starship troopers (fwd)

January 2nd, 2009

From Sat Aug 02 00:47:48 1997
>Date: Sat, 2 Aug 1997 00:47:36 -0700 (PDT)
>From: Tracy Johnson
>To: MAHAN-L
>Subject: Re: starship troopers (fwd)
>Precendence: bulk
>Sender: mahan-owner@microworks.net
>
>There was a discussion of Starship Troopers on the Conflict Simulation
>(CONSIM-L) list. During the course of thread, parts of Heinlein’s
>personal history came up. Speculative though it may be:
>
>Tracy Johnson
>tjohnson@adnetsol.com
>”Semper Pollus”
> ADC-2239-5531
>
>———- Forwarded message ———-
>Date: Thu, 31 Jul 1997 17:54:08 -0500
>From: Leonard R. Cleavelin
>To: Multiple recipients of list CONSIM-L
>Newgroups: bit.listserv.consim-l
>Subject: Re: starship troopers
>
>At 11:03 PM 7/30/97 -0400, Steve wrote:
>
> >Leonard R. Cleavelin wrote:
>
> >> Heinlein was a graduate of the Naval
> >> Academy, and probably would have retired a rear admiral (at least) had he
> >> not contracted tuberculosis (?) before WWII and gotten a medical > retirement.
> >
> >Interesting. What do you base that on? Not that I disagree with you,
> >but I’m just interested in what he may have had to say about Pre-WWII
> >naval tactics and strategy that would warrent such a statement.
>
>I’m basing it on wild assed speculation, based on what I thought was
>Heinlein’s seniority based on what I remember as his Academy graduation
>date. At the time I wrote this, I was under the impression that he’d have
>graduated in the late teens or early ’20s. That would have made him a fairly
>senior officer by ’41 (Commander at least and probably a Captain) which
>would have made him a shoo in for a couple stars during The Big One, given
>how the Navy expanded for WWII.
>
>I’ve since reviewed my sources, and I see he was born in 1907, and graduated
>from the Academy in 1929. Based on what little I know about probable
>promotion times in the between wars Navy (and to be honest it’s damned
>little), had he not gotten a medical retirement (in 1934) he’d probably have
>been a Lieutenant Commander by ’41. I think he’d still have picked up a
>star or two in WWII, but I don’t recall if the Navy was using temporary
>wartime ranks during that conflict. If so, there’s a good chance he’d have
>lost the stars once peace broke out (assuming, of course, he survived the
>war). As an Academy graduate with wartime experience, I still think that he
>would have a fair to good chance of having gotten a promotion to flag rank
>after the war (and to retire as such) unless he did something that was very
>”career-unenhancing” to screw up those chances.
>
>Best regards,
>
>–
>Leonard R. Cleavelin
>E-mail: leonard@inlink.com or lcleavelin@solutechinc.com(work related mail)
>WWW: http://www.inlink.com/~leonard/
>Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by stupidity.
>********Help stop Internet spam! Join CAUCE: ********

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