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Comment by simplicio | Hacker News Reader

I always thought it was kind of weird choice. You'd think one of the requirements for your primary military building would be that you wouldn't want it to be easy to pick out from the air by potential bombers. Especially in WWII, when aerial bombardment was such a major part of the war, and such bombing relied heavily on visual recognition of the target. But the Pentagon isn't just architecturally distinctive, but is so in such a way that's primarily appreciated from above, and than they named it to draw attention to the fact. (the article does mention that this objection was at least briefly considered during the buildings planning).

And indeed, the building was bombed from the air in 2001. One wonders if the 9/11 hijackers would've chosen it as a target if it wasn't so easy to pick out by eye.

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There's something to be said for the emotional value of a recognizable symbol for the most powerful military in the world.

"But as a symbol... As a symbol, I can be incorruptible, everlasting." - The Batman

"Did you think to kill me? There's no flesh and blood within this cloak to kill. There is only an idea. And ideas are bulletproof." -V

There is a certain irony, given that "The Pentagon" has become at least roughly synonymous with, "Unbelievably bloated and corrupt". If the F-35 were a privately funded venture, everyone involved would have probably shot themselves.

Business fails all the time usually does not result in seppuku. The problem with government bloat is the lack of death for the business, not its purveyors. The plane is not built by the government, but Lockheed Martin, a private company. If government cut funding a while ago, they would've stopped working on the plane.

To be clear, I was hyperbolically trying to make that exact point... I'm not truly suggesting death as an option.

> Unbelievably bloated and corrupt

Pretty sure that impression is government in general: elected politicians, pensioned workers, IRS, public utilities, etc.

Of which the largest government body is... the military. "Healthcare" is the largest expenditure, but largely to a collection of unconnected private industry... the military is a different matter.

The aerial bombing in WW2 was so spectacularly inaccurate that being the aiming point was possibly safest place to be. It was the fires that did the most damage. For something that consumed so much resources it is very contraversial - not helped by German production going up during the period of heaviest bombing.

Before the Pentagon, the largest office building in the world was the Luftwaffe headquarters[1]. Unlike the largest synagogue in Berlin, tt was not damaged by Aerial Bombardment.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detlev-Rohwedder-Haus

Thanks!

There is a good book on the topic by Richard Overy, The Bombing War. It left me with the impression that the bombing morphed into vindictive civilian punishiment.

Probably because the US hasn't had a foreign army on its soil since like...1812

Pearl Harbor, although pedantically maybe that was just an air force/navy instead of an army.

Pedantically? If we take your new definition, how many countries is the US currently invading with its airforce (particularly drones)? It isn't invading them because it's armies aren't in them and that's what the term "on its soil" means.

Well, the parent was talking about _bombing_, so Pearl Harbor is a reasonable point.

The Japanese also used ground troops to take over several Aleutian Islands during WWII.

Pancho Villa's raid on Columbus, NM, a few decades earlier was clearly an army, and well after 1812.

But you don't need a foreign army around to launch bombing raids. The Doolittle raid (US bombing of Tokyo in response to Perl Harbor) was only a few months in the future when the Pentagon was started.

> Perl Harbor

That's when Ruby overtook Larry Wall's language, right?

Yeah, but then Larry dropped a couple nukes on Matz.

> Probably because the US hasn't had a foreign army on its soil since like...1812

Inserting the clearly implied "hostile" before "foreign army", that's still off by more than a century, since we had one in 1916, even if we only consider the CONUS and so exclude some things in WWII.

The US faced a hostile foreign army on CONUS in 1916?

Pancho Villa's Division of the North attacked Columbus, NM, provoking the Punitive Expedition.

The last time there was a flagged and uniformed foreign military on US soil was in 2005. The Mexican army assisted with aid work in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_response_to_Hurricane_...

I would think https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holloman_Air_Force_Base#Germ... has uniformed German military and flies German flags.

I think "and hostile" was implied.

US intelligence in 1940/1941 had a pretty good idea that the Germans were nowhere near the ability to build a bomber that could make the flight from France to the US east coast and back. Reference:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amerika_Bomber

Building something with significantly more range than a B-29 (which at that time existed as preliminary blueprints only) was something they knew the Germans were nowhere near.

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