I grew up just a few miles from Moffett Field. Moffett was originally set up as a base for the Navy dirigible USS Macon on the tidal flats around the southern tip of San Francisco Bay. The land is very flat and a little marshy in places, and the water that intrudes to make the marshes is salt water, so it would not make an especially good orchard, which was the principal business of the area at the time. Nevertheless, a group of Sunnyvale businessmen collected nearly half a million dollars in 1931 to buy the land, some of it salt marsh, some dry, specifically to donate it to the Navy to serve as an airbase, thinking such a base nearby would be good for business. They were unquestionably correct, and the Navy base was the start of what came to be known as Silicon Valley. Less than 4 years later, and after less than 2 years of service, the Macon was damaged in a winter storm and lost at sea, less than 100 miles from home. But the land proved to be an excellent place to build an airfield, which they did. The house I grew up in is less than a mile from where an airplane 5 miles out on final approach would pass. So I got to see lots and lots of airplanes flying low and slow, every day. Constellations, C141s, C5As, B-17s, and most important of all, the P3 Orions. A P3 is a variant of the Lockheed Electra that was used for sub chasing, and as I write this, they're still being used to try to find Malaysian Air flight 370, apparently lost somewhere in the Indian Ocean. Moffett had been the main west coast base for these long range aircraft, and they trained there and did a lot of their missions from there.
Every year, the Blue Angels would do a show at Moffett, and they often flew over our house, both while doing their landing approach and while practicing. As soon as we were old enough, my friends and I would ride our bicycles out to an overpass we'd found that was high enough and near enough to give an excellent view of the airshow, while not requiring us to pay admission. I very distinctly remember watching them flying F4-Phantoms, which they flew between 1969 and 1974. These heavy planes didn't seem especially good for the purpose, but they were the mainstay of the Vietnam War. After two unrelated midair collisions in 1973 and a number of other crashes, many fatal, they were replaced by the much more appropriate A4 Skyhawk in 1974. These planes were still in use when I moved to the Seattle area in the early 1980s, and everywhere I've lived here has been subjected to numerous flyovers every year during SeaFair, except for the one that the Blues didn't because of the Republican sequester. I've frequently gone to see the show (much harder to do now that they close the I90 bridge) and I often watch it on TV. The F18s they fly today are beautiful, noisy and fast.
The Blue Angels get a lot of criticism--they are expensive and serve no direct military purpose. That's true. They cost the Navy about $40M a year, and the amount of revenue they take in is a tiny fraction of that. Even if they pack 10,000 spectators at 50 shows a year for $10 each, that's just $5M. The basic operation of the spectator venues are barely covered by this. But this completely misses the point.
Their purpose is to drum up enthusiasm. Their shows are spectacular and awe inspiring, and a source of nationalistic spirit. Each of their shows is seen by around a million people--50 or 60 million viewers each year. If just a few people are inspired by this to join the Navy, it's a good investment. If you figure each recruit is worth their career wages--something like $75K on average--then it only takes about 530 new recruits a year for the Navy to break even on this. That's just 10 recruits a show. I'm sure the real number is much higher than that...if the navy averages 100 recruits per show, it becomes a terrific deal.
Such recruiting is an example of an extrinsic benefit. Just as with public transit, the value it produces is so loosely coupled to the cost of getting it that attempting to make it pay for itself directly is a pointless exercise. But that value is real and serves an important national function.
No comments:
Post a Comment