In the recent presidential campaign, candidate Mitt Romney asserted that the US Navy today has fewer ships than at any time since 1917. It turned out that a campaign advisor named John Lehman, Secretary of the Navy under President Reagan and a man with "strong and complex personal financial ties to the naval shipbuilding industry," was the author of that talking point.
I was on the joint staff during the Reagan years and I remember Lehman's push for a 600-ship Navy. President Reagan and Secretary of Defense Weinberger would have given it to him too, if they hadn't run out of money. But Lehman and the Navy were only part of Reagan's massive military expansion. I remember my US Army colleagues dreaming of impossible WWII-level numbers of divisions. And I remember how we in the US Air Force fought for more F-15s and F-16s ... and for the B-1 bomber, canceled during the Carter administration but reinstated by Reagan.
A decade before Reagan opened the treasury, however, the USAF had begun pursuing another dream: an all-jet fleet. That we were still flying propeller-driven aircraft in the 1970s was an insult, a galling reminder of olden times. We had gotten rid of all but one: the lowly Lockheed C-130 Hercules tactical airlifter. Never mind that the Herk's props were driven by jet engines, we wanted a "pure jet" tactical airlifter.
Airlift: the glamor, the excitement. (photo: militaryphotos.net)