If you have the opportunity to make light of war by associating it with a football game, my guess is you should probably just not.
Apparently, Air Force didn’t get the memo.
The academy unveiled its new alternate football uniforms this week, paying homage to the 1942 Doolittle Raid in Japan during World War II, and while the uniforms themselves are probably fine, everything Air Force had to roll out alongside the uniforms for context are why the idea should have been ditched.
“An ambush,” read an uncomfortable tweet from Air Force with a quote from Lt. Col. James Doolittle that, when viewed through the lens of a football game, is just as cringeworthy considering the severity of devastation from the war.
An ambush pic.twitter.com/4RKUoGR77z
— Air Force Football (@AF_Football) August 17, 2023
The actual context is that Doolittle’s Raid was the first American retaliation for the attack on Pearl Harbor. The damage was comparatively minor to other devastation of the war, but the raid is said to have provided an important boost to American morale.
Of course, this is all important history. It happened, and I’m not saying we need to act like it didn’t. But we also don’t need to honor an airstrike as part of a football game.
Air Force has been doing this Airpower Legacy Series since 2016, rolling out alternate uniforms that honor some piece of its history. And past uniforms, as I recall, have pulled this off quite well. This year’s, however, honoring an actual attack that proceeded the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki — fresh on people’s minds with the release of Oppenheimer in theaters this summer — falls short of that.
Last year’s uniform paid homage to Space Force, and it was incredible. In 2021, Air Force honored the B-52 Stratofortress — a piece of equipment, not an actual raid. The 2020 uniforms were a moving tribute to the Tuskegee Airmen. In the future, they should return their focus to honoring those who stepped up in horrific circumstances and not glorify the horrors themselves.