renegate326
Airman
- 34
- Nov 16, 2013
Agenda ? what do you mean?
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Really?
What is your agenda here?
Don't be ridiculous. It was a commercial deal with a nation who had been a wartime ally and had made a major contribution to an allied victory in Europe, including incidentally the liberation of France.
Even with a year or so of hind sight it doesn't look like a very smart thing to have done as evidenced by those exchanges in parliament.
A review of the US reaction to the British decision to sell the world's first commercial jet airliner in Eastern Europe might serve as an education. Comet didn't turn out too well in the end anyway!
The US reaction to the world's first supersonic airliner? The US reaction to TSR2 ?
Commercial considerations and airy fairy notions about special relationships and allies don't mix very well. That's the real world for you.
Cheers
Steve
Yes major ally in the war but mortal enemy few years later . The US was against Britains selling the Comet to East Europe because they feared the western technology might be copied and used for building military aircraft and they were right. The Brits however wouldn't listen but the problem was solved when Comets started to fall from sky. The US reaction to TSR-2 ?? what do you mean ?
"....the worst backstabbing of an ally in last century ..."
Really .... I didn't know that .... until you pointed it out. Until then I thought it was de Gaulle kicking the Americans and NATO out of France ... followed closely by the Soviets failure to return B-29 bombers that came down in the USSR on missions to Japan.
And of course the Soviets didn't have any spies in Great Britain that could steal the plans for the Nene did they ....?
I feel your pain about this betrayal, renegade326 ..
I think more of a backstabbing was France leaving NATO and kicking out her allied friends at the heart of the cold war.
Not as simple as you put ..Americans ,the Johnson administration were delighted to see France leaving NATO so that they could impose their view and policy freely without opposition .
I'm sure the British, Germans and a few other nations would seriously disagree with that.France is the only country in the western hemisphere capable of designing and developing its own weapon systems without depending on foreign sources or technology .
Right, Americans have the rest of the world ground under their heel.Not as simple as you put ..Americans ,the Johnson administration were delighted to see France leaving NATO so that they could impose their view and policy freely without opposition .
That France is the savior of the last 200 years and he is here to prove it! The US and UK pretend to have saved modern civilization but he is here to offer proof that France is the true savior of the Anglo world.
"...France is the only country in the western hemisphere capable of designing and developing its own weapon systems without depending on foreign sources or technology . It cost lot of money yes but the majority of people think,including socialists,it was worth !..."
Didn't the USAF loose a bomber or two as a result of crew fatigue brought on by not being allowed to fly over France on their way to strike Qadaffi?
I'm sitting here having dinner mulling over the earlier comment about native French technology and then I remembered that the jet engines of the Mirage fighter were developed from the WWII era BMW003.
Oops!
One F-111 with 2 men was lost. France, Spain, and Italy permitted no overflights, plus no continential European country would allow the aircraft to take off from any NATO bases on their soil. But you can put all the blame for our loses on France if you want.
There is an apocryphal story that when France withdrew from NATO De Gaulle asked that all US Troops leave French territory as soon as possible.
Secretary of State Dean Rusk supposedly asked "Does that include the thousands we have buried here?"
If De Gaulle replied we don't know what he said.
It may not really have happened but it certainly illustrates a point.
Cheers
Steve
The French used to annoy me no end, always saying the British were (are) bad Europeans, we have too many of our young men buried there to warrant that description.