Originally Posted by
dtfl
IMO the Army could have put DZs in their back yards in Iraq and prevented the need for many convoys.
I worked with a Army dude that said they had pitched the idea to the USAF. The Army would build dirt LZs with their engineers if we'd fly to them and deliver, thus cutting out the need for a bunch of convoys. The USAF declined, stating that landing on dirt would result in too many bent airplanes.
I mentioned it to an O-6 I knew and he also had heard of that idea, and agreed with the USAF's premise. Yet he had no problem with our crews coming home from 120 day vacations doing nothing but landing on 10,000' paved runways to get their currency re-hacked on our 3,000' dirt LZ. I'm quite sure the LZs the Army would have built would have been longer and wider than anything we train on back home.
It's a travesty we never did that...I imagine a few Army and Marine troops would still be alive had we been able to deliver their supplies and people via airplane to their own LZ.