…And thus am at risk for assassination.

I thought I had blogged about this before, but I couldn’t find it.  There was a comment over on BaconBach about Fort Wayne being “on Hitlers list of cities to bomb during WWII.”

This is a particular pet peeve of mine, which goes to show you how many times I’ve heard such silliness.  First off, I’d imagine Hitler probably would have been happy to bomb any U.S. city, so maybe his list included every city in the entire country. The commentor doesn’t mention how far down the list Fort Wayne was. But, Hitler never bombed ANY U.S. city, so whether it was on the list or not is sort of irrelevant. What I’d really like to know is how this mysterious commenter got his hands on such an amazing piece of WWII memorabilia as a list of cities to bomb, scrawled in Hitler himself’s handwriting I’m sure.

I’ve heard this rumor about Fort Wayne before of course and, although I don’t doubt the psychological damage that could be inflicted on the U.S. by the destruction of the fighting Tin Caps or the military implications of Old Fort Wayne, when I questioned why it would be a target the best answer I ever got was that Raytheon has a location there.  Well guess what, by my unofficial count there are 114 Raytheon locations in the United States (as well as others in other countries).

The odd part is that everywhere I have ever lived, I have heard the same story. At Purdue they said it was due to a large ROTC program and a defunct nuclear reactor buried under the engineering campus (why would that even be a target, even if it wasn’t really just a particle accelerator?) In Philadelphia it was more based on the size of the city, it’s naval yards and the psychological blow that could be caused but blowing up the liberty bell and the nation’s first capitol. That last one actually has some merit. Assuming someone destroyed every military base, the 5 cities larger than Philly and Washington D.C. and the U.S. still hadn’t retaliated, I could imagine someone taking a shot at Philly. I haven’t specifically heard the same in Chicago, but I’m sure I will sooner or later.

So why does everybody spread this bit of urban legend? I think it’s because they want to feel important and because it is kind of like telling a ghost story; just enough danger to give you a thrill. Even the most cursory examination reveals how asinine the stories are though.

And even though Fort Wayne has the most self inflated image of its importance, let’s not forget that it lies in the state that lists a popcorn factory on it’s Terror Target List.