Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for July 16, 2013

And so it’s always been, since there was aviation in warfare.The flyboys soar over the blood and guts, drop their payloads and return to the comfortable airbase.Sure, some don’t make it back, but often the other flyboys just saw them fall out of the sky; they didn’t have to cradle their bloodied and broken bodies (except in the bombers in WW2). And they rarely saw their targets close up.It’s good to be a pilot in wartime. It sucks to be just about everybody else.

An alternative (i.e not 2012) rerun:http://www.gocomics.com/doonesbury/1974/03/07Roland at the Walden Commune.Mike

It’s also safer to be pilot. Surprisingly few IEDs in the air.

roland at Walden cracked me up. we had an engineer at a place I worked – he got his degree in the 70s. He said that he thought the dorms smelled that way because so many people used the same incense – I guess it was …. the kind you roll up and smoke.

I remember an episode of MASH that dealt with this. The 4077 got a US pilot in camp for some reason. Hawkeye was angered by his blase attitude about the death and destruction he rained down from the air. So Hawkeye forced the pilot watch him try to patch up people injured by a US bombing run. The pilot was in turn angered because Hawkeye had screwed up his nice sanitary view of the war.

Mel’s hair bun is missing in action in the last panel.

In WWII, the Eight Air Force lost more men bombing Germany, than the Marines did in all of the war in the Pacific.

Omnius, you are an idiot. Look at Gromit801’s post. Several of the large bombing raids to Germany with thousand of planes lost over 25% of the planes and men. I’m sure the men who crawled into the planes to do it again the next day can be call cowards.

lol! Good effort! . . . but it looks like you left in an extra quote "

The 12th. Air Force lost more men in WWII than ALL the Marine Corps did.

Really Omnius? Cowards? As a Marine who was on the ground in Nam I have to say that is both ignorant and lame. Talk about something you have a clue about.

“And, to be a drone-master is suberb….”.And that’s why I’m always disgusted that they give out “combat” medals to drone “pilots”.

I couldn’t agree with you more.

“When I was in the Navy, we referred to Air Force Pilots as “The Bus Drivers in Blue”.”

Could only be because everybody knows it’s the Navy which has the best pilots!

YES! You got it.

I am going to have to disagree with you, and to some degree, GT. Flying copters and planes can be fun but when you get hit by SAM, you need a whole world of courage and nerves.One of the most dangerous jobs in WW2 was to be a tailgunner in a bomber. Do yourself a favor, watch “The Best Years of Our Lives.”

My family was happy that my dad was turned down to do the training for becoming a tailgunner, they said he was too tall. My family was afraid he would be at far greater risk than being a grunt on the ground. Dad did say from what he heard, a lot of those guys were very lucky to be alive after their experience in WWII.