somehow missed Nobuo Miyake with those A-bombs.