Quote:
Originally Posted by UGAalum94
No doubt.
But it's still a low number of injuries or deaths especially considering the length of the US involvement. We don't simply have fewer deaths and an equal number of injuries. We have fewer casualties generally. I'd expect that we'd show that even if we adjusted for the number of people involved, but I'm not eager to do that math. (ETA: The data does have a ratio of deaths vs. injuries in one of the later graphics. What a morbid stat: but it was about 1:1.8 for WWI and it's 1:7.4 for Iraqi Freedom.)
This isn’t attempted commentary on the morality of the war, but quoting the number of injured or dead isn’t a particularly effective anti-war commentary, unless you're just an absolute pacifist.
EATA: it's interesting that the Vietnam survival observation doesn't seem to bear out compared to Korea, unless there were more helicopters in Korea than Vandal Squirrel was thinking. Look at CSR-9 http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL32492.pdf.
Maybe that ratio isn't really showing what we're talking about. You'd need some measure of the seriousness of injuries survived, I guess. |
Well look at the length of involvement, Korea was 3 years, Vietnam was 9 (according to that link). Just rough number, if Korea lasted as long, multiply the deaths by three, it would have been 109,722, and Vietnam for 9 years was at 58,209, almost half. In the ten years between the two engagements technology improved the use of the helicopter immensely. Just look at the difference between the size and capacities of a Korean era Bell H and a Vietnam era Huey.
http://www.korean-war.com/KWAircraft.../bell_h13.html
http://www.fas.org/programs/ssp/man/...otary/uh1.html