The Stuka Siren, And A Presidential Election
What you don't hear after November 5, 2024
With the onset of World War Two Nazi Germany introduced the “Blitzkrieg”, a form of attack marked by rapid advancement of ground forces, particularly armored and mechanized transport. Proceeding such advancements were flights of warplanes designed for ground attack. One of the principal warplanes the Nazis fielded: The Junkers JU-87 “Stuka” dive bomber/ ground attack aircraft. This single- engined, fixed landing gear monoplane with downward angled ‘gull wing’ wings proceeded the German Army into Poland, France and Russia.
Its job was to attack columns of troops and armor, destroy bridges and fortifications, and bomb civilian infrastructure as needed. The Stuka was unique in that each landing stut had a ram- air powered siren mounted. In the dive, the scream of the siren proceeded the sound of the plane. Its intent was to demoralize enemy ground forces, and it did a good job, so much so the sound effect has made its way into countless movies, as a portent of death from above:
Later on the Russian front another role, more terrifying was thrust upon the plane and its pilots. Two 30 mm cannon were mounted under the wings, operating semiautomatically. The intent was to make the Stuka into a killer of tanks, especially the Russian T- 34s, which were chewing through German Panzer tanks of all types. A Nazi pilot, Colonel Hans- Ulrich Rudel, became famous for his method of attack- come in low at about fifty feet, with full power, spot a target and fire two shots in under two seconds, and pull away, often over other enemy forces. He destroyed some five hundred Russian tanks before being shot down for the last time, severely wounded.
Picture yourself in the year 1939, on foot in the French countryside. You are leading your family westward across fields newly planted, stumbling in the dirt. You’re fleeing the Geman Army moving through villages behind you. Suddenly- from above- you hear that terrible wailing yet again. Not singly, but in pairs of twos and threes. You pull your family into a muddy ditch, praying the bombs won’t land anywhere near you. Or you’re a Russian soldier riding into battle on the back of a lurching T- 34 tank, making you one of the lucky ones that you don’t have to walk to battle. As the tank moves across a snow covered meadow, you sense something to your left. You see a warplane barely above tree top level coming right at you. The PPsH submachine gun in your hands is shrinking in size as you see the Stuka’s guns are firing, reaching out for you.
But this is not 1940 and not Europe. This is 2024 and the United States. We have just finished a presidential election, with a winner declared. The transition between administrations is proceeding. And here come the sirens.
Pundits on both ends of the American political spectrum are metaphorically going into dive mode, screaming out what the Trump Adminstration will or will not do in the next four years. There’s also people on social media looking to come in at ground level, finding a weak spot in the political discourse, and fire a burst of half- truths and outright lies, to get a reaction going in the wrong direction.
We don’t need that, and we don’t need censorship, a crackdown on ‘misinformation.’ Rather, we need to hear from persons across the politcal landscape who can voice nuanced arguments, prinicpled and concise, that respect the voter. We don’t need spewers of hate posting ranting spasms consisiting of streams of f-bombs like bursts out of a machine gun. Like it or not, our Constitution is designed to drive debate and discourse over the political issues of the day. It is not designed to support a faction that says, “We won, so for the next four years, shut up!” If the first two years of the new Trump Administration is not to your liking, you will have the opportunity to change the make up of Congress in 2026. And 2028, and so on. It’s how it’s been for some two hundred years; and for the most part, it has worked.
We must do what we can, politically speaking, to ignore the Stukas of social media and get on with the job- creating an American society and economy that works for all. As the job has been, every four years since 1789.