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How the Pentagon Got Its Shape
Pcol writes "The Washington Post is running a story on the design process for the Pentagon building and why it ended up with its unusual shape. In July 1941 with World War II looming, a small group of army officers met to consider a secret plan to provide a permanent home for War Department headquarters containing 4 million square feet of office space and housing 40,000 people. The building that Brig. Gen. Brehon Burke Somervell, head of the Army's Construction Division, wanted to build was too large to fit within the confines of Washington DC and would have to be located across the Potomac River in Arlington. "We want 500,000 square feet ready in six months, and the whole thing ready in a year," the general said adding that he wanted a design on his desk by Monday morning. The easiest solution, a tall building, was out because of pre-war restrictions on steel usage and the desire not to ruin Washington's skyline. The tract selected had a asymmetrical pentagon shape bound on five sides by roads or other divisions so the building was designed to conform to the tract of land. Then with objections that the new building would block views from Arlington National Cemetery, the location was moved almost one-half mile south. The building would no longer be constructed on the five-sided Arlington Farm site yet the team continued with plans for a pentagon at the new location. In the rush to complete the project, there was simply no time to change the design."
That's a pretty good cover story. Really they had to radiation-shield the pentagram that locks down the devil at its center, with lots of authoritarian human bodies to absorb the extremely high frequencies that scorch souls.
--
make install -not war
almost 20 years before the founding of discordianism?
impressive.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Historical trivia on how one of the most known military buildings in the world came to be, I'd say. If they thought the Pentagon was built that way to fit the enormous pentagram in the basement and that the US military is run by devil worshippers, they'd simply do so. Right up there with the flat earth society and those that believe the moon landing was a hoax. Both of which should be put on a one-way rocket to crash into the moon's surface, HHGTTG style so they'd hopefully realize their error along the way, but that's a different story.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Sorry but this isn't the 2nd century BC where all you needed to go to war was to pick up a spear and put a helmet on. Amateur 'pickup' armies don't work, and will be easily destroyed by a full-time professional army.
Next up - "what part of George's anatomy inspired the Washington Monument".
Kevin Smith on Prince
..."Rectangle", "Quadrilateral", and "Square", tested poorly in focus groups.
wow an anti-conspiracy theory guy on Slashdot? I didn't think you guys existed.
Bobo Mahoney
You are aware of what was happening in 1941 right? I mean, I know ignorant opinionated drivel like yours can be lazy, but I would assume you have at least been through the basic history of the whole WWI/WWII/Cold War progression.
Beyond that, you are yet another one of those fools that blames the military for any of this crap. The military does what it is told to do by civilian authority, just like the constitution says. The civilians say they can't do something, and that means they can't do it. You want to fix this, quit bitching and trying to screw over the men that serve their nation, and go fix the men that serve themselves (politicians). Further, while not paying politicians sounds very attractive, it would just further the whole lobbyist problem. When the military DOESN'T do what the civilians tell them, you have a military coop, and I am reasonably certain you would rather have the military continue to follow bullshit directives from idiot civilians that you can replace democratically than have to deal with a military coop (which by the way would probably rather quick once you opted to quit paying them).
The idea that you could fight and win in modern warfare just by grabbing a bunch of untrained people and not paying them is just unbelievably ignorant of what the military does. Beyond that, I seriously doubt you are aware of or give a damn about what the military does that ISN'T part of our idiot politicians agendas. The US military is usually one of the first responders to natural disasters globally, and other humanitarian things. Here, this is why we should definitely quit paying them.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
Trivia: the Pentagon was constructed without regard for the curvature of the Earth. That's right, they just flattened the site out without even considering the effects of the curvature of the Earth.
This is proof that the Flat Earth Society was working in league with the Satanists and the Teamsters to create the cold war. Stalin was in on it, and so was Eisenhower and Truman. Pudge knows, but he's not saying. He's avoiding military service, because if he were caught by the terrorists in Iraq and the secret got out, it would be the end of our way of life. I salute you, Pudge, for keeping our secrets safe within the borders of the nation, and away from the terrorists in Iraq. Such a brave man.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
WW2 was a special time in the history of the public service. Projects were approved and built at a pace that embarrasses us today. Sure, the military had a bureaucracy but there was a war to be won. Everyone focused on being effective. Petty bureaucrats with petty bureaucratic concerns were swept aside.
The lessons were learned in WW1. When that war started, the British officer corps was incompetent. They were in charge of the empire's troops and there were massacres of Canadian, Australian, Newfoundland etc. troops. The colonies weren't about to put up with that. In fact there is a story that the Canadian prime minister hauled the British prime minister out of his chair by his lapels and made it very clear that, if there was another such massacre, the Canadians were going home. The incompetent British officers were replaced by competent colonials. By the time the Americans arrived, they had some very good models of military efficiency to copy. (You could also make the argument that they weren't that stupid in the first place.) In any event, when WW2 came along, the lessons learned in WW1 were still living memory.
Sadly, given enough peace time, the fat bloated bureaucracy rears its ugly head again. The meritocracy is suppressed. If we had to build another Pentagon today, it would cost too much and take too long, and some company close to certain politicians would get rich. In fact, looking at the corruption and waste of money in Iraq, I'm feeling very depressed.
Actually, that was from a headline from the first post-9/11 issue of the Onion.
More correctly, it was a headline they thought went a little too far, and was not actually used. If memory serves it was something like "America Stronger Than Ever, Say Quadragon Officials."
~Philly
If the full-time professional army was allowed to fight like their enemies in Iraq do, then the situation there would be different.
If we were actually fighting a War of Conquest, as people seem to insist that we are, then the situation would be different. We aren't fighting a War of Conquest though. We are fighting some sort of wet-dream nation-building exercise created by the Neo-Cons that assumed we'd be welcomed as liberators and only planned on being there for six months or so after the war. We are fighting Dubya's war because he had to one-up his Dad and go to Baghdad.
Irregular/guerrilla warfare only works if you assume that the occupying power has to follow certain conventions and rules of war that you (as the guerrilla) don't. If the occupying power is free from any political constraints then the guerrillas are screwed. Guerrilla warfare never worked against Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia.
It also never really worked against the early Romans. They were only too happy to slaughter entire villages. Kill every male of military age and sell the women and children into slavery. Yeah, it's not pretty, but by the rules of the day it worked quite well. Lay down your arms and you can join the empire, resist us and we will crush you utterly and enslave any survivors.
People who accuse the United States of trying to "conquer" Iraq or Afghanistan don't know what true conquest is.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
wow an anti-conspiracy theory guy on Slashdot? I didn't think you guys existed. - it is, of-course, a conspiracy.
You can't handle the truth.
I totally agree. Like all open source ventures, the quality just isn't there. The proprietary masons would have done it properly.
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
Perhaps you aren't old enough to remember the Vietnam war, but I do. The US was never officially at war against North Vietnam, they spent ten years helping South Vietnam fight the Viet Cong insurgents. They dropped a few million tons of bombs in North Vietnam, for sure, just like they did on the Viet Cong supply routes in Laos and Cambodia, but they never attempted to invade North Vietnam.
If the US had wanted to win the Vietnam war they should have invaded North Vietnam. Land there in an amphibious attack and war would have been won in a matter of weeks. Likewise, if they want to win the Iraq war now, they should invade Syria and Iran. If the US Army had stopped at the German border after liberating France from Nazism they would have lost WWII.
Ever since Truman refused the MacArthur request to attack China during the Korea war, the US has had this doctrine of limited wars, fighting proxy armies as if the power behind them did not exist. A very expensive way to obtain limited results.
I thought everyone knew this, but I guess not...
A pentagon is a very traditional shape for fortifications. Reason is very simple. If you have a pentagon shaped fort then each side of the fort can provide supporting fire to its two adjacent sides.
A sides on a square fort cannot provide supporting fire at all. Sides on a hexagonal fort can but with a hexagonal fort you can only get 50% of the defenders firing against an attack on a side. With a pentagonal fort you can get 60%. This basic fact makes a pentagon the most effective shape for a fortification, assuming no terrain features to change the situation.
It would be an amazing coincidence if The Pentagon was pentagonal for any reason but this.
Screw the pentagon, i want to know how this military building got its shape.
The French resistance may have made life hot for the Nazi troops once in a while, but they had very little to do with why Germany lost the war, and they certainly didn't drive the Germans out of France. The real reason was that Germany was fighting on two fronts (western and Russian) and got over-extended, so was vulnerable to a concerted invasion force, and it wouldn't have mattered where that happened.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Well, there is a reason for those five pages. The site was restricted originaly by speed of the internet, but then it was moved to another server. The team continued with plans for five at the new location. In the rush to complete the project, there was simply no time to change the design.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
To be specific, WWII starts in around 1939. The US is eventually involved, and ends the war in 1945, at which time the UN is set up. In 1947 the US forms a plan to rebuild europe, which is completed by 1952. 7 years after the war ended and four year after the plan was implemented.
Um... it's worth mentioning that at the time we were rebuilding France, Germany, Italy, and every other spot in Europe that got economically and physically trashed during that war, we did NOT have religiously-driven suicidal crazies trying to kill pizza-shops full of their brothers and cousins in order to terrorize them out of wanting a democracy in which evil things like Women Reading Books, Music Being Played In Public, and Daughters Choosing Their Own Husbands might come about. There weren't well-financed groups of hidden Nazis willing to kill themselves and everyone in a vegetable market because a cave-dwelling extremist with buckets of cash has pursuaded them that Allah will open the doors to Virgin-Mart on their behalf if they can cause as much horrifying death as possible to scare people out of wanting a simple democratic, constitutional governement, and scare them back into settling for a brutal, theocratic, medieval-style thugocracy. With nukes.
It's not the same thing. Oh, and neither has it been 7 years since the end of hostilities or even close to it, because the people stoking the current conflict (the Iranians) are still busy DOING it.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
The Romans needed 200 years of constant warfare to pacify Hispania, in spite of using the genocidal means the parent describes. The Roman republic was characterized by an incredible degree of persistence in military matters. This was how they won their wars, not by superior military leadership/organization/technology.
The Illuminatus Trilogy is a humorous work of fiction. It doesn't try to explain anything. It is a comedy novel, like Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, except about conspiracies instead of space-travel. It finds an audience in the post-LSD era, because it is still funny.
Can we please get rid of the attitude that WWII started on 7 December 1941. I always find it interesting that the British (and even the occupied Dutch) declared war on Japan the same day the Americans did, but not only did the Americans take two years to declare war on Germany, they didn't even declare war on Germany first--Germany declared war on the US! Looming indeed!
The Illuminatus Trilogy is a humorous work of non-fiction. It successfully tries to explain everything. It is a comedy novel, like Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, except about conspiracies instead of space-travel. It finds an audience in the post-LSD era, because it is still relevant.
("Both of the preceding statements are true. Both of the preceding statements are false. Both of the preceding statements are irrelevant.")
The passages on Celine's Laws are particularly relevant today. You don't need a conspiracy to explain Gulf War II. You just need Saddam's lieutenants swearing up and down that the WMD projects are going well -- because they know they'll be shot if they tell the truth. Nor do you need a conspiracy on the American side -- you just need a bunch of paranoids listening in on the conversations between Saddam and his lieutenants.
Saddam: "How are my nukes?"
Lieutenant: "What nukes?"
Saddam: *BANG*
Lieutenant #2: "Gulp... umm, actually, they're going very well, sir!"
Lieutenant #3: "Yes, it's going very well!"
America: "What's Saddam up to?"
Spies: "Well, every one of his lieutenants say his nukes are almost ready, sir!"
America: "Launch the missiles!"
Some folks might even find the following little snippet of dialogue to be relevant.
Not bad for the 1970s.
It's not true unless it makes you laugh.
But then, to bring us back on topic, my first thought on 9/11 was to wonder if he got out of the Pentagon. Unfortunately, it looks like he did.
A pilot would easily find it even without a map.
Uh, yeah. I think that actually happened. Heard about it on the news or something.