9 ms·
I always thought it was kind of weird choice. You'd think one of the requirements for your primary military building would be that you wouldn't want it to be e
by simplicio 10y ago
I always thought it was kind of weird choice. You'd think one of the requirements for your primary military building would be that you wouldn't want it to be easy to pick out from the air by potential bombers. Especially in WWII, when aerial bombardment was such a major part of the war, and such bombing relied heavily on visual recognition of the target. But the Pentagon isn't just architecturally distinctive, but is so in such a way that's primarily appreciated from above, and than they named it to draw attention to the fact. (the article does mention that this objection was at least briefly considered during the buildings planning).
And indeed, the building was bombed from the air in 2001. One wonders if the 9/11 hijackers would've chosen it as a target if it wasn't so easy to pick out by eye.
- kesselvon 10y agoProbably because the US hasn't had a foreign army on its soil since like...1812
- avn2109 10y agoPearl Harbor, although pedantically maybe that was just an air force/navy instead of an army.
- lostlogin 10y agoPedantically? If we take your new definition, how many countries is the US currently invading with its airforce (particularly drones)? It isn't invading them because it's armies aren't in them and that's what the term "on its soil" means.
- paulddraper 10y agoWell, the parent was talking about _bombing_, so Pearl Harbor is a reasonable point.
- simplicio 10y agoThe Japanese also used ground troops to take over several Aleutian Islands during WWII.
- dragonwriter 10y agoPancho Villa's raid on Columbus, NM, a few decades earlier was clearly an army, and well after 1812.
- simplicio 10y agoBut you don't need a foreign army around to launch bombing raids. The Doolittle raid (US bombing of Tokyo in response to Perl Harbor) was only a few months in the future when the Pentagon was started.
- krallja 10y ago> Perl Harbor That's when Ruby overtook Larry Wall's language, right?
- yellowapple 10y agoYeah, but then Larry dropped a couple nukes on Matz.
- dragonwriter 10y ago> Probably because the US hasn't had a foreign army on its soil since like...1812 Inserting the clearly implied "hostile" before "foreign army", that's still off by more than a century, since we had one in 1916, even if we only consider the CONUS and so exclude some things in WWII.
- kesselvon 10y agoThe US faced a hostile foreign army on CONUS in 1916?
- dragonwriter 10y agoPancho Villa's Division of the North attacked Columbus, NM, provoking the Punitive Expedition.
- takk309 10y agoThe last time there was a flagged and uniformed foreign military on US soil was in 2005. The Mexican army assisted with aid work in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_response_to_Hurricane_Katrina https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_response_to_Hurricane_...
- lostlogin 10y agoThe aerial bombing in WW2 was so spectacularly inaccurate that being the aiming point was possibly safest place to be. It was the fires that did the most damage. For something that consumed so much resources it is very contraversial - not helped by German production going up during the period of heaviest bombing.
- afarrell 10y agoBefore the Pentagon, the largest office building in the world was the Luftwaffe headquarters[1]. Unlike the largest synagogue in Berlin, tt was not damaged by Aerial Bombardment. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detlev-Rohwedder-Haus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detlev-Rohwedder-Haus
- lostlogin 10y agoThanks! There is a good book on the topic by Richard Overy, The Bombing War. It left me with the impression that the bombing morphed into vindictive civilian punishiment.
- paulddraper 10y agoThere's something to be said for the emotional value of a recognizable symbol for the most powerful military in the world. "But as a symbol... As a symbol, I can be incorruptible, everlasting." - The Batman
- Jach 10y ago"Did you think to kill me? There's no flesh and blood within this cloak to kill. There is only an idea. And ideas are bulletproof." -V
- M_Grey 10y agoThere is a certain irony, given that "The Pentagon" has become at least roughly synonymous with, "Unbelievably bloated and corrupt". If the F-35 were a privately funded venture, everyone involved would have probably shot themselves.
- paulddraper 10y ago> Unbelievably bloated and corrupt Pretty sure that impression is government in general: elected politicians, pensioned workers, IRS, public utilities, etc.
- M_Grey 10y agoOf which the largest government body is... the military. "Healthcare" is the largest expenditure, but largely to a collection of unconnected private industry... the military is a different matter.
- devoply 10y agoBusiness fails all the time usually does not result in seppuku. The problem with government bloat is the lack of death for the business, not its purveyors. The plane is not built by the government, but Lockheed Martin, a private company. If government cut funding a while ago, they would've stopped working on the plane.
- 10y ago
- walrus01 10y agoUS intelligence in 1940/1941 had a pretty good idea that the Germans were nowhere near the ability to build a bomber that could make the flight from France to the US east coast and back. Reference: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amerika_Bomber https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amerika_Bomber Building something with significantly more range than a B-29 (which at that time existed as preliminary blueprints only) was something they knew the Germans were nowhere near.