Air Drop!

This is coolbert:

From the Chicago Tribune today:

Discussing the air-drops of supplies, vitally needed, to the populace of Haiti.

Air-drops previously ruled out as TOO dangerous to those on the ground.

"Troops flood in, Haitians out"

"The 82nd Airborne carried out it first air drop of food and water in Port-au-Prince. A C-17 cargo plane dropped 40 skids of water and packaged military meals to a SECURED DROP ZONE [my emphasis!] in the city . . . The skids contained 14,000 gallons of bottle water and 125,000 meals, wrapped in canvas and attached to parachutes for the drop"

Unfortunate as it is, these air-drops can be mortally physically dangerous to those on the ground. A pallet of supplies, weighing a pretty good amount and being parachuted to the ground, having a velocity, represents a danger to anyone foolish enough and naive enough to be under the pallet as it descends.

See my previous blog entry on this topic from long time ago now. Allied prisoners-of-war, Canadians imprisoned on the island of Formosa [Taiwan], in the aftermath of Japanese surrender, hit and killed by pallets air-dropped from B-29 bombers. Pallets of life giving supplies, heavy, an instrument of death rather than life!!

[A battalion of Canadians were captured by the Japanese while defending Hong Kong, 1941!]

In this case, the drop-zone was secured, guarded, the pallets coming to earth safely without danger to those on the ground! No need to exacerbate an already tense situation!

Al L.