Red Dawn 20+ AH.com archive

[lordroel]

From page 45

Panzerfaust 150

Well, we were with 29th Light Division, so no, not jump qualified..We were actually airlanded into Houston about a week after the festivities..The division had seen some action in Louisiana, but had been OPCONed to XVIII Airborne Corps, and then, we got moved all over the place..the joke soon went around the division was that we were "Maryland and Virginia's bastard children"!

Matt Wiser

Even so, it still took a month to get the Houston-Galveston-Port Arthur/Beaumont area cleared. The ComBloc just didn't want to give Houston up without us having to pay for it. The same thing went for D/FW. Especially since that was where the Quisling "People's Government" had their capital in Los Colinas, near Dallas. Schwartzkopf was furious at VII Corps and IX Corps for getting bogged down in a city fight when they should've looped around and surrounded the D/FW area. He wound up firing both Corps Commanders. The talking heads on CNN mentioned this, and suggested this time Al Haig (the National Security Advisor) would finally get a field command-he'd been requesting one since Invasion Day-and they thought this time he'd get one. No such luck. The President wanted him close by as his NSA, so he stayed in Raven Rock. D/FW has special meaning for me, as that's where I got the squadron when our CO went down. His backseater was found by some resistance people and exfild' back to friendly lines, but the CO went in with the plane.


Midland-Odessa: the airborne side of it, in Keegan's words, "Made Arnhem look like a successful operation." For us, it was a target-rich environment: we never got in amongst the transports, but those DZs were pretty vulnerable, as they hadn't had time to unpack their SA-7s or SA-14s, and set up their ZU-23s. One thing about West Texas: it's so wide open that nobody, and I mean nobody, can have a continuous front line. You have to accept open flanks if you're out there, and just have to patrol aggressively to keep any party-crashers from getting into your flank and rear. Ivan forgot about that. X Corps and the ROKs used that to their advantage, and III Corps followed up with the counterattack.

sloreck

During this phase of ops I had just transferred from Alpha surgical, 1st FSSG to be MEB Surgeon on the Tarawa - including the Petro hit & afterwards. When we kicked the Sov bloc out of Texas, we were working up for another big amphib op so I was busy with the rest of the staff on an op that never happened & can't be discussed even now. My home town is New Orleans, and having my wife & kids missing (they had already died in a camp but I did not find out til the war ended) so i was plenty worried about the rest of my family.

Haven't had a chance to read Keegan's book yet, wonder what he'll say about the naval war/amphib war in the Pacific. BTW as of 10 Aug I'm on terminal leave & back in Madison. Have to start buying books for the fall semester, my advisor made sure I got the seminars I need.

Matt Wiser

Hey Sloreck, glad to have you back. At least you got a nice tan, one hopes. CNN's been showing the stuff about Gitmo: the war-crimes people have a few Cubans that they want to have a few words with about the mass grave you guys found. Did they ever find out if those in the grave were all from the base, the destroyer tender, or both? Somebody ought to pay for that....And has anyone checked out the old POW compounds?

New Orleans, hmm? Were they from a town west of there? Because no ComBloc forces got within artillery range of the Big Easy (due to the I-10 and U.S. 90 bridges being blown), and the only Ivans to get to New Orleans were survivors of that botched amphib operation in the Gulf of Mexico-as EPWs. They had a lot of gall, thinking they could just sail up the Mississippi to New Orleans, unload, and walk into the city. That was a big mistake, and a lot of Russians and Cubans paid for that folly. The lucky ones wound up as EPWs. A few ships managed to get away, the rest wound up feeding the fish, and their ships became artifical reefs. The Mann flew anti-ship strikes during those couple of days, and he's got some stories from that. Hell of a way to lose Northern Fleet's 63rd Guards Naval Infantry Brigade and a brigade of Cubans, but that was their disaster, not ours. The Big Easy was a favorite R&R spot for the guys from XVIII Airborne Corps and the 9th Air Force in the Southeast, at least that's what the people who were in the other three squadrons from 4th TFW say. Lots of fights between Army, Marines, AF, Navy, Coast Guard, and even Royal Navy and Marines. Of course, those who lost were the ones who wound up arrested by the MPs or Navy Shore Patrol.

sloreck

Matt: That part of my family all in N.O. so did OK, but you know how it is if you're not there you're not sure where the stuff is landing. As far as the Cuban version of Katyn, they are still working on identifying all the bodies, but it looks like they were base staff, including medical staff from the hospital, officers off the tender & some odds & ends. The Marine officers, at least the ones taken right at the battle edge "lucked out" & went to camps - it appears the regular Cuban troops took prisoners, but the rear area types fell in to the hands of the secret police.....

BTW in addition to my tan have several boxes of now legal cigars, anyone comes by cheeleand we'll share.

Matt Wiser

You might want to have a talk with Major Kelly Ann Ray: she was a POW in Cuba from March of '86 until March of '90. She says that most of the POWs in the camps she was in were a mix: Marines from the base defense force, Navy personnel from the base (the two escapees that the book and movie Open Water deal with were Navy-one was a pilot in VC-10, the other was an aircraft maintenance officer), crew from the tender, and aircrew shot down over Cuba like she was. There were 1400 or so officers and enlisted on the tender, 450 Marines assigned to the base, about 2,000 or so Navy base personnel (about 350 in VC-10), and 1,500 dependents. 2500 POWs from Gitmo were repatriated in March of '90: there were the two escapees in November '86, and about a hundred or so aircrew shot down (a mix of Navy, AF, and a few Marines) between '85 and late '89 who made it to release. When she was shot down, she was taken to Havana for interrogation, then to the POW prison in Mariel, where most of the POWs were officers and sailors from the tender, with a few Marines and base personnel. At Holguin, there were more people from the base than from the tender, along with some downed aircrews, and at Isle of Pines, it was a mix of everyone-those who had proven to be hardcases to their captors, or were sent for "punishment", as in her case (aiding and abetting the famous Open Water escape). Two-plus years of solitary, abuse, and misery followed. Her last prison was near Santa Clara, where it was mostly downed aircrews, with a few Navy personnel from VC-10. One Hispanic Marine told Major Ray that he'd overheard some guards talking about specific POWs, and when her name came up, they called her "The one who does not cry." Then one day, all of a sudden, the POWs were taken to the nearby air base, loaded onto a Il-62 airliner, and everyone thought they were being flown to Russia. Instead, it was San Jose, Costa Rica, and when they got off, there were several C-141s waiting. Only then did she and the others know it was over. She asked one of the AF officers after she'd been formally handed over about her backseater, and was told that he was on the died-in-captivity list. Then she cried. Now that we've gone in, done away with Fidel (hopefully, any getaway boat sank on the way south, and he's feeding the fish), and gotten the bodies back of those who died in captivity. Major Ray has a funeral in a few days to go to, and we're providing the Missing-Man flyover. Her backseater's mom lives in Butte, Montana, and that's where the funeral will be.

29th ID: the Blue/Gray Division. IIRC they were in the lead on Omaha Beach back in 1944. How'd you guys fit in with guys like the Stonewall Brigade (116th Infantry of Omaha Beach fame-or infamy)? Especially when Houston was still a dangerous place-it took a while before it was declared "secure". There's a story from the amphib landing that made the rounds back then: some Soviet and Cuban REMFs were garrisoning the town of Freeport, on the coast, when the amphibious force appeared on the horizon. One Russian who was captured by the Marines told the Jarheads that one of the sergeants went to their CO and told him "Look at all of our ships in the bay, Comrade Captain." The officer went out, had a look-see through his binoculars, and said, "They're not ours." He went into his office and shot himself. 2nd MarDiv just went ashore like it was an exercise, and there was very little resistance; most of the REMF types simply gave up or ran. 6th MarDiv had some trouble, though: a VDV unit was rebuilding north of their assault zone, and sounded the alarm. Those air-assault guys held fast, and didn't budge until they were killed in place.

trekchu

Sorry for not posting back here. The wife and I had to fly to Europe to bury her father. ( He died on a holiday trip there,)

Anyhow, the mass graves... I saw them, but only on sat pictures, not for real. They kinda reminded me of the Kathyn massacre in WW2, where Ivan shot loads of Polish Officers they captured when they invaded eastern Poland.

And I can tell you now that 14th AD also captured a subeterranean depot in Cuba full with old captured US equipment that never made it to the Soviet union. M60s, a few M1s, wrecks from F 4s, M113s... you name it. It appears that Ivan shipped the stuff to Cuba first but never managed to have it transported to the Soviet Union, and now most of it is on the way back to the US.

Panzerfaust 150

Matt Wiser said: 29th ID: the Blue/Gray Division. IIRC they were in the lead on Omaha Beach back in 1944. How'd you guys fit in with guys like the Stonewall Brigade (116th Infantry of Omaha Beach fame-or infamy)? Especially when Houston was still a dangerous place-it took a while before it was declared "secure". There's a story from the amphib landing that made the rounds back then: some Soviet and Cuban REMFs were garrisoning the town of Freeport, on the coast, when the amphibious force appeared on the horizon. One Russian who was captured by the Marines told the Jarheads that one of the sergeants went to their CO and told him "Look at all of our ships in the bay, Comrade Captain." The officer went out, had a look-see through his binoculars, and said, "They're not ours." He went into his office and shot himself. 2nd MarDiv just went ashore like it was an exercise, and there was very little resistance; most of the REMF types simply gave up or ran. 6th MarDiv had some trouble, though: a VDV unit was rebuilding north of their assault zone, and sounded the alarm. Those air-assault guys held fast, and didn't budge until they were killed in place.

Well, we all got along well enough. I dealt with the 116th Bde's staff guys on occasion and they seemed alright guys who knew their shit. The big problem with Houston was the fact that the organized resistance collapsed quick...it was the "unorganized" resistance (read, desperate folks looking for an out) that made things so damned dangerous. Not to mention, 1st Bde of the 82nd and 1/75 and 2/75 Rangers had a hell of a time at Houston Intercontinental. They took the place, but for some reason, the REMFs there put up a fight. I know because that's where we set up shop for about a month, and this was a week after we took the place.

sloreck


Matt - looking at the numbers (~4,000 military at Gitmo when it started) and ~2,500 prisoners from Gitmo returned, given the death rates at POW camps with the "regular" mass grave we found of those killed in the fighting and the "Katyn Forest" execution site I'd say pretty much all the military were accounted for. As I said it looks like most base staff officers including drs & nurses, officers off the tender, and a few Marine officers were executed. I assume somebody is going to go over the lists of who was there when it started, and subtract the names of those we found in the graves & the reurned POWs & see who is not accounted for. Always some you never find, but wonder if the intel folks from the base & the Marines (officer & enlisted) turn up missing, along with some senior enlisted tech specialists from base & tender. These are the folks that the Sovs would want to take back to Russia to squeeze for knowledge & if that happened I'm afraid after they were squeezed they were executed & buried in some Siberian forest, Ivan will never admit to having them - maybe we'll find some Cuban documents authorizing the transfers.

Anyone know what happened to the dependents? By the time I left we had not found another mass grave, although that is possible & no civilians in either the regular or execution graves far as we could tell. Naturally some dependents were probably killed being in the worng place wrong time, but assume most were captured - anyone know?

trekchu

I keep wondering what radicalized the ComBloc forces so much. It can't have been just propaganda....

Matt Wiser

Major Ray says in her book that she did encounter some of the dependents in both Holguin and Santa Clara. Most were wives and older teenage kids, and the Cubans were treating them as POWs, not as "interned civilians." They got the same treatment than the military POWs, though the guards often....entertained themselves with them (or any female military prisoners, for that matter). The highest-ranking survivor from the destroyer tender was the XO, and he was a full Commander. (he was on the same repatriation flight as Kelly Ann) He did say that some of the crew with knowledge of missile systems (Tomahawk especially) were separated from the rest of the crew, and they never saw them again. None of the missile techs were repatriated, she found out. Except for the Isle of Pines, the Cubans were using the POWs as forced labor-cutting Sugarcane, for example, among other things. (the two escapees from Open Water got away from a sugarcane detail) The prison on the Isle of Pines was a punishment hellhole, pure and simple. And the Cuban Military Intelligence HQ in Havana was their main interrogation center.

So that explains why Houston was so dangerous. A lot of desperate REMF types looking for either a way out, or a chance to take as many of our people with 'em as possible. Chuikov's grandson just walking to 2nd Marine Division's front line was a shocker, I'll bet. An Army commander just doesn't give up without a fight unless he had a good reason. All he did was tell his staff "Do what you think is best." Then he took a walk...

Ivan having some kind of depot in Cuba for captured gear doesn't surprise me at all. Makes you wonder what he did get back to Russia, and what was on the way, but wound up on the bottom of the Atlantic thanks to a sub. That stuff still being there after all this time does show how the blockade worked once it really got going. Trekchu: did you guys find F-4D wreckage with the tail number 67-1298? That was Kelly Ann Ray's aircraft.

trekchu

Matt Wiser said: Ivan having some kind of depot in Cuba for captured gear doesn't surprise me at all. Makes you wonder what he did get back to Russia, and what was on the way, but wound up on the bottom of the Atlantic thanks to a sub. That stuff still being there after all this time does show how the blockade worked once it really got going. Trekchu: did you guys find F-4D wreckage with the tail number 67-1298? That was Kelly Ann Ray's aircraft.
We did find it. Last I heard before I flew to Germany was that she was to be notified if her shrink approved.

Anyhow, it was a large underground depot, pre-war probably a tank storage site for the Cuban Army or something, my guess is that there was enough gear to equip two-ish short regiments with all sorts of stuff. From the records we captured we found out that very little found it's way to Ivan, they wanted to ship it after the war was won to help develop their next generation of Tanks and AT weapons. What amused me was that the Cubans kept it all in prime condition! We even took an old M-60 out of there, filled it up with Diesel and drove around for a couple of minutes. I'd wager taht even the gun could still have been fired had there been shells. Beat's me why they didn't just let it all rust away.

Matt Wiser

I'll tell her myself. Btw, she's not seeing a shrink anymore: all the nightmares and other issues went away after she joined the 419th. She's one of my best Strike Eagle pilots, and I couldn't ask for anyone better. Her basic philosophy is that the best revenge is to live well. The old memories did come back when she was called to Key West, but that night on the town made those go away. If you haven't seen the youtube video, do so. Just try and ignore the outlines of the rope burns on her arms, and the scars where they beat the crap out of her. (She's a looker, though, and there was a lot of hootin' and hollerin' when her turn in that wet T-shirt contest came) I don't know who'll the'll cast when the Showtime movie about her starts production, but after the Scott brothers' movie films here at Mountain Home and Hill, the Showtime bunch shows up. Hollywood's coming to Utah and Idaho: some wag in the cafe I go to in Mountain Home for breakfast after taking Lisa to work (her Chevy Blazer's in the shop) said there hasn't been as much movie people here in ages-a few Westerns got filmed here in the day.

Matt Wiser

Fellows, especially The Mann: Remember this bird from the first Victory Day air show? It's in its Edwards Flight Test markings, but it's a MiG-29 Fulcrum-C: the most advanced MiG-29 variant encountered in North America. I didn't run into any of these (thank heaven-they had a very good look-down/shoot-down radar), but I'm sure The Mann did. Were the Cubans flying the old Fulcrum-A models, or did they have the -Cs? Either way, against F-22s, they were dead men flying....



trekchu

Speaking of Mig-29s, the Germans captured a boat load of them in Eastern Germany and Poland. They even used them in the LUftwaffe as an interim fighter until we could replace their F-4G losses.

OOC: Sorry, but the look of this thing in Luftwaffe markings is too awesome.



Matt Wiser

Nothing wrong with using captured hardware: there were times where even the U.S. Army used captured enemy vehicles (after being repainted and special markings added). You didn't want your captured T-80 or BMP-2 getting shot up by mistake....And there was the chance of picking up ammo from the enemy. There were times when we in 335th TFS were told not to hit ammo or fuel dumps unless specifically tasked. Seems some Army units (mostly made up of former guerillas) were using captured Soviet vehicles, and needed supply dumps intact.

Well, guess who showed up at Mountain Home, with a DOD movie liasion? Meg Ryan. She's been cast in the Showtime movie about Major Kelly Ann Ray. Major Ray will be taking Ms. Ryan up this weekend from Hill AFB.

Matt Wiser

Keegan's next chapter deals more with Midland-Odessa. And his Russian sources give Sixth Army's commander and staff credit where it's due. When Sixth Army realized that it was more than a spoiling attack, they told X Corps and the ROK Expeditionary Corps to "trade as much space for time as you can." Delay, delay, delay were the orders of the day. 10th ACR (the old "Buffalo Soldier" regiment), did a masterful job of bleeding Ivan, always being careful not to get outflanked or surrounded. Soon enough, the 7th Guards Tank Army (from Beylorussia) and 20th Guards Army (GSFG), outran their supply lines, which were being heavily interdicted by both air strikes and guerilla action. Getting two VDV divisions and an air-assault brigade mauled in an operation that made Market-Garden look successful didn't help, either. Then came III Corps sending 3rd ACR and 1st Cav for the counterattack, and X Corps turning the 40th ID (California National Guard) loose. 20th GA got out of the trap mostly intact, and got south of the I-20 line in decent shape. 7th GTA, though, was badly mauled. Two tank divisions were wiped out, a third reduced to regimental size, and only one tank division, plus army-level assets, got south of the I-20. The only good thing the Russians say about Midland-Odessa from their perspective is that it forced III Corps to stretch its lines a good deal, and scotched a plan for a III Corps attack aimed at cutting D/FW off from the south (which is what Schwartzkopf wanted-help from Sixth Army). And the use of KGB Motor-Rifle Regiments in the attack was something the Soviet Army did not want, given the hostility between the Army and the KGB. Two of those Regiments were wiped out-almost to a man-and 20th Guards Army's CO said later that he ought to send a thank-you letter to the ROK Corps Commander: they got the KGB out of his hair for a while. But using the KGB sent a message that the Soviets didn't want to: units previously used for rear-area security were now being committed to the front. And that only encouraged a vibrant (some say exuberant) guerilla force to more action.

Fallout from Midland-Odessa in Moscow was severe, so the Russian Republic says: the Chief of the Soviet General Staff, the GRU Director, and the Plains TVD Commander were all "retired." (meaning: shot) It's said that the Defense Minister kept his job (and head) by offering up the Chief of the General Staff and the GRU Chief as scapegoats. And several other top officers in the planning and operations sections were also liquidated. This was only the beginning of the wave of purges that swept the Soviet military as their North American adventure went from defeat to disaster. But there was still eight more months to go until Brownsville and the end in the lower 48.

And here's another participant in that first Victory Day air show at Scott AFB: a MiG-27M (Flogger-J). It was nice to see it in proper markings for a change, and the first time a lot of guys and girls there saw one not in their gunsights.



Panzerfaust 150

Yeah, Midland-Odessa was the first real work we did as a division, mostly helping to reduce pockets from 7th GTA that III and X Corps had bypassed. That's where our first Soviet line doggie EPWs came from. Soon as we cleaned up said pockets, they moved us back down by truck and helo to Houston Intercontinental for the drive south. God, were we a caravan! We were using just about every vehicle around, from civilian panel trucks that were repainted, to Soviet BMPs! (repainted). We had HMMWVs but after the incident I described earlier in the thread, I somehow got issued a VW Thing! (still ran!) and used that for the rest of the war.

Matt Wiser

I'll bet that was a long drive: Midland-Odessa to the D/FW area is about 200 miles, then another 200 to Shreveport, and then south to I-10 (remember, the ComBloc still held the I-45 from just south of Dallas to Huntsville, north of Houston at this time), and then back to Houston. Long time in the saddle, even with no one shooting at you. It wasn't until after winter (and Dallas-Fort Worth can have some nasty weather from January to March) that Fifth Army could get ready for the push south to link up with XVIII Airborne Corps and get back to the old I-10 line. But when they cut Schwartzkopf's leash, that was a real dash south. Sometimes we'd take off, and by the time we got to the target area, the FAC would say that the bad guys had already ran off, and let us go after opportunity targets (usually said bad guys who were in retreat). We never got to the Houston area, but Waco last week in March, then Austin, Bryan/College Station, and finally, San Antonio first week in June, supporting III Corps all the way.

Anyone notice that once we were firmly headed to the I-10 line, that some of the Russians (but not Cubans or Mexicans) saw the handwriting on the wall? I remember flying a mission in support of a 1st Cav brigade NE of Austin, a good-sized town called Rockdale; somebody must've seen us, because the Russians there laid out a white flag on the ground so that we could see it as we rolled in. I couldn't believe it, Lisa saw it from the backseat and she couldn't either, even on the Pave Spike pod. Seems these guys were Category III (26th MRD, I believe), and they had just had enough. Not to mention having old equipment: T-55s, BTR-60s instead of BMPs, towed artillery, etc. I called in the report of the white flag, and 1st Cav's 3rd Brigade sent a battalion in. A whole Soviet MRD gave up to a mech infantry battalion. Formal surrender on the steps of the county courthouse, flag raising, the works. Too bad that didn't happen more often....Their comrades a few miles further south, though, ate the Rockeye CBUs and laser-guided bombs we were packing that morning.

Well, the first of the movie crews arrived in Mountain Home today, so those of us in the 419th supporting the filming are now officially on Temporary Active Duty. They've got a C-123 rigged up as a camera bird, and there'll be some practice flying tomorrow, for them and us, to get things rolling for the air-to-air filming. Some ferry pilots came in, with six F-4Es to use in the Scott brothers' movie, and in the Showtime biopic of Major Ray. (She flew a D, but a minor nit...) Mountain Home's museum will get one of the Phantoms when all the filming's done, the University of Utah will get another, along with BYU, Utah State, and the University of Idaho. Since Hill AFB's museum has several Phantoms, the last one (thanks to the AF and a special act of Congress authorizing jet warbirds)....well, looks like I have something to fly on weekends when I'm not a Strike Eagle driver. Eat your heart out, The Mann. I got my Phantom. And there's quite a few maintenance folks in 419 who remember the F-4, still have their manuals, and will be happy to do the maintenance work. One Master Sgt. told me that he'd take vacation time from his civilian job, just to work on an F-4 again.

Matt Wiser

Fellows, here's another tame MiG from the war: Again, it's an Edwards flight test bird, with this one a MiG-23. This one was ex-Soviet, found on the ramp at Tulsa IAP during Phase I of PRAIRIE FIRE.

Well, Meg Ryan had her flight today, with Major Ray behind the stick. Ms. Ryan's reaction was like a kid on a roller coaster, because when they landed at Hill, Meg asked the Major "Can we do it once more? Because it was FUN!" They had a long talk in the O Club afterwards, going over Major Ray's experiences as a POW in Cuba, and how she's doing now. Now Meg has to go through an unclassified version of SERE that the DOD movie liasion people reccommended, so that she gets the "feel" for being a POW. After the still-untitled Scott brothers' movie wraps up here, then the Showtime crew comes.

[lordroel]

From page 46

Chuck Mandus

Matt Wiser said: Anyone call in with stories from that Raven Rock business? From Ivan's POV, that was a nasty way to lose a Spetsnatz battalion. Dropping on the wrong DZs, finding out the area's more heavily defended than they expected, and having no real means of extraction. Not to mention armed locals taking potshots at them while they're in their chutes, and harassing Ivan at every opportunity.

Tape Transcript of Caller

Subject: Soviet Spetnaz attack at Site R (“Raven Rock”) during World War III

(Bumper music plays prior to host cuing into the program stream – “Strange Days” by The Doors)

Music fades out…..

C. Mandus (aka “Host:”): Good evening to all of you in radioland, this is another hour’s edition of Talkland at Night where we discuss things like current events, the paranormal and just about anything you’d like to talk about. Last hour’s guest, Dr. Corso, claimed that we used technology that we harvested from Roswell to fight the Soviets during World War III and I’m sure you want to talk about it since I promised open lines for the rest of the night. However, I must break that promise, my first open line caller has a story to tell and it is a doozie. It is about the Soviet attack on Site R, Raven Rock, where it is one of our Presidential shelters in case of nuclear attack. We will talk with this mysterious person after these messages.

Bumper Music: “Ventura Highway” by America plays and then fades out………

Commercial: This is Winky’s, Western Pennsylvania’s and Eastern Ohio’s, along with the Western Panhandle of West Virginia’s favorite food restaurant with the new special, the Super Big Wink! One half pound of juicy Angus burger with dripping cheese, ummm hummm. Served with large fries and a Coke, it will make the best meal of your day. Bring the kids in for our Young American’s meal with the Winky Junior, small fries and drink plus in each meal, there is a toy from the upcoming “Red Dawn” Movie about the early days of World War III. Enter our contest and win free tickets to a special screening when the movie comes out in two weeks. Winky’s, “makes you happy to be hungry.”

Oh, don’t forget, the newest Winky’s will be opening up in Wilmerding, so now “there IS a Winky’s in Wilmerding.

(AH Note: Winky’s was a local, Pittsburgh based food chain that folded in 1985, in this world, I handwaved them in.)

Bumper Music: “Who Do You Think You Are?” by Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods

Music fades out…….

Host: OK, here at Talkland at Night, we have a mysterious caller who claims he was a Marine officer at Site R, Raven Rock, during the time the Spetnaz forces, Soviet Special Forces if you will, tried a raid to kill our President and top officials during World War III. He will only identify himself as “Falcon.” He is also using a voice changer to conceal his real voice. OK, Falcon, please bear with me, I have to ask the basic questions first, were you truly there when the attack happened?

Falcon: Yes I was, I was a 1st Leutenant with the Marine guards there, I worked with security.

Host: Security, yes, usually the Marine handled security at these facilities. How long were you there, what years did you serve there, Falcon?

Falcon: I can’t really say the exact time, someone might identify me, but say early 1980’s to sometime after World War III hostilities ended.

Host: Hmmmm, Was the President there at the time?

Falcon: Yes, although he did move about to other shelters and bases.

Host: I understand Raven Rock is a huge underground complex, how big is it?

Falcon: Very big, it could rival Cheyenne Mountain, at least that’s one of the few Air Force personnel that were there told me. We could actually survive for years without stepping outside if we have to.

Host: The ultimate shelter, I’m sure many of us wish we could have one. So let’s cut to the chase, what exactly happened when the Soviets attacked with Spetnaz?

Falcon: Well, we assumed they were here for some time, mingling with our population and smuggling their arms with them or they had caches, it could be either, things were in confusion and a total state of flux during those times.

Host: Yeah, I know, a lot of resistance groups I’ve talked with from back then, the main problems they had was telling Russians from Americans, “they look like us” they always told me. (Host snickers)

Falcon: (Laughs) True, until they open their mouths, but many Spetnaz had training in their “Chicago School” to talk like Americans so they can blend in. We will get to that later in the story.

Host: OK, so how did the attack go over?

Falcon: There was about 50 of them, they tried to sneak in by cutting through the fences, they did manager to cut their way through but with the combination of sensors and the geese we had patrolling in the area, they gave themselves away.

Host: I’ve heard of that, using geese as a way to detect intruders. They are very noisy and mean, I’ve been bitten a few times as a kid, they are nasty critters.

Falcon: Yes they can be. (laughs) NATO started using them at their bases too. At least they only ask for food for their keep but they crap everywhere.

Host: I know, I also slipped in goose crap as a kid, was the butt of jokes for a while.

Falcon: Well, that would be humiliating but in comparison to the Spetnaz attackers, that was nothing. They engaged in a 10 minute firefight with our forces before giving up, we had them surrounded in no time.

Host: I’ve heard rumors the attack was so inept but a 10 minute firefight? That really is bad. Casualties?

Falcon: The Soviets or Marines lost no one, in a way, it was like the old “A-Team” TV series just prior to the war, we all fired but no one hit anything. I guess they kept their heads down until they fired back. Then we heard arguing over on their side and then the White Flag of surrender. There was one casualty though, a Soviet Sargeant slipped in some goose poop and broke his leg.

Host: (laughs hard) I bet that hurt, not only his leg but his ego. They surrendered like that?! Why?!

Falcon: Well from later interrogations, the arguing was between their commander, XO and the Zampolit, the Zampolit is their political officer, make sure they adhere to the orders of the Soviet command as well as stick to the Communist ideals. Well, Zampolit told them to charge, they said, “no” they will just get killed so they argued with him and then with a little help from their non-comms, tied him up and then surrendered.

Host: Wow, just like that?

Falcon: Yes, in fact they were no trouble at all, except for the Zampolit. As long as they told us what we wanted to know, really, they volunteered a lot of info. Going on such a mission with little support, they thought the Soviet Union screwed them royally. They love their country but detested the trouble they got them and the world into. The Zampolit was stubborn, we didn’t torture him, but his fellow soldiers kept beating him up until we had to put him in solitary for his protection. In fact, they were model prisoners, they enjoyed our food, TV and music.

Host: Wow, I’ve heard stories like that but their special forces? I guess like anyone else, they got sick and tired of the whole mess.

Falcon: Yeah, they did.

Host: Where are they now?

Falcon: They stayed here, all of them, they are working in our country like you, me and the rest of Americans and Soviet POW’s who elected to stay here. The Zampolit wanted to go home so after the war, he was sent back home.

Host: Yeah, I know a few POW’s myself, in fact one brought his baby sister over, she’s my wife now.

Falcon: Well, you’re not the only one, the Russian mail order brides is a huge market now although I’m sure in your case, you married our of love.

Host: We did, he runs a garage, fixes my cars when I can’t or don’t have time, he brought her over on a regular visa actually.

Falcon: Yeah, true, many just want to get out of there, I hear it is a Hell hole in some places, but I don’t know, I haven’t been there. I have to go, I don’t want to be traced or anything but I promise to be on your show again soon, I will contact you again, soon.

Host: OK, I hope by then you’ll take callers’ questions as well. You take care and I wonder why so much of this is secret, it would make an interesting movie.

Falcon: Yeah, next time I’m on, I’ll take questions and go into even more detail. I gotta go so I’ll say goodbye and we will talk again.

Host: Goodbye and I wish you all the luck, I hope we can talk again. (Phone clicks) Well folks, there it is, the basic story of what happened, or allegedly happened at Raven Rock. Now we will go to commercial break…..

Bumper Music: “Answering Machine” by Rupert Holmes

Matt Wiser

Nice transcript, Chuck. Apparently this guy was some ways away from where that battalion was dropped in-they hit the wrong DZ, remember? Those guys had to be very deep cover GRU types, held for some specific mission profiles, and hitting Raven Rock was one of 'em. Anything on that old fellow who flew that Sopwith Camel? The AF has plans for him at the Victory Day Air Show at Scott AFB. Hope he doesn't mind flying a C-20 Gulfstream with his family, and his Camel tucked nice and neat inside a C-17, and VIP guest quarters.

trekchu

OOC: *claps hands furiously*

shermpotter

Gang:

I just discovered this little trip down memory lane. Somebody mentioned "tank girls" in the 1st CavDiv. Yep, I had some in the battalion I served in. I commanded Bravo Company, 3-66th Armored. My third platoon was 4/5 women. You didn't want to cross these ladies, and they were very good at what they did. Many started out in 'non-combat' roles, but their knowledge of the vehicles led to them getting combat jobs about a week or so in (unofficially, of course). Third platoon was our largest grouping of women, but they were spread throughout the division.

My story is also interesting for another reason. I was assigned to the Tiger Brigade (2d of the 2d ArmDiv). I was a liaison officer and was helping clear out our storage facilities as we drew back to CONUS. I was on the last ship out of Bremerhaven, carrying POMCUS and Tiger vehicles and equipment on a big Dutch RO/RO. We got sent to Savannah and off loaded there for retransitting to Fort Stewart. Talk about a mess! A real cluster if you know what I mean. This was about four months before the balloon went up. Most of us knew that something was brewing, but who would have though Ivan had the cojones to INVADE the USA?!?!?!?

Hard to believe what we went through and that it was 25 years ago!! Been some tough times and I have seen some really nasty shit, let me tell you. I will try to get some notes together and reminisce here with you all!

-Thomas Potter, Lieutenant General USA(Ret)

Matt Wiser

Glad to see someone from 2nd Armored: they got split off from III Corps somehow (the books dealing with the debacle on the I-10 line don't really explain how, but 1st Cav and most of the Corps troops wound up getting pushed into New Mexico, where they stayed until PRAIRIE FIRE got going in the Spring of '87. I've read that one brigade from 2nd AD was virtually wiped out on the Red River (TX-OK State line), and you guys somehow wound up in Missouri for rebuilding.

Well, the movie filming starts tomorrow, with two flights scheduled. The guys flying the C-123 camera plane are ex-Air Force, so they know the deal. And the title of the movie based on the 335th's story is now official: Wings of the Phantom. The Special Effects should be great; besides the air-to-air and air-to-ground filming, the CGI people should do a good job. They showed us the storyboards, and the crew has high hopes for how the finished product will come out. We had quite a bit of flying over the weekend and today, getting our F-4 legs back. A lot of the younger pilots, WSOs, and airmen had never seen F-4s flying, so they got a free air show as the Phantoms took to the sky out of Mountain Home. Even the Singapore AF guys, who have their F-15E conversion unit here, were impressed with those old warbirds, and they wished that their government had bought F-4s back in the '70s.

Trekchu: you might want to know that Major Ray got a piece of her Phantom from Cuba: some of the people who cleaned out the storage area cut the serial number off the tail and sent it to her. It goes into the Hill Aerospace Museum next week.

shermpotter

2d Armored

Gang:

Well, the reason why Tiger Brigade was involved in the antics in and around the Great White North was rather simple. Remember I said it was a cluster at Fort Stewart? Not nearly enough bunk space or room for the units there. After ten days we were ordered to pack up and move to Camp (now Fort) McCoy in Wisconsin. Plenty of room there. So we had just settled in there and were getting training regimes set up with the Wisky Guard units went the balloon went up. Tiger Brigade had been used to being a relatively autonomous unit as the rest of 2d ArmDiv was back in the states. As a mattter of fact, 2d ArmDiv stood up a replacement 2d Brigade to replace us after the war started.

The war was eventful, we were the steel tip for a great many ops. We had M60A3TTS to start with, and some of our crews scavenged ComBloc wrecks and had their maintenance wonks put Soviet ERA on our MBT's. Better than nothing until we got M1's in 1985. We had the long rod penetrator shells for our 105's and they did work against Ivan's armor.

I was wounded three times, only one very seriously when I took a rifle bullet through my right arm. Lucky it was a ricochet... Taught me a lot about standing up in my hatch in unsecured terrain!! I had graduated from the Point in 1979. Ten years later I was a bird colonel. I saw a lot of good people die, and many more get wounded. Thankfully, we made the ComBloc pay for those lives dearly!

Matt Wiser

Fighting just north of the U.S-Canadian border must've been no fun at all. In Winter, the weather can be just as dangerous an opponent as the enemy! Any cases of people being frozen to their tanks or APCs? Even the Russians, with their experience of winter warfare, found things frightful at times. You must've been east of the Rockies: North of the Montana or North Dakota border? 'Cause they never did get to the actual border itself. (running out of gas in the middle of the attack can cause that to happen...)

Lurksalot

Anyone think Letterman would've replaced Carson after Johny retired? Letterman's show seemed to be catching on before the end.

Matt Wiser

If Letterman hadn't been in NYC when the Manhattan bomb went off, probably. But Jay Leno did a good job subbing for Johnny, and he did do more than his share of USO visits. Bob Hope, of course, did his usual USO tours: even in the bad days of November-December '85, he put together a USO show for the Sixth Army in New Mexico and parts of Colorado. (being on an E&E, I missed it). It was much better organized in December '86 and '87, going all over the front lines from the Pacific NW to Lousiana. He stopped at Sheppard AFB during PRAIRIE FIRE II; even though it was meant to be a refueling stop, before going down to New Orleans, he and his troupe did a pick-up show for us and the Marine air. Bob fully deserved his title of "honorary veteran" for all he did for GIs in WW II, Korea, Vietnam, the Cold War, and World War III. I doubt anyone here would disagree. Did anyone here catch the Bob Hope show when it came to your AO?

Snowman23

Yeah, I caught hope while on Shore Leave in San Fransisco. He did a show right after the navies retreat from Pearl Harbor for us, because our morale was rock bottom. He helped a lot.

Matt Wiser

When PACFLT was in SF after that botched VDV drop on Pearl? I'll bet that was the first time since Korea that San Francisco actually cheered the Navy arriving in wartime. I was home in Central CA on a two week leave after my E&E when the Pacific Fleet sailed into SF Bay. Practically every TV station in Northern and Central California covered that (and gave counter-intelligence people ulcers). Seeing three carriers, along with the battleship Iowa and the heavy cruiser Des Moines was an impressive sight on TV. Their arrival was covered live. Their departures back to the war zone were not. But yeah, Bob Hope always gave a good show. Even the impromptou one at Sheppard: he had the Go-Gos, Eddie Mony, and for comedy, Jay Leno. And the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders (the Cowboys played in Phoenix for the duration of the war, remember) visited the nearby MASH to cheer up the wounded. And two weeks later, I was at D/FW waiting for a combat repair team to come and change out a damaged engine, and he was there. This time, Lisa and I caught the full show. Kenny Rodgers was there, along with Stevie Nicks. And they had both Racquel Welch and Brooke Shields. (Lisa told me not to look too much) And that show was a blast! (Literally-someone shot an SS-21 missile with a HE warhead, and it landed a couple miles away just after the show ended)

One of Keegan's Russian sources had a collection of photos from the early days of the invasion: this was a familiar sight in Texas and New Mexico after the I-10 line was broken. BMP-2s leading a Motor-Rifle Regiment north.



Matt Wiser

Keegan's next chapter deals with the Naval War: and it was a nasty one at that. Even with the exiled Royal Navy, the Royal Australian Navy, the Canadian Naval Command, and assistance from the ROKs, the Taiwanese, and the JMSDF, getting supplies such as oil, raw materials, food, as well as war materiel from overseas kept the U.S. Navy very busy. Several naval battles, including one we've talked about here, can best be described as "knife fights in telephone booths." While the Soviet Navy was determined, it never did accomplish its mission of cutting the U.S. off from the rest of the world, and gaining Naval superiority in both the North Pacific and North Atlantic. He notes a battle in the North Pacific, halfway between Alaska and Midway Island, where both Navies, through a combination of bad weather, emissions control, and just plain bad luck, got very close together. (Snowman, this is your big fight). The U.S. Navy lost the carrier Independence, two cruisers, several destroyers and frigates, but the carriers Carl Vinson and Enterprise and their battle groups arrived in time to give the surviving ships from the Independence group time to get away. He also notes how the USN sub force in both the Atlantic and Pacific did its best to cut off Soviet and other ComBloc Forces from their supplies, with the campaign against Soviet shipping bound for Alaska being the most effective. And the sub force helped out in other ways: provding intelligence by tapping Soviet communications cables (OOC: the real-life IVY BELLS program), landing SEAL teams in both occupied and Soviet/Cuban/Mexican territory to conduct raids and to gather intelligence, and by firing Tomahawk cruise missiles with conventional warheads against targets in the USSR. The two special-operations boats did valuable work in the Pacific Northwest, along the Soviet Far East, and in both Cuban and Gulf Coast waters. And many of their missions are still classified today. The Silent Service certainly lives up to its reputation.

You guys might remember this picture-it's also from the early days of the invasion: A photographer for UPI hired a civilian chopper to take him over West Texas, after the I-10 line was broken, and he got some photos of a Cuban tank regiment engaging a rear guard north of Pecos, Texas. This is one of those pics, which appeared in not only Stars and Stripes, but USA Today, the L.A. Times, and many other papers.



trekchu

I still wonder which fool authorized the VDV raid on Pearl. To think we'd fall for that one twice.....

Matt Wiser

You're not the only one: didn't Blackwave say that some believed that it was a way to get rid of VDV reservists who'd shown some "Anti-Soviet" tendencies? The only ones satisfied with the raid on Pearl were probably the Soviet Navy: they did sink Midway and the assault carrier Iwo Jima as they tried to get away from the raid. But two of the four subs involved didn't come back, either.

TheMann

That was the first time, Matt. The second time four of their planes got hit by SM-2s from the Navy ships and never got anywhere near Pearl, and a bunch of others got shot down by fighters based in Hawaii. I can't believe they tried that twice - it was suicide the first time, what the hell were they thinking?

Snowman23

TheMann said: That was the first time, Matt. The second time four of their planes got hit by SM-2s from the Navy ships and never got anywhere near Pearl, and a bunch of others got shot down by fighters based in Hawaii. I can't believe they tried that twice - it was suicide the first time, what the hell were they thinking?

Thought they could catch us off guard I guess, by then then war was decisively against them....

TheMann

Snowman23 said: Thought they could catch us off guard I guess, by then then war was decisively against them....

That don't make it any less stupid as far as I can see. It was a suicide mission, and they lost a supercarrier, Mother Russia, in the process.

Did anybody catch that Discovery Channel special about Allied Submarine Forces in WWIII? Apparently, boomers got TWO Soviet flagship vessels on their own, and Boomers aren't supposed to go into Combat! Apparently, the SSNs pretty much focused on destroying ASW ships and their Russian counterparts, and the Brits smuggled the designs for their supercavitating torpedoes out when the British military bugged out on the Lemmings in London. We got lotsa subs that way, they say.

Matt Wiser

Building a new production line for the Spearfish torpedo must've been some effort. The boomers were still on nuclear alert, IIRC. But that didn't mean not taking any shots if someone Red came their way. The two converted boomers used for SEAL ops, though, were the only such subs with a hunting license, however. I'm only a third of the way through the Keegan chapter on the Naval War: all that flying we're doing for the movie production kinda gets in the way of reading. We've had two flights a day, plus brief and debrief. Haven't had this much of a rush since my last combat time. At least 20th Century Fox is paying for all the fuel and other expenses....

The Mann: if you've seen the newspaper pics or TV of Major Kelly Ann Ray, you'll see why Showtime cast Meg Ryan in her role. Though I would've preferred Demi Moore, but beggars can't be choosers. We're still doing all the flying for her movie here, but thanks to CGI, they'll use footage of Cuba shot recently (they're glad they can do that now) and blend in the F-4s. There was talk of filming some in Cuba itself, but Major Ray (who's going to be an on-set technical advisor) vetoed that. So they'll film some in Florida, and the rest in a studio in Hollywood. Meg's halfway through her SERE preparation.....I wonder how she enjoys catching bugs (and eating them)? She should be entering the survival in captivity phase right about now.

One of the older ships in the Navy that got reactivated was the destroyer Turner Joy, the last of the Forrest Sherman class destroyers. She still had her three 5-inch guns, and Keegan does give her some time, when he talks about the amphib on Seattle. That destroyer hid in some of the San Juan Islands, waited for the air strikes to start, and then came out, 5-inchers and two twin 3-inch 50s blazing. She came back to Bremerton Navy Yard without a scratch, but her 5-inch barrels needed replacing, along with the three-inch mounts. One of the Ivan-Rogov class amphibs, two Alligator-class LSTs, and a Krivak-class frigate fell victim to Turner Joy's guns. Not bad shootin'.

Chuck Mandus

Nice transcript, Chuck. Apparently this guy was some ways away from where that battalion was dropped in-they hit the wrong DZ, remember? Those guys had to be very deep cover GRU types, held for some specific mission profiles, and hitting Raven Rock was one of 'em. Anything on that old fellow who flew that Sopwith Camel? The AF has plans for him at the Victory Day Air Show at Scott AFB. Hope he doesn't mind flying a C-20 Gulfstream with his family, and his Camel tucked nice and neat inside a C-17, and VIP guest quarters.

Well, I'll have to pull some strings and see what is going on with the Sopwith Camel as well as the Soviets hitting the wrong DZ.

Chuck Mandus

Matt Wiser said: If Letterman hadn't been in NYC when the Manhattan bomb went off, probably. But Jay Leno did a good job subbing for Johnny, and he did do more than his share of USO visits. Bob Hope, of course, did his usual USO tours: even in the bad days of November-December '85, he put together a USO show for the Sixth Army in New Mexico and parts of Colorado. (being on an E&E, I missed it). It was much better organized in December '86 and '87, going all over the front lines from the Pacific NW to Lousiana. He stopped at Sheppard AFB during PRAIRIE FIRE II; even though it was meant to be a refueling stop, before going down to New Orleans, he and his troupe did a pick-up show for us and the Marine air. Bob fully deserved his title of "honorary veteran" for all he did for GIs in WW II, Korea, Vietnam, the Cold War, and World War III. I doubt anyone here would disagree. Did anyone here catch the Bob Hope show when it came to your AO?

Yeah, I wonder that myself, but I don't think so, my mother always said Letterman was too crass and I would have to agree with her. No one can be like Johnny Carson but Leno did a good job. I heard after the war, Paul Shaffer did have a successful music career, he was in Canada visiting his parents at the time of the Manhattan Bomb IIRC.

[lordroel]

From page 47

Matt Wiser

Didn't Shaffer wind up in L.A. for a while? I remember him being on Arsenio Hall's show on Fox in the early '90s. Thank Heaven the D.C. reconstruction job is almost done; then the final job: Manhattan. Oh, Staten Island, Newark, the Bronx, and that part of Queens within the blast zone are doing fine, but getting Manhattan cleared and rebuilt is going to be a big job.

The Mann and Panzerfaust: did either of you ever catch Bob Hope's show? And the Mann: you'd better try getting that A-7 you want for your friend: I have dibs on one of the F-4s being used for the filming when that's done. The AF relented, and Congress passed a law allowing for jet warbirds after they've been "demilitarized". Which means the gun will be a training replica, the Sparrow and Sidewinder missiles will also be training rounds, and the weapons-control equipment will be removed. But the radar will still be in working order. I suggest you get down to AMARC when you've got leave and find that A-7 you talked about earlier.

TheMann

Matt Wiser said: Building a new production line for the Spearfish torpedo must've been some effort. The boomers were still on nuclear alert, IIRC.

As In understand it, they made the first few by hand while they got the hang of building them. But the British engineers who came with them were rather helpful, apparently. The Discovery special talked specifically about the Spearfish, and what it meant for the US Navy's Submarine fleet.

The boomers were on nuclear alert, but they still ran into Soviet ships, and the boomer drivers, apparently, figured if they tried evasive action they'd get found, so why bother trying to go around? The Ohios in particular were black holes, even our new Seawolf class subs, which are designed to hunt Russian boomers, can't find the Ohio class subs. As a result, a bunch of the boomers got kills, USS Michigan got an aircraft carrier, Ohio got a Yankee class herself, supposedly from just 3500 yards. That's a brave Boomer pilot there.

Matt Wiser said: But that didn't mean not taking any shots if someone Red came their way. The two converted boomers used for SEAL ops, though, were the only such subs with a hunting license, however.

OOC: That didn't happen until well after the Cold War (1992 and 1993 for Kamehameha and James K. Polk, but what the heck, for the sake of argument, we'll say its been done in 1986-87.)

And as I seem to recall, those two converted boomers were both used in the raid on Vladivostok. Perhaps our friend from USS Tarawa can help me with that, am I right?

Matt Wiser said: I'm only a third of the way through the Keegan chapter on the Naval War: all that flying we're doing for the movie production kinda gets in the way of reading. We've had two flights a day, plus brief and debrief. Haven't had this much of a rush since my last combat time. At least 20th Century Fox is paying for all the fuel and other expenses....

I envy you, I really, really do. I love having my Raptors, but you get to be in a movie, whereas I am just consulting and my character is playing a smaller role. It'll still be awesome to tell my grandkids about, that's for sure. :cool: Hoes does that F-4 fly compared to the Strike Eagle? I know when I tried out a Hornet for the first time, it was just as I remember it, a wickedly maneuverable thing. Slower than the Raptor, but just as easy to fly.

Matt Wiser said: ↑The Mann: if you've seen the newspaper pics or TV of Major Kelly Ann Ray, you'll see why Showtime cast Meg Ryan in her role. Though I would've preferred Demi Moore, but beggars can't be choosers. We're still doing all the flying for her movie here, but thanks to CGI, they'll use footage of Cuba shot recently (they're glad they can do that now) and blend in the F-4s. There was talk of filming some in Cuba itself, but Major Ray (who's going to be an on-set technical advisor) vetoed that. So they'll film some in Florida, and the rest in a studio in Hollywood. Meg's halfway through her SERE preparation.....I wonder how she enjoys catching bugs (and eating them)? She should be entering the survival in captivity phase right about now.

I hope she can handle it. A lot of tough people I'm sure can't. I have seen the pics of Major Ray, and I agree with you on Demi Moore, she looks closer to Major Ray anyways. I figure if they want to film over the tropics, they could do it over the Yucatan or Jamaica or something of that nature. If you're in my neighborhood on filming, I think me and the base commander can let them in for a tour, and I'll show 'em my F-22.

Matt Wiser said: One of the older ships in the Navy that got reactivated was the destroyer Turner Joy, the last of the Forrest Sherman class destroyers. She still had her three 5-inch guns, and Keegan does give her some time, when he talks about the amphib on Seattle. That destroyer hid in some of the San Juan Islands, waited for the air strikes to start, and then came out, 5-inchers and two twin 3-inch 50s blazing. She came back to Bremerton Navy Yard without a scratch, but her 5-inch barrels needed replacing, along with the three-inch mounts. One of the Ivan-Rogov class amphibs, two Alligator-class LSTs, and a Krivak-class frigate fell victim to Turner Joy's guns. Not bad shootin'.

I seem to recall that most of the Forrest Shermans got reactivated and returned to service (OOC: They were all decommissioned in 1982-83, and they all still existed in late 1986, Barry woulda been destroyed by the Nuke that hit Washington), but Turner Joy got the most attention because of her exploits in Puget Sound. That disaster shoulda taught them that just because we don't have SAM batteries everywhere doesn't mean we aren't prepared for incoming invaders.

I think the better story might be USS Chicago. A WWII heavy cruiser that became a WWIII guided missile cruiser. For a while, there were two USS Chicagos, kinda a problem when they operated with the same battle groups, as apparently they did once.

TheMann

Matt Wiser said: and the Mann: you'd better try getting that A-7 you want for your friend: I have dibs on one of the F-4s being used for the filming when that's done. The AF relented, and Congress passed a law allowing for jet warbirds after they've been "demilitarized". Which means the gun will be a training replica, the Sparrow and Sidewinder missiles will also be training rounds, and the weapons-control equipment will be removed. But the radar will still be in working order. I suggest you get down to AMARC when you've got leave and find that A-7 you talked about earlier.

I've already been there and done it. I have an A-7 on order for him and a ex-French Navy F-8 on order for me at AMARC.

trekchu

TheMann said: I've already been there and done it. I have an A-7 on order for him and a ex-French Navy F-8 on order for me at AMARC.

Back from Germany. While my wife took care of things with her father, I was allowed to visit the Rheinmetall factory where they are making these guns.... When they heard I was a vet, they showed me around the factory.

And btw, we are moving to Kentucky along with the Company. So from 2010 onwards you might get to see an early model M1 with a retrofitted but demilitarized 120mm gun driving around there, because that law also extends to tanks. My wife wasn't enthousiastic, but she understands.

Matt Wiser

Actually, there were two Ethan-Allen class boats used before the Big K and the Polk: Sam Houston and John Marshall. (Sam Houston in Pacific Fleet, John Marshall in Atlantic Fleet) A lot of the operations those four special ops boats did are still classified today: the Silent Service holds its secrets pretty well. But there's enough in the public domain to know what they did: intelligence-gathering, SEAL insertion/extraction, etc. And of course, lopping off the occasional Red that came their way. Kamehameha joined Sam Houston in PACFLT, while James K. Polk went to the Atlantic Fleet. For the former two, the Soviet Far East, North Korea, Alaska, and the coast of British Columbia were familiar waters, while the other two prowled the Gulf of Mexico, Cuba, Nicaragua, and the Kola Peninsula. Don't be surprised if the only American combat boots on the ground in Mother Russia turned out to be SEALs. It's rumored that the SEALs tried to extract the two escapees featured in the book and movie Open Water, but nothing's been offically acknowledged, well, publicly, anyway.

The Mann: Compared to the Strike Eagle, the F-4 is a generation behind. Lots of old-style instrumentation, controls everywhere (be glad the folks at McAir put the HOTAS controls in the original Eagle and the Strike Eagle), though ours were refitted with a HUD thanks to the Japanese. Below 350 knots, the F-4 handles like a Peterbuilt truck. Past Mach 1, it flies like Superman. About the only problems are size (you can see it coming) and those J-79 engines that put out a lot of smoke. But we did have the ARN-101 upgrade, with digital avionics, Pave Spike or Pave Tack capability, AIM-9Ls, extra RWRs and ECM, etc. Wish they'd upgraded the radar, too, so we'd be AIM-120 capable, but that didn't happen.

I had some FAA twerp come by the other day, to handle how my warbird will be treated. This little weasel seemed put off by the fact that there's going to be 1960s and 70s fast-jet warbirds flying around, and from his tone, this jerk didn't like it at all. He tried to get me to deactivate the ejection seats, even though the law says you can keep 'em active, for pete's sake. He did say there'd be no supersonic flight unless in appropriate airspace, minimum cruise altitude of 5,000 feet, no mock ACM unless at an airshow or in approved airspace, and so on. He did approve my registration number: NF4E515; the tail number of the plane I was shot down in was 71-0515, and this warbird will be so marked, with one exception: all of my kills will be painted on the aircraft, with the victim's type, date, and weapon used. After he left, I called his supervisor to complain about his attitude, and the guy said "You're not the first. Everyone he deals with complains about him." I should've gone to the FAA office in Vegas instead of Salt Lake: they said their inspector would've been much more positive and understanding (read: he's a vet).

Panzerfaust 150

Hey all,
Been busy with classes, good bunch of folks all around. My courses more resemble round table discussions about specific topics. Most of the guys here are up for Squadron Command or SIO slots, so like I said, mature, reasoned folks, many with combat experience. Me, I am more moderator than instructor. But, I do have my moments.....

As for the USO. I really didn't get a chance. We were busy a lot. EPWs would come in at ALL hours and when you had time sensitive intell to collect, it was get it or somebody dies. I did see a USO show after the war in Reno, nice little number with Cyndi Lauper of all things? She's really parleyed a career post war. I think a brother of hers was killed in Seacouver during the fighting so she's always done USO tours gratis.

As for me getting any mementos...well, we do have a HMMWV from our motor pool as one of our two cars. Hey, it ran and the government was getting rid of a few at the time. So, I paid I think $50 at the time and it's ran damn well for the last 20 years...though it's gotten a bit finicky about the quality of the motor oil. Now that I work at Maxwell, it's easy to get maintenance done.
Last edited: Aug 18, 2009

Matt Wiser

At least you didn't have to deal with some twerp who didn't like the fact that you've been allowed to have a memento and made no bones about it. That FAA inspector from Salt Lake is too young to have been in the military, so he's a proper bureaucrat. Ugh. I should've flown down to Vegas and had their people take over. Hopefully, some Marine getting his or her old A-4 or F-4 will teach this little weasel a lesson.

The maintenance guys at Maxwell are pretty good. Even though I was a student, one sergeant noticed the bullet holes in my Jeep Grand Cherokee, and asked how I got 'em. After telling him about the naked CSP gal, he laughed and said "drive over to the motor pool, and tell them Sgt. Clark sent you. They'll patch her up." Sure enough, they did. We've had that Jeep for 20+ years, and she's still truckin'. Lisa and I do go off-roading every once in a while, too. We did have a tryst interrupted by one of the Singapore AF F-15Es roaring down the river canyon where we were parked, though....Sound of freedom, as the bumper sticker says.

Panzerfaust, how'd you guys handle the drive from Midland-Odessa all the way back to Houston, with the I-45 corridor still hostile territory? That drive via D/FW, Shreveport, and Lake Charles must've been long and boring. (600+ miles, I believe). I take it there were signs on the road "watch for unexploded bombs" and "Danger: this road patrolled by MiGs"?

TheMann

Panzerfaust 150 said: As for me getting any momentous...well, we do have a HMMWV from our motor pool as one of our two cars. Hey, it ran and the government was getting rid of a few at the time. So, I paid I think $50 at the time and it's ran damn well for the last 20 years...though it's gotten a bit finicky about the quality of the motor oil. Now that I work at Maxwell, it's easy to get maintenance done.

My brother did that, too, but he then spent 20 grand making into something worth driving on the street - new drivetrain, interior and paint, for starters. He loves it, though, so I'm not gonna begrudge him that. Me, I have a Nissan Skyline I brought home from when I was stationed in Japan post-war, plus a big Jeep Grand Cherokee and my trusty Buell motorcycle.

AMARC called me today wanting to know when I could get over to get the A-7 I ordered. The base commander told me to go when after my unit's inspection, which is next week. A civil airport near here has a hangar reserved for me, and that's where my Corsair II is gonna go. I'll have to fly it up to the Pacific NW one day, though, because I promised my buddy a ride in it. Apparently, the FAA guys in Miami are pretty reasonable, because there is a bunch of vets down here, and the local civil airports are full of old warbirds. An ex-Marine in Fort Launderdale has a Harrier, apparently. I'll believe that when I see it.

Matt Wiser

The guy in charge of the General Aviation side at SLC International says I can use a hangar there, for "nominal rent" (read: cheap). He's ex-USAF, and so as long as Lisa's stationed at Mountain Home, and I'm at Hill, my Rhino has a home. I was at the FAA office today, finalizing the paperwork, and there was a different inspector there: much more friendly and outgoing, and willing to listen to you whenever you raised an issue. I asked the supervisor what happened to the little weasel who was originally in charge of my case, and he said that said little man in question crossed someone the wrong way, and he's been reassigned. (hint: word got back that he was poorly treating someone with a lawfully authorized jet warbird, and TPTB in the FAA didn't like that) Once the movie projects are done, the AF paperwork gets taken care of, the plane gets demilitarized, and it's mine. And AMARC just sent a truckload of spare parts, including two engines. Awful nice of 'em.

I managed to get some more of Keegan done today, as we had some T-Storms, and thus no flying. He does mention the submarine war, with the Russians trying to interdict the various convoys to and from the East and West Coasts, and not doing a good job of it. Even though the French and Italians were officially neutral, their navies did pass sub sighting reports to the Sixth Fleet as it escorted convoys from the PG and Israel. How? Simple: they made their reports to their shore bases in the clear, and in English. Sixth Fleet's ASW forces could then attack the contact if it threatened a convoy. The Soviet Navy's efforts in the Pacific were laughable, he writes. Only one attempt at going after an Australia-San Francisco convoy, and that one failed miserably. Even the convoys from Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan mostly, but not always, had free rides.

Has anyone read the alternate histories that go into what if there'd been no war, and the Cold War had either continued, or had ended with the USSR collapsing from within? Not a With a Bang, But a Whimper, is an anthology of some stories set in such an AH. Some are decent, others, though...

Snowman23

TheMann said: I think the better story might be USS Chicago. A WWII heavy cruiser that became a WWIII guided missile cruiser. For a while, there were two USS Chicagos, kinda a problem when they operated with the same battle groups, as apparently they did once.

OCC: The Heavy cruiser Chicago from WWII was sunk in 1943, after that it was replaced by a Cleavland light cruiser which i don't think they would have refurbished.

I Love cruisers so much, I hope we build a whole bunch of em now that where rebuilding the navy. Have any of you heard the controversy about the new cruisers, the Samar's? Well apparently, the Navy design called for 2 modern 8 inchers as WWIII taught us its always good to have bug guns, but some people, not even sure who, are arguing against it for reasons about the ammo and it be "unnecessary". Ugh, damn bureaucrats....

TheMann

Snowman23 said: OCC: The Heavy cruiser Chicago from WWII was sunk in 1943, after that it was replaced by a Cleavland light cruiser which i don't think they would have refurbished.

I Love cruisers so much, I hope we build a whole bunch of em now that where rebuilding the navy. Have any of you heard the controversy about the new cruisers, the Samar's? Well apparently, the Navy design called for 2 modern 8 inchers as WWIII taught us its always good to have bug guns, but some people, not even sure who, are arguing against it for reasons about the ammo and it be "unnecessary". Ugh, damn bureaucrats....
OOC: I was referring to This USS Chicago. Baltimore-class heavy cruiser that became an Albany class guided missile cruiser. Commissioned January 1945, rebuilt 1959-1964, served as a missile cruiser until March 1980, staying in the mothball fleet until April 1990.

IC: The Samars are being held up partly because we still have the Iowa and South Dakota class battleships for fire support. I don't know if its occured to them yet that their "expeditionary warfare" ideas require the Marines to get fire support, and its better to have too much than too little in that regard. The bureaucrats always forget that the Marines are our primary response team the next time the boys and girls at Foggy Bottom fuck up.

Snowman23

TheMann said: OOC: I was referring to This USS Chicago. Baltimore-class heavy cruiser that became an Albany class guided missile cruiser. Commissioned January 1945, rebuilt 1959-1964, served as a missile cruiser until March 1980, staying in the mothball fleet until April 1990.

IC: The Samars are being held up partly because we still have the Iowa and South Dakota class battleships for fire support. I don't know if its occured to them yet that their "expeditionary warfare" ideas require the Marines to get fire support, and its better to have too much than too little in that regard. The bureaucrats always forget that the Marines are our primary response team the next time the boys and girls at Foggy Bottom fuck up.
OCC: Damn it! I was thinking the Houston! Sorry :eek:

IC: I know! The marines deserve all the Naval Fire Support they want, they are the ones who are our man reaction force. And it was always fun to slam 16 inch shells into commie positions and then getting a relived Marine voice over the radio going "Thanks, one more bunker down".

TheMann

Snowman23 said: OCC: Damn it! I was thinking the Houston! Sorry :eek:

No worries.

Snowman23 said: ↑IC: I know! The marines deserve all the Naval Fire Support they want, they are the ones who are our man reaction force. And it was always fun to slam 16 inch shells into commie positions and then getting a relived Marine voice over the radio going "Thanks, one more bunker down".

Well, as a fighter jock I didn't often hear that one, but a couple times it was relieving to have a Navy ship drop a couple fighters that were on my tail, and then I'd hear "Pilot, this is the fire control officer, USS Oregon City. You alright up there, son?" I got that fighting the air battle over Houston a couple of times, either a Ticonderoga, Virginia, Leahy or Albany class cruiser, most often the Albany class ships because of their heavy armor. (Making missile cruisers from WWII gun cruisers does have a few advantages.)

And yeah, if you ask me, they ought to have a USN fleet specifically for ships to back up the Marines. They deserve it. Some of the morons in the Navy think that 5-inch guns are sufficient for that. My thought is "Why use the smaller guns when you can use the big ones?" I know there are logistical concerns, but if we learned anything during the war it is that the guys on the front lines are at their best when they know whatever ordinance they expend, there is more of it waiting for them back at base. I doubt the Navy guys are any different, are you?

Snowman23

Well, as a fighter jock I didn't often hear that one, but a couple times it was relieving to have a Navy ship drop a couple fighters that were on my tail, and then I'd hear "Pilot, this is the fire control officer, USS Oregon City. You alright up there, son?" I got that fighting the air battle over Houston a couple of times, either a Ticonderoga, Virginia, Leahy or Albany class cruiser, most often the Albany class ships because of their heavy armor. (Making missile cruisers from WWII gun cruisers does have a few advantages.)

And yeah, if you ask me, they ought to have a USN fleet specifically for ships to back up the Marines. They deserve it. Some of the morons in the Navy think that 5-inch guns are sufficient for that. My thought is "Why use the smaller guns when you can use the big ones?" I know there are logistical concerns, but if we learned anything during the war it is that the guys on the front lines are at their best when they know whatever ordinance they expend, there is more of it waiting for them back at base. I doubt the Navy guys are any different, are you?

Yeah, always was nice knowing I had more 16 inchers waiting back at home port to throw at Ivan. Was like Christians all year round. We always knew we had enough shells so we spared no expense in sending the shells down range whether at bunkers, tanks, ships, or buildings. Our highest rate of fire i think was sending out 3 shells a minute per gun, pretty good for 2,000 pound shells

Matt Wiser

(OOC: I think The Mann's referring to the Guided Missile Cruiser U.S.S. Chicago (CG-11). She was a Baltimore-class heavy cruiser converted to a missile cruiser in the late 1950s, with her sister ships Albany (CG-10) and Columbus (CG-12). All three were in mothballs in 1985, and could've been reactivated. However, there was a new U.S.S. Chicago in the Fleet in 1986: SSN-721. ) The two other cruisers could be reactivated, with the Chicago being a parts source for the other two. They would've needed some modifications, as their Talos SAMs were no longer in service, and Mk-26 Standard launchers would need to be installed fore and aft, along with CIWS, Harpoons, etc.

IC: So the Navy got off its rear end and decided to bring that single 8-inch turret intended for destroyers? The Marines will say "About time." The more gun platforms for fire-support, the better. A couple of Marine students at the Air War College were glad the Navy had brought back not only the battleships, but the two heavy cruisers as well. I still get a kick out of what the Navy did to that Yemeni warlord, charging tolls for ships passing into and out of the Red Sea, until Salem's 8-inch guns and a carrier air strike from Nimitz convinced him otherwise. Then Marines landed and put him out of business for good. He was killed, but some of his lieutenants got caught. They were tried, convicted of piracy and extortion by a military tribunal, and shot. Haven't had many problems like that there, but in some other places, though....The Rump USSR complained to the UN, of course, but as is usual now, the UN did nothing, and just issued a statement "regretting that a peaceful solution was not followed." The Navy even had new shells produced for the cruisers: with rocket-assisted HE, along with submuntion rounds similar to CBUs, being produced.

Well, Showtime just had a change of plan: instead of filming the scenes for Major Ray's pic in Florida, they're going to Puerto Rico. Seems PR has a Film Board that tries to get movies and TV shows to film there, and the offer was a good one, apparently. So Kelly Ann goes off to San Juan for three weeks (that's how long those scenes will be shot), before going to California for the interior shooting.

Trekchu: what does the DMV have to say about you driving a tank around? Even if the 120-mm has the breechblock welded shut and the machine guns being replicas? If they're anything like that FAA twerp was....

Snowman23

The Navy just sent out a press release with the names of the 8 Samar's:

USS Samar (WWII, "Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors")
USS Manila Bay (Spanish-American War, Dewey's Big Victory)
USS Cape Hatteras (WWIII, One destroyer and Two frigates on Patrol attacked and sank 4 full loaded Soviet transports)
USS Cape Esperance (WWII, First US night action victory against IJN)
USS Santa Barbra (WWIII, USN defeats Comm-Bloc task force meant to land in San Fransisco)
USS Bonhomme Richard (American Revolution, John Paul Jones's ship)
USS Sunda Strait (WWII, USS Houston and HMAS Perth's last stand against IJN Invasion convoy)
USS Pugent Sound (WWIII, USN annihilate Soviet Invasion Convoy trying to land in Seattle)

Panzerfaust 150

Matt Wiser said: At least you didn't have to deal with some twerp who didn't like the fact that you've been allowed to have a memento and made no bones about it. That FAA inspector from Salt Lake is too young to have been in the military, so he's a proper bureaucrat. Ugh. I should've flown down to Vegas and had their people take over. Hopefully, some Marine getting his or her old A-4 or F-4 will teach this little weasel a lesson.

The maintenance guys at Maxwell are pretty good. Even though I was a student, one sergeant noticed the bullet holes in my Jeep Grand Cherokee, and asked how I got 'em. After telling him about the naked CSP gal, he laughed and said "drive over to the motor pool, and tell them Sgt. Clark sent you. They'll patch her up." Sure enough, they did. We've had that Jeep for 20+ years, and she's still truckin'. Lisa and I do go off-roading every once in a while, too. We did have a tryst interrupted by one of the Singapore AF F-15Es roaring down the river canyon where we were parked, though....Sound of freedom, as the bumper sticker says.

Panzerfaust, how'd you guys handle the drive from Midland-Odessa all the way back to Houston, with the I-45 corridor still hostile territory? That drive via D/FW, Shreveport, and Lake Charles must've been long and boring. (600+ miles, I believe). I take it there were signs on the road "watch for unexploded bombs" and "Danger: this road patrolled by MiGs"?

Understatement of the the year...MiGs, Snipers, Fire Strikes by long range artillery....I got very acquainted with my K-Pot and Vest. Not to mention my MOPP gear. Goddamned Ivan just loved to lob chem at us. But, the good days were fun...real road trip like...you'd almost forget there was a war on, and with the amount of purloined gear we had...nobody was walking. The joke around the division is that we were "Light Mechanized".

Matt Wiser

At least you guys and gals didn't have to worry about speed traps: some of those little burgs in Texas and Louisiana before the war were notorious for such misbehavior. When I went to see our ALO with 1st Cav in New Mexico, there was a sign on this New Mexico State Highway that said: "WARNING: The Reds Direct Traffic Past This Point." Another sign said "Speed Patrolled by MiG". This was before the big ComBloc bug-out from Santa Fe and Taos that PRAIRIE FIRE caused. And then our F-4s (AF and Marine), and Marine A-4s, directed traffic on the roads the ComBloc was using....And where'd you get your purloined vehicles? "Moonlight Requesitioning," say? Or did their previous owners no longer need them?

I see the Navy's picking up where those AEGIS cruisers left off; naming cruisers after battles.

TheMann

Matt Wiser said: (OOC: I think The Mann's referring to the Guided Missile Cruiser U.S.S. Chicago (CG-11). She was a Baltimore-class heavy cruiser converted to a missile cruiser in the late 1950s, with her sister ships Albany (CG-10) and Columbus (CG-12). All three were in mothballs in 1985, and could've been reactivated. However, there was a new U.S.S. Chicago in the Fleet in 1986: SSN-721. ) The two other cruisers could be reactivated, with the Chicago being a parts source for the other two. They would've needed some modifications, as their Talos SAMs were no longer in service, and Mk-26 Standard launchers would need to be installed fore and aft, along with CIWS, Harpoons, etc.

You're right on the money, Matt. One correction: Columbus was scrapped in 1977, it was gone in OTL by 1985. Albany and Chicago were there, though. Being that this TL has a much stronger Russian fleet than OTL, I would imagine the USN perhaps has Reagan's 600-ship Navy fully in existence when the war kicks off. I mentioned Oregon City and Fall River because they were two other heavy cruisers selected for rebuilds that didn't come about, which in this TL is probably a certainty. Maybe a couple more too. Assuming here that Columbus is still around in 1985, all five would probably be yanked out of the mothballs and returned to service. If you have reactivated the Des Moines class cruisers, then mechanically you have no issues here, as the Baltimore, Oregon City and Des Moines class cruisers were almost identical mechanically - Babcock and Wilcox oil-fueled boilers and General Electric steam turbines. Assuming Columbus isn't modernized (as in OTL), then four would hit the water immediately, with Columbus in the yard for a major refit (Mk 26 missile launchers or even Mk 41 VLS, Harpoons, Phalanx CIWS, modern communications gear and fire control, et cetera), while the others get the Talos put back temporarily, trading it for the Mk 26 and SM-2 Standard missiles when they come in for overhaul.

Matt Wiser said: IC: So the Navy got off its rear end and decided to bring that single 8-inch turret intended for destroyers? The Marines will say "About time." The more gun platforms for fire-support, the better. A couple of Marine students at the Air War College were glad the Navy had brought back not only the battleships, but the two heavy cruisers as well.

Yeah, it seems that for much of the Navy, big guns are back in vogue. I'm not complaining, I got quite a lesson of their capabilities watching Massachusetts, Alabama and North Carolina at work in Caribbean. The 8-inch turret for destroyers is good, too, but hopefully the bureaucratic dimwits don't decide that's a good excuse to decommission the battleships and the heavy cruisers. What did Spruance say on that topic in WWII again? Oh yeah, "it takes both aircraft carriers and battleships."

Matt Wiser said: I still get a kick out of what the Navy did to that Yemeni warlord, charging tolls for ships passing into and out of the Red Sea, until Salem's 8-inch guns and a carrier air strike from Nimitz convinced him otherwise. Then Marines landed and put him out of business for good. He was killed, but some of his lieutenants got caught. They were tried, convicted of piracy and extortion by a military tribunal, and shot.

Yes, our world has still got many stupid problem areas to clean up, though at least we're making a good start on that. Having dealt with Cuba, that's one more PITA dealt with, though Castro got away. Oh well, we'll get his ass one day.

Matt Wiser said: The Navy even had new shells produced for the cruisers: with rocket-assisted HE, along with submuntion rounds similar to CBUs, being produced.

All the BBs got those new shells too. Apparently the Navy even brought the Katies for the Iowas, 15-kiloton nuclear shells. Never got used though, to the best of my knowledge. (Keegan didn't find any evidence of them either, IIRC.)

Matt Wiser said: Well, Showtime just had a change of plan: instead of filming the scenes for Major Ray's pic in Florida, they're going to Puerto Rico. Seems PR has a Film Board that tries to get movies and TV shows to film there, and the offer was a good one, apparently. So Kelly Ann goes off to San Juan for three weeks (that's how long those scenes will be shot), before going to California for the interior shooting.

Rats. I was hoping Showtime would ask me to fly my A-7 in the filming, and I want to meet this Major Ray. Sounds like my sorta woman.

Matt Wiser said: trekchu: what does the DMV have to say about you driving a tank around? Even if the 120-mm has the breechblock welded shut and the machine guns being replicas? If they're anything like that FAA twerp was....

They probably don't say anything about it. Think about. Even without guns, what exactly can win a fight with an Abrams? DMV guy is being a dick, all ya gotta do is tell him what a 67-ton tank does to the sorta crapboxes all of these bureaucrats drive.
TheMann

The Navy just sent out a press release with the names of the 8 Samar's:

USS Samar (WWII, "Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors")
USS Manila Bay (Spanish-American War, Dewey's Big Victory)
USS Cape Hatteras (WWIII, One destroyer and Two frigates on Patrol attacked and sank 4 full loaded Soviet transports)
USS Cape Esperance (WWII, First US night action victory against IJN)
USS Santa Barbra (WWIII, USN defeats Comm-Bloc task force meant to land in San Fransisco)
USS Bonhomme Richard (American Revolution, John Paul Jones's ship)
USS Sunda Strait (WWII, USS Houston and HMAS Perth's last stand against IJN Invasion convoy)
USS Pugent Sound (WWIII, USN annihilate Soviet Invasion Convoy trying to land in Seattle)

Good choices for the Names. Has the Navy released what the Samars have for armament yet? I'm curious to see what they come up with.

[lordroel]

From page 48

trekchu

Matt Wiser said: Trekchu: what does the DMV have to say about you driving a tank around? Even if the 120-mm has the breechblock welded shut and the machine guns being replicas? If they're anything like that FAA twerp was....

They weren't too happy, let me tell you that, but more because this thing's heavy, so I have a speed restriction in place when using public roads. Mind you, most people go out of the way/wait for you to get past, so that's not really a problem. Because the demilitarization before I got it I didn't have any problems because of that.

Snowman23

TheMann said: Good choices for the Names. Has the Navy released what the Samars have for armament yet? I'm curious to see what they come up with.

Yeah, two 8 inchers, two double 40mm Bofors mounts (even I'm surprised by that, I think they want them for protection from attack boats) ten Phalanx's, twelve 20mm Orlikons, eight 50 cals, two Tomahawk missile tubes, eight Harpoon launchers, four RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile launchers, six Sea Sparrow launchers and, this is surprising, two Mark 48 torpedo tubes. Apparently they are going back to ship launched torpedoes for anti-ship use. Pretty heavy armament, but thier big ships, almost 600-foot length.

Matt Wiser

Bringing back heavy torpedoes for the cruisers? Given wartime experience, where the Mark-46s had trouble killing double-hulled Soviet subs on many occasions (two, even three hits before sending Ivan to the bottom), it makes sense.

Well, today's flying was different: We had the funeral for Kelly Ann Ray's backseater this morning, and four of the F-4s being used in the movie did the missing-man flyover. Lisa represented the Air Force by giving the WSO's mom the flag, Kelly Ann sat beside her, and I led the flyover. He's officially listed as died in captivity, and supposedly one of the Tier IIs now awaiting trial was one of the interrogators at Havana's Military Intelligence Center, where all POWs who'd been shot down over Cuba were brought. Kelly Ann says that her WSO had minor injuries when shot down, but he never came out of the Intel Center into the POW camp system down there. I imagine this Cuban interrogator has had a few words about her WSO's death with investigators. Unless he lawyered up.

There's going to be another jet warbird at SLC: some ex-Marine who lives in Park City got the A-4M that he flew from 1987-1990. Seems we'll be sharing the hangar. I also found some RF-4C photos that the Nevada ANG (152nd TRG from Reno, The High Rollers) took of New Mexico: seems they have photographic proof of where two of my probables crashed, including that Il-20 ELINT bird, so I don't have to trample over Northern New Mexico to get pieces of the wrecks. The pics are off to the AFHC so that I can have two probables bumped up to confirmed, bringing my score to 14. Now, if I can find that one Colorado wreck, I'll be a triple ace.

sloreck

Hello again all. Was outprocessing back off AD and then spent 5 days "at sea" on my sloop Kraken out of door County in wisconsin - out on Lake Michigan. Now back in Madison & getting set for classes in a couple of weeks.

Mann: I can't say I saw the converted boomers during the Petro op, however took care of a wounded SEAL (nothing too serious) who was part of a group that took out the main Petro electrical plant just before we hit them. Loss of power and sabotaged backups played Hell with their air & surface search radar capability just when we needed a little cover. How did those SEALS get there - they didn't say but do the math.

Matt does Keegan make anything of the fact that the Sov navy made the same mistake the Japanese made in WWII - ignoring logistics in the Pacific. The Sovs, like the Japanese never had an adequate fleet train for sustainment (ships with guns are sexier than replensihment vessels), and also like the Japanese always targeted the trigger pullers, never the logistics force to any extent. Our at sea replensihment/refuel meant we could stay at sea longer 7 keep fighting, or, as with Petro, sail a deceptive & longer route because we brought gas stations along.

As far as gunfire support goes, 8" is really the minimum you want. Its way cheaper and much more effective to go after hardened installions with armor piercing 8" or bigger than with missles or bombs.

Matt Wiser

Haven't gotten that far yet: but he does mention that the Soviet Navy's replenishment ships were clearly inadequate to the task, something that old Gorshkov forgot when he started building that blue-water navy. I guess he figured there'd be enough Soviet client states around the world to make up for that. And a few of those (Angola, for example) had their harbors mined and Tomahawks shot at airfields used by the SNAF (courtesy of the sub force). A high price to pay for supporting the Russians...Keegan did mention that the Soviets did enough of a job getting supplies to Alaska, even with sub and carrier air interdiction. Though what happened to those supplies once unloaded and on their way south was a whole different matter. Only about half of what was delivered to Alaska made it to the front lines.

Well, AFHC moved with unusual speed (Panzerfaust, was that you prodding them?), and they officially raised my kill total to 14. Now, if I could find that one Su-24 over Southern Colorado, just a few miles north of the New Mexico State Line, I'll have #15. Once we're done with all the movie work here at both Mountain Home and Hill, I'll be able to get away and run down there and see if there's any wreckage still around. GPS coordinates, some pics, and a piece of the airplane is what I need to verify this last kill, as a search of RF-4C imagery turned up negative.

The Mann: find Kelly Ann Ray's book; you should find it in any major bookstore, or online. I read it after taking over the 419th, just to know where she was coming from, and it's a bit harrowing at times. Especially the week in the Havana MI Center, and then later on, the two-plus years on the Isle of Pines in solitary. After reading it, now I understand quite fully why she wants certain Cubans at Havana, Mariel, Holguin, and the Isle of Pines to die slowly.

trekchu

Matt Wiser said: Now, if I could find that one Su-24 over Southern Colorado, just a few miles north of the New Mexico State Line, I'll have #15. Once we're done with all the movie work here at both Mountain Home and Hill, I'll be able to get away and run down there and see if there's any wreckage still around. GPS coordinates, some pics, and a piece of the airplane is what I need to verify this last kill, as a search of RF-4C imagery turned up negative.

I think I can help you there. Where exactly is that? My wife has relations in Southern Colorado, and there is talk...

Matt Wiser

It's about 25 mi. west of Trinidad, north of Colo. State Highway 12. I never saw the crash, and neither did Lisa. But we saw it going down (it ate an AIM-9 in the tail), but lost it in the clouds-there was a cloud deck about 500 feet-and never saw the impact. But there's no way it could've survived, as the port stabilizer got torn off by the Sidewinder, and the tail was shredded-and afire, too. I'm sure there's wreck hunters who probably have found the crash site, and wonder who nailed this one. I don't even know if the crew got out, as we saw no chutes before the aircraft went into the clouds.

trekchu

That fits, my Father-in-law's brother lives in that area. I'll call him first thing tomorrow.

Matt Wiser

Pics, GPS coordinates of the wreck, and maybe a piece or two are needed for kill confirmation. The AFHC accepted the RF-4C imagery of the other two because they came from "official" sources. He may need to use whatever off-road vehicle is available, as this was north of the highway.

trekchu

Matt Wiser said: Pics, GPS coordinates of the wreck, and maybe a piece or two are needed for kill confirmation. The AFHC accepted the RF-4C imagery of the other two because they came from "official" sources. He may need to use whatever off-road vehicle is available, as this was north of the highway.

No worries. He makes helicopter tours for tourists with an ex-US Army Huey.

Panzerfaust 150

Matt Wiser said: At least you guys and gals didn't have to worry about speed traps: some of those little burgs in Texas and Louisiana before the war were notorious for such misbehavior. When I went to see our ALO with 1st Cav in New Mexico, there was a sign on this New Mexico State Highway that said: "WARNING: The Reds Direct Traffic Past This Point." Another sign said "Speed Patrolled by MiG". This was before the big ComBloc bug-out from Santa Fe and Taos that PRAIRIE FIRE caused. And then our F-4s (AF and Marine), and Marine A-4s, directed traffic on the roads the ComBloc was using....And where'd you get your purloined vehicles? "Moonlight Requesitioning," say? Or did their previous owners no longer need them?

Mix of both...we had everything from captured Sov stuff (marked 9 ways to sunday with air rec tarps and big white stars) to recaptured bank armored cars, police vehicles, and panel vans...repainted of course...but not with issue paint...we found an abandoned ACE hardware store near Odessa...let's just say I am glad Glidden makes colors that match CARC! (This was after the switchover from MERDC, but we had vehicles running around in that scheme till the end of the war).

As for your kill, well, I made a few calls...asked if AFHC had gotten your info and asked them to expedite it. I now owe AFHC a favor or two..but I can pay that back in a seminar or two on C-SPAN....

Matt Wiser

Filling in that last outline of a star on my F-15E not only makes me happy, but my crew chief as well (technically it's "his" bird-I only borrow it). Lisa's happy, as those three probables would boost her score to 12 (I had three with my previous WSO before being shot down), so another excuse for a blow-out at the Mountain Home O-Club. Hill's CO used to be an F-16 driver, but he looks at us Strike Eagle guys and girls as if we're from another planet for some reason. Being the only Eagles on an otherwise F-16 base has something to do with it, I think.

Well, some additional filming today, with several hookups with KC-135s from the Utah Air Guard down at SLC International. Since there wasn't much manuvering, we had the actors up in the back seat in the F-4s today, and they all loved it! "Mid-air Ballet" is what Kate Winslet said to Major Ray. I had Mark Wahlberg in my back seat, and he was speechless as we hooked up to the tanker. He told me that his jaw was dropping every time we got in to hook up, and he was wondering if we'd have time to eject if something went wrong. With KC-135s or KC-10s, if something does go wrong, though, it's over quick, though the fireball is pretty spectacular-I've seen a couple such incidents, sad to say.

Panzerfaust: thanks for cutting thru the AFHC red tape. Your unit reminds me of some unit that was profiled on the History Channel. They were the 83rd ID, and they were raised from IRR members, volunteers, and draftees from Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, and parts of Kentucky. They had older stuff at first (M-60s and M-113s), but they became known as "The Rag-Tag Circus", after their predecessor division in WW II. That unit was famous for using captured German vehicles, artillery pieces, etc, against its former owners. They were first committed to combat in Missouri, when that Spring-Summer "86 Offensive started, and by the end of that, they'd "acquired" so much captured ComBloc gear that they had two battalions with T-72s, one with BTR-70s, lots of trucks and other soft-skinned vehicles, towed artillery pieces (mainly 122-mm), and so on. They fought all the way to the Rio Grande, and always asked that air strikes and artillery fire be directed away from fuel and supply dumps, so they could "acquire" more gear. Eventually, they had 200% more vehicles than the Army authorized.

Matt Wiser

Hey Trekchu, I got a package via FedEx today, from Trinidad, CO. The sender was "Southern Colorado AirTours", and it was addressed to Commanding Officer, 419th TFW, Hill AFB, Utah. I opened the package and there were several pictures of a clearly identifiable Su-24 tail assembly, minus the port stabilizer, two engines, parts of the wings, and a few other pieces, including an intact AA-8 Aphid AAM (you'd better tell your in-laws to notify either local law enforcement, or Army EOD at Fort Carson ASAP), and some 23-mm shells. Also inside was one of the manufacturer's data plates, some small pieces of metal from the wreck, and a circut board from the avionics bay. The attached note also included the GPS coordinates, and said that the cockpit was unrecognizable, and though pieces of flight suits were found, no remains (predators, most likely). The note also said that wreck hunters seemed to have been there in the past, because someone had been digging around the engines and some other parts of the aircraft. This appears to be the one. Now to notify AFHC and let them know. If nobody else has a claim for a Su-24 in this location....

Matt Wiser

Fellows, here's the most dangerous SAM system I ever encountered in four years of war: the SA-11 Gadfly. Each launcher has its own radar, unlike the SA-6, which has a radar vehicle separate from the launcher tracks, and it has an EO backup in case of heavy ECM. When we first encountered these in the early days, the only way was to go in low, hope the jammer pods worked, and the Wild Weasels were on the ball. And pray there weren't any ZSU-23s around, because if they were, well...too low and the Shilkas would nail you. Go a little higher to avoid the guns and the SA-11s would be there. When we worked with III Corps, our ALOs asked that Corps-level artillery and division-level MLRS rockets be used to make those things go away. Sometimes the Army's help paid off, sometimes not... This example is a captured one now on display at the Southern New Mexico Military Museum in Clovis. It's still drivable, and does show up on display when Cannon AFB holds its air show.



Snowman23

I remember having to blast a few batteries of those when we attacked Panama so the navy fly boys could finally get airborne. We didn't know they had set up so many batteries of them, and when we launched the initial air strikes we lost 27 planes to them. So we pulled back and used partisans to locate the positions and either destroy them them self or call in the big guns on them.

Matt Wiser

Believe me, these were no fun at all. I had one squadron CO and an XO nailed by these things. My first flight leader led us in the second week against some Cuban armor near Alamogordo, New Mexico, and there were four of us, I was No. 2, and we had SAM warnings come up on the threat receivers, and then Lead's F-4 took two and blew the plane apart-the two guys never had a chance. No. 4 also took an SA-11 and they went down: both are still MIA. One of these is why I got the squadron during the D/FW mess....fortunately, Ivan and Fidel didn't have that many of 'em. But what they had was enough. I'm sure The Mann has some nasty experiences with SA-11: none of 'em good, I'll bet.

trekchu

Matt Wiser said: Hey Trekchu, I got a package via FedEx today, from Trinidad, CO. The sender was "Southern Colorado AirTours", and it was addressed to Commanding Officer, 419th TFW, Hill AFB, Utah. I opened the package and there were several pictures of a clearly identifiable Su-24 tail assembly, minus the port stabilizer, two engines, parts of the wings, and a few other pieces, including an intact AA-8 Aphid AAM (you'd better tell your in-laws to notify either local law enforcement, or Army EOD at Fort Carson ASAP), and some 23-mm shells. Also inside was one of the manufacturer's data plates, some small pieces of metal from the wreck, and a circut board from the avionics bay. The attached note also included the GPS coordinates, and said that the cockpit was unrecognizable, and though pieces of flight suits were found, no remains (predators, most likely). The note also said that wreck hunters seemed to have been there in the past, because someone had been digging around the engines and some other parts of the aircraft. This appears to be the one. Now to notify AFHC and let them know. If nobody else has a claim for a Su-24 in this location....

He called me to tell that he mailed the package.

Matt Wiser

Mail or FedEx? Because that's how it arrived on base. But the stuff in the package is what I need to get AFHC to upgrade the claim from "probable" to "confirmed." And did you tell him to notify the county Sheriff (that'd be Sheriff Lori Sheppard) or Fort Carson about the unexploded ordnance? I'll bet there's still a lot of that around, even after all this time.

Last weekend of filming here, both in the air and on the ground, for the Scott brothers' movie, anyway. Then the Showtime crew shows up for Major Ray's pic. (That filming takes only a week) Getting back in the F-4 brings back some memories-some good, some bad.

trekchu

Matt Wiser said: Mail or FedEx? Because that's how it arrived on base. But the stuff in the package is what I need to get AFHC to upgrade the claim from "probable" to "confirmed." And did you tell him to notify the county Sheriff (that'd be Sheriff Lori Sheppard) or Fort Carson about the unexploded ordnance? I'll bet there's still a lot of that around, even after all this time.

Last weekend of filming here, both in the air and on the ground, for the Scott brothers' movie, anyway. Then the Showtime crew shows up for Major Ray's pic. (That filming takes only a week) Getting back in the F-4 brings back some memories-some good, some bad.
Mail. The nearest FedEx is currently closed because of remodeling. He is a former armory Officer aboard Enterprise, I didn't have to tell him about ordnance. According to him they dug out almost a full loadout.

Matt Wiser

So that explains the digging around the wreck: someone had already been there, and found the ordnance, and notified the appropriate authorities. This guy was No. 2 in a flight of two, and he never knew what hit him: I came in behind,told Lisa to keep the radar off (no use giving him a warning on his RWR gear), got a good tone on AIM-9 at about three miles, and fired. He was at 750 ft. doing 550 knots or so when hit, as the Sidewinder flew up the left exhaust and the explosion blew off the port stabilizer, shredded the tail, and did a number on the right engine as well, as the whole tail assembly was in flames. He rolled inverted and went down, but we lost sight of him at about 500 feet, due to low clouds. Didn't see a crash, so we couldn't get confirmation of a kill. Kara Sackhoff, who was my wingie at the time, tried getting the leader, but he dodged the Sidewinder sent his way, and before she could try a Sparrow, we got a "MiGs Inbound" call from AWACS, and had to get out of there, as our fuel was running low, so a bug-out west was the only option. Both of us got back to the KC-135s with only 650 pounds of fuel remaining.
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[lordroel]

From page 49

Sigma7

You guys sound like the my bosses over at the NSA, always talking about the "old days" and stuff that I only heard bits and pieces of growing up in Capitulated New England.

I was a kid back then, but my folks were with the underground. Sometimes I wonder who had it worst, the folks in the warzone or those of us living in the "Peace States", as quaint a newspeak phrase as any for out and out right co-operation with Ivan.

I don't know. I've seen the pictures and video from the old occupied territories as part of my work. I've seen the work camps, Pacco and Ivan's depredations, the mass graves. Read more dossiers of red scum collaborators and Soviet/Sandanista personel accused of war crimes/ crimes against humanity than you can shake an Mike 19A1 at.

Comes with the job, I suppose.

There's something that gnaws at your gut though, so removed from it as we were up here, yet in some ways, closer to the front than anyone in uniform.

You folks in the warzone got the reds with the guns.

We got the reds with the power and "presitge"...and the collaboraters.

My dad was a software tech by trade, but got his start as an electronics tech in the navy (CVA 14 USS Ticonderoga, '63-'66).

Fire Control tech, specifically, but that training, appaently, covers a whole lot of ground and branches easily.

Quite the radio enthusiast too. Came in handy after the capitulation in all but name here in Connecticut.

During the day, we went about our lives, such as they were; Red-ucation for us kids. Placement-labor for our folks.

Dad kept the family together and sane though. We used to work on "projects" at night; remote radio triggers, homing devices, stuff like that in the little workshop dad kept in the basement.

Lotta laughs, lotta solder but most importantly, resistance in the only way you can under the circumstances: keeping the bombers and trigger men equipped for the kick hits on collaboraters and "visiting dignitaries" whose vists never seemed to end.

It was maintaining a sense of family as the central institution, as our core. It was resistance to submission to the state that sought to replace that institution that kept us together, kept his babies from losing a sense of hope or the values of a free people.

I remember my first "kick".

Towards the end there, when the 1st, 3rd, 5th and 7th IDs were making "The Big Push" through New York City, what my dad called "Our Berlin Offensive".

There were already 1st SFR, Rangers and elements of the 82nd and 101st opperating as far north as Fairfield and New Haven counties by then.

It was rough in the burbs. Curfews. Round-ups. Heard it was worse in the cities, like Hartford, New Haven, Bridgeport. I know now how much worse.

Comes with the job.

By then, no adult without a uniform or badging could get anywhere near a Party man or woman. They were all busy trying to either get the hell out or destroy the evidence.

Adults couldn't get near them.

Us kids could though.

Tough thing to ask a 13 year old to do. Mom was against it. Dad wasn't even sure he could sign off on it.

The party jerk in question had to get it though. You sign that many warrants against your own countrymen, people guilty of nothing more than their God given right to their own opinion...you've got to face a reckoning for that.

Simple device, 5 lbs. C-4, wired with a radio switch and homing device.

Had to be done quick. Word was good she was going out on the next plane for some parts unknown sanctuary state.

I had an in; I may have been a lowly prole, but her daughter liked me.

A lot.

Thing about their security apparatus at that point; unless they were depoted, their personal vehicles were pretty much naked.

Got myself an invite to their house. After-school affair, so a kid with a backpack doesn't draw much attention from the goons at the door. Not that it mattered at that point. Birthday/Going Away party for her and her family.

Wasn't difficult to slip away. Most of the adults were wasted by the time we got there. Bunch of adolecents and pre-adolecents running amok around the grounds, looking for someplace "quiet".

Told the girl I had to use the bathroom.

Somewhere along the way, I ended up in the garage.

Wired the package directly off the battery and mounted it directly under center, just like dad taught me to. Fast, just like dad taught me to.

Made nice with the girl, like my parents told me to. "If you act strange, they'll think something's up."

In truth, nobody there seemed to give a crap. It was like the last days in the bunker for Hitler; bunch of drunk, stoned adults, too busy grabbing a quickie before leaving the country, or facing the inevitablitiy of the "honor" of dying for the revolution.

Don't know why I even stuck around after I wired the car. She and her Papa Oscar Sierra mother and boy fondling dad were going to be vapor soon enough. Maybe I felt bad for her, in some way.

That was back when I still felt things.

After that, it was a simple matter of waiting for them to leave, and, as expected, they left before their guests.

Guess they got lucky in the air-lift lotto.

I left through a side gate. Borrowed a car parked outside from one of the party goers and waited.

They must have been in a hurry, because they didn't even wait for their security detail. Then again, it's possible their detail were passed out, or pounding some flesh in the upstairs bathroom for all I know.

I let them get to the end of the street before I pulled off the curb.

Kept the rangefinder on the seat next to me. If they were out of range, the grid went red. So long as I kept the grid green, they were in range.

Followed them at a safe distance, onto the highway. Stayed on them as close as I could without being conspicous.

Dad told me to wait until the road was as empty as possible when I lit 'em up. No sense in killing some poor bastards commuting home from his impressed service at the factory or power plant.

I was waiting for a clear stretch of highway when they suddenly flashed their blinkers. They were taking an exit. Not part of the plan.

Call it instinct taking over, personal initiative, whatever. I took the exit ramp too, except, unlike them, I floored it. Down the ramp, around the side of their car and blew through the stoplight, right back up the on-ramp across the road.

I glanced at the grid. It was solid green. I floored it up the on-ramp almost to the highway, eyes half on the road, half on the grid. The green was fading. I double tapped the button on the remote.

The flash lit up the interior of the car about a split second before the roar of the blast made my ears ring.

I slammed on the breaks at the top of the ramp. It was empty, and so was the intersection behind me.

I backed the car down slowly to the base of the ramp. Confirmation was needed. I was going to do my duty and confirm.

The Connie was blown in half. It's rear end, near as I could tell, was now lying in front of the front end, flipped on it's side. Whole thing was an inferno.

Nothing was moving inside. Nobody had gotten out.

All the confirmation I needed, and now I could hear sirens.

I floored it up the ramp and peeled out down the highway to an abandoned rest stop.

Torched the car and the gear inside it, just like I was told. Then headed into the woods to look for a safehouse.

Turns out, I hiked it ten miles through the woods, not that I noticed. I was clutching the snub nose .38 the honcho had given me tightly the whole way and my mind was kinda hazey.

A couple of guys in a pick up, throwing back beers and doing some night angling were the first people I ran into.

That was forunate.

"Hey kid, how many lamps in the steeple?" the one with the flashlight called out.

"Two." was my reply.

Noticed that the guy behind him had produced a 1911 from out of nowhere and at that point he stepped forward.

"Who are you with?" he asked softly.

"Hannon's group." was all I said. Just like I'd been instructed, if asked by anyone, even friendlies.

They stashed me in the back of the truck, under tarps and loose planks, lumber and tackle and we drove for what seemed like forever.

I couldn't make out the two men's conversation, over the engine and the radios and scanner, but I could hear the scanner. Lots of squawk on the police bands. "Car bombing off Rt. 9. Party Officer and family killed. Police dispatched for a sweep. Party guests unhelpful. Usual suspects to be picked up." etc...

The truck pulled over to a stop on the gravel access road we'd been traveling on.

The tarp came up and the guy with the .45 whispered "Hey, how'd you get out here?"

I froze for a second. I eased the .38 out of the pouch on my sweatshirt, beneath the tarp and slowly cocked the hammer.

"Hannon sent a fucking kid out for this!?!" the other guy asked incredulously.

.45 guy spoke again: "Mike, calm down."

He turned back to me and continued:

"Listen, we know you're on the level. I assure you, Mike and I are on the level."

"Who are YOU with?" I spit through a tightening throat.

.45 Guy was quiet for a minute. He glanced over at "Mike".

"Kid's scared Cap. If you tell him..."

.45 guy cut him off. He thought about it for a minute that seemed like an eternity. The hammer on my .38 was cocked now and it was out of the pouch pocket and at my side, pointing straight up beneath the tarp, pretty much a point blank shot of .45 guy's face. With .38 Special SJPs, at that range, I could have taken his face off.

Instead of speaking, he reached down the front of his shirt. A mettalic rattle was followed by the appearence of a set of dog tags.

U.S. Army dog tags.

"Captain Jeff Graves, 1st Special Forces Regiment, United States Army. That over there is Master Sergeant Tom Sykes."

First time since I dumped my backpack for "the package backpack" that afternoon that I actually felt safe.

Sometime before dawn, Sykes and a WO named Parker dropped me off in front of my house.

Funny thing about all of that. You tell a recruiting officer a story like that, they don't just give you a service battery and an appointment with the docs.

They send you to off to some federal building, to talk to some guy who doesn't really have an office there and isn't always who they say they are.

The tests aren't a stadard battery either; it's part SAT, part IQ and part psyche evaluation.

If all that checks out, THEN you see the docs.

I have a job in the post war world.

Officially, I work for the Department of Investigations and Reconcilliations of Occupation Era Criminal Activities; War Crimes and Civillian Abuse Division.

Unofficially, we're the Reprisal and Punative Actions Detachment; aka "The Scalphunters".

There were people who thought they were just going to disappear after the whole Red Blitz collapsed. That they could find a quite little place to hide in the post war world where they could live out the rest of their lives with some smug satisfaction that they had lost the war, but would never face trial for the "moral victories" they achieved during the revolution.

We see to it that one way or another, justice is ultimately served to those people.

By any means neccessary.
ASoIaF: Were We Different Men (Completed, contains revisions)
ASoIaF: Of Wolves and Lions, Secrets and Lies, Shadows and Light (NEW!)

Matt Wiser

Given that there's no Statute of Limitations on Collaboration with the Enemy, or Treason....you guys should be busy.

Ivan never got into New England (unless you're counting Spetsnatz), and three times, the ComBloc demanded the U.S. and Canada surrender. Three times, the answer (delivered jointly by the President and the Canadian Prime Minister) was "NO!" Ivan wound up either retreating into Mexico in that Summer and Fall of '89, surrendering at Brownsville, TX, in late September of that year, and doing the same up in Alaska and Canada that November. The Cubans didn't agree to the Armistice until March '90. Then you could say it was over. For the time being, anyway. Now that Fidel's who knows where, Raoul is in the hands of the U.S. Marshals' Service down in Florida-and other unfinished business with Cuba has been taken care of (see previous postings in the thread), all that's left is the Rump USSR, North Korea, the pseudo-Marxist government in Mexico City (which only controls the areas within range of their own rifles, I might add), and Venezuela (with a Fidel-wannabe howling mad now that Fidel may be fish food, and Fidel's brother in a Miami jail cell).

One other SAM system that we had to worry about: the SA-8B Gecko. A Search and Radar, EO backup in case the radar was jammed, and the ability to have two missiles in the air against the same target (first Soviet tactical SAM with this capability). The Wild Weasels got the better of these slime-lickers, and a lot of times, the operators got thrown off when they used their EO system when the radar was jammed-you'd have a flight come in at all points of the compass and overwhelm the battery. And if you weren't a Wild Weasel, then AGM-65 often did the job well enough. I almost got nailed by SA-8 several times, and lost wingmen twice (one before Kara Sackhoff got the job, and one after she became an element leader): One crew KIA, one MIA. God bless, guys. And Kara once came back with one F-4 with an unexploded SA-8 in the right fuselage! This one's also at the Clovis museum. Where and how they found an intact launch vehicle, I don't know. We preferred them (and any other SAM vehicle) flaming wrecks.



jacobus

I was a kid back then, but my folks were with the underground. Sometimes I wonder who had it worst, the folks in the warzone or those of us living in the "Peace States", as quaint a newspeak phrase as any for out and out right co-operation with Ivan.

The "Peace States"? Ha ha, what a great name! Are you adept at Paint? How about a map of North America too, to show us the extent of these "Peace States" where collaboration was the rule, the parts of the country where resistance to the occupation was so widespread and fierce that the ComBlock had to practically depopulate the entire territory, the irradiated zones, and the places in between.

Matt Wiser

The "Peace States" comprised all of Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas, plus New Mexico East of the Rio Grande and then the Rockies, Colorado and Wyoming East of the rockies (up to Casper), Nebraska south of I-80 from the Wyoming line to Lincoln, along with most of Kansas except for the NE corner near Fort Leavenworth, much of the Missouri Ozarks all the way to the suburbs of St. Louis, and then down the Mississippi all the way to Baton Rouge, Louisiana and the Mississippi River Delta. At least that's what the "Radio Liberated America" said on its radio shows (when we weren't either jamming them or outright blasting their transmitters-335th TFS hit more of their transmitters than anyone else in the Southwest-thanks to us having Pave Spike and a few Pave Tack pods to guide Laser-Guided Bombs. Believe me, you needed those LGBs if you wanted to take out a radio or TV transmitter-they're more of a precision target than you'd think otherwise. Guerillas then targeted their repair crews...Anyway, any Soviet or Cuban presence outside those states were usually Spetsnatz or Cuban SOF on recon/sabotage missions (like the Raven Rock op). There were some SOF in just about every state not occupied....Just be glad they never did cut the country in half. They came close in that Spring-Summer '86 Offensive.

Well, halfway through Keegan's naval chapter. The Battle of Kamchatka is pretty well described as the swan song of the Soviet Pacific Fleet. The raid on Petropavalosk brought out the carriers Minsk and Novosoryssk, along with the Kirov-class battle cruiser Freunze, to face the Carl Vinson and Enterprise battle groups. In a way, the amphibious force was a decoy, to draw the SOVPACFLT out to do battle. The sub force did its job, sinking the Freunze and getting the main anti-air warfare and anti-surface threat out of the way in the process. The Soviet commander wanted to turn back, was was turned down by his Fleet Command in Vladivostok, and it turned out to be a death-and-glory ride. In a nutshell, both carriers were sunk, along with an additional cruiser (Ochakov), three destroyers (one Kashin and two Sovremenny class ships), and one of their precious fleet replenishment ships. U.S. losses: one cruiser (Richmond K. Turner) sunk, two destroyers (Coontz and Hayler) also sunk, and the frigate Downes so badly damaged she had to be scuttled. Air losses: four A-7s, seven A-6s, three F/A-18s, and one S-3. Not a bad day's work, fellas. As a result, the Soviet Pacific Fleet never did venture out in force beyond the range of land-based air, and the supply line to Alaska was now even more tenuous. Sloreck-this was your op-the Raid on Petropavalosk. Keegan thinks well of you guys.

What were you guys' favorite wartime songs? We've mentioned Don't You (Forget About Me), and Wagner's Die Valkure, but what else did you guys listen to on AFN or on a local station? AFN's favorites included We Gotta Get Outa This Place-Katrina and the Waves redid the Animals' classic from the Vietnam days, Elton John's Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting, Nancy Sinatra did a more modern version of These Boots Are Made For Walkin'; Tears for Fears had a song a year before the war that summed up everything: Everybody Wants to Rule the World, and then there was The Boss, Bruce Springsteen, with Born in the U.S.A. What else was a favorite of those in the war zone?

trekchu

Queen. They were over here when the Brits got stabbed in the back and elected to stay here 'for the duration' as the brits like to say.

Matt Wiser

Anyone here up in Alaska, during the invasion there and occupation? We've had some experiences from Canada, but no one from Alaska itself. Ivan planned on making Alaska a new SSR, but never started on that, since there was so much resistance activity. Anyone here from the USAF at Elmendorf or Eielson AFBs, the BMEWS station, or the Army at Forts Richardson and Wainwright? You guys really never had a chance, but did the best you could, and the lucky ones were able to get out and live to fight another day, or if able, get into the wilderness of Alaska and start fighting as guerillas. Alaska and Canada were the only areas where there wasn't much of a counteroffensive: by the time the Mexicans quit and signed a separate peace (much to the disgust of the Soviets and Cubans, who wanted to fight on), and forces on the Mexican border could finally be redeployed, the Soviet Northern America TVD was seriously considering a surrender, and since the supply lines to Alaska were being cut by the Pacific Fleet, can anyone blame the Theater Commander?

Finally finished Keegan's naval war chapter (no flying today). His assessment is that the Soviet Navy failed in two major tasks: first, to support the Army by transporting supplies from Russia to both Cuban and Mexican ports in the south, and in the Northern Theater, to Alaska. While supplies did get through, it wasn't enough to fully supply the ComBloc forces in both theaters. The Russian Republic sources he has cite this as a primary reason the Soviet Summer Offensive in British Columbia (1986), whch led to the Battle of Vancouver, failed. Lack of supply more than anything else, though heavy resistance by U.S. Canadian, and other Allied forces (New Zealanders and Filipinos mainly) stalled the offensive, and the Navy's failure was compounded by the amphib attack on Seattle, which ended in a crushing Soviet defeat. In the southern theater, the failed Amphibious attack on New Orleans was another failure: both were blamed by Soviet Navy officers on the vanity of Admrial Gorshkov, the CINC-Soviet Navy. The Soviet Navy also failed to cut off the U.S. from foreign sources of supply: weapons, ammunition, strategic minerals, oil, and food. That alone, the Russian Republic's sources who were Soviet Army, meant that the war would drag on, and that the U.S. and its allies could win a war of attrition over that distance. The Soviets and their lackeys could not. The "administrative redeployment" of BAOR from internment in Germany and the Low Countries back to the UK, which resulted in the Quisling Occupation government's overthrow (and in many cases, their execution), is also cited as a Soviet Naval failure: the Soviet Baltic Fleet was informed of the impending move, but never deployed any of its sub or fast-attack forces to halt the deployment. COMSOVBALTFLT was later shot by the KGB for "dereliction of duty, gross incompetence, and of deliberately engineering with the enemy." A lot of that went around the Soviet military in 1987-88...

TheMann

Keegan pretty much got it right in terms of the naval war. The lone wolf strike off Cape Hatteras - a frigate, a diesel sub and patrol boats against a Soviet supply convoy - and the battles off Florida where the old BBs and land and carrier-based aircraft tended to make big messes of convoys headed for Cuba proved that they didn't have the naval strength to shut us down. Bet that came to be a rude awakening.

Anyways, I took my buddy out in my TA-7E for the first time yesterday. It was great, the thing flies really well, and my buddy was in heaven, even in the backseat. The thing accelerates fast for an attack aircraft, though not as fast as my Hornet and certainly not as fast as my Raptor.

I got a call on the radio about a parade in Little Havana in Miami, and they wanted to know whether I could do a flyby - its the anniversary since the last Cubans left America, and the Cubans in Miami were commemorating it. I did the flyby, at about four hundred knots about a hundred and fifty feet above the houses, to a big cheer from the crowd in the street. Miami air traffic control gave me a grilling for it, though. Party-poopers.

Matt, you guys get any beer or something for the anniversary? It was twenty years ago yesterday since the last of those red fuckers packed their shit and got the fuck out of our country.

Snowman23

Matt Wiser said: Well, halfway through Keegan's naval chapter. The Battle of Kamchatka is pretty well described as the swan song of the Soviet Pacific Fleet. The raid on Petropavalosk brought out the carriers Minsk and Novosoryssk, along with the Kirov-class battle cruiser Freunze, to face the Carl Vinson and Enterprise battle groups. In a way, the amphibious force was a decoy, to draw the SOVPACFLT out to do battle. The sub force did its job, sinking the Freunze and getting the main anti-air warfare and anti-surface threat out of the way in the process. The Soviet commander wanted to turn back, was was turned down by his Fleet Command in Vladivostok, and it turned out to be a death-and-glory ride. In a nutshell, both carriers were sunk, along with an additional cruiser (Ochakov), three destroyers (one Kashin and two Sovremenny class ships), and one of their precious fleet replenishment ships. U.S. losses: one cruiser (Richmond K. Turner) sunk, two destroyers (Coontz and Hayler) also sunk, and the frigate Downes so badly damaged she had to be scuttled. Air losses: four A-7s, seven A-6s, three F/A-18s, and one S-3. Not a bad day's work, fellas. As a result, the Soviet Pacific Fleet never did venture out in force beyond the range of land-based air, and the supply line to Alaska was now even more tenuous. Sloreck-this was your op-the Raid on Petropavalosk. Keegan thinks well of you guys.

What were you guys' favorite wartime songs? We've mentioned Don't You (Forget About Me), and Wagner's Die Valkure, but what else did you guys listen to on AFN or on a local station? AFN's favorites included We Gotta Get Outa This Place-Katrina and the Waves redid the Animals' classic from the Vietnam days, Elton John's Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting, Nancy Sinatra did a more modern version of These Boots Are Made For Walkin'; Tears for Fears had a song a year before the war that summed up everything: Everybody Wants to Rule the World, and then there was The Boss, Bruce Springsteen, with Born in the U.S.A. What else was a favorite of those in the war zone?
I was at the Petropavalosk raid too, commanded the gunnery of the USS Ticonderoga. That was a fun little vacation.

I loved when they would play the old Vietnam-era songs like Hendrix, Joplin, and Jefferson Airplane on AFN or the remakes some bands did. I still remember having Watchtower on while shelling Ivan positions in California.

Matt Wiser

Was that when you guys were blasting a Spetznatz team that was found near Vandenberg AFB? There wasn't much action in California, that Mexican brigade moving up from Mexicali and getting smashed by 1st Marine Division notwithstanding. I'm from California, and my family told me that not much was going on, though some "peace" group (yeah, right...) got caught trying to sneak into the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant and cause some mayhem. They were all convicted of wartime sabotage and given lengthy prison terms. And they're still there. The Vandenberg AFB Combat Security Police had a reputation for calling in whatever supporting assets were available: though using battleship or cruiser gunfire to dig out a 12-man Spetsnatz team is a bit too much.

The Mann: Yeah, we got a case of Sam Adams, via the movie company. Twenty years since the Brownsville surrender? Man, how time flies. A few days after that is when we got orders to go up to Fairchild AFB. And yes, the Marines we had flown with since the first week went with us. The Russians in Alaska and Canada didn't surrrender until October, remember? We had to wait until our ground convoy got to Fairchild before flying up there, and man, that base was packed! B-52s and KC-135s from SAC's 92nd Bomb Wing, Washington ANG's KC-135s and the Idaho Guard's RF-4Cs, plus the Marines and us AF "orphans" in the 335th. Everyone got some theater orientation rides up into B.C. and Alberta, and a few low-threat combat hops, but nothing serious until the Soviet surrender on 5 October. Flew cover up into Calgary and Edmonton for our guys and the Canadians, until they sent us back to Texas (Kelly AFB) in November. Did you ever have any trouble with SA-11? Those things were downright dangerous, period.

Major Kelly Ann Ray and the Showtime people are busy now: they start filming tomorrow. After filming here at Mountain Home and at Hill, it's off to Puerto Rico for three weeks, and then they go back to California for the prison scenes at one of the studios. We'll have some flying, some scenes shot on the ramp, and an "after the war" scene at Hill.
Last edited: Aug 25, 2009

TheMann

Matt Wiser said: ↑Was that when you guys were blasting a Spetznatz team that was found near Vandenberg AFB? There wasn't much action in California, that Mexican brigade moving up from Mexicali and getting smashed by 1st Marine Division notwithstanding. I'm from California, and my family told me that not much was going on, though some "peace" group (yeah, right...) got caught trying to sneak into the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant and cause some mayhem. They were all convicted of wartime sabotage and given lengthy prison terms. And they're still there. The Vandenberg AFB Combat Security Police had a reputation for calling in whatever supporting assets were available: though using battleship or cruiser gunfire to dig out a 12-man Spetsnatz team is a bit too much.

The Vandenberg guys weren't the only ones who called in big stuff on Spetznaz squads. I think the idea was to expend shells and bombs rather than expend people. Can't say I disagree, honestly. Though I think somebody might ask a few questions if you are using a battleship to blow up a Spetsnaz squad......

A buddy of mine told me about the dimwits who tried to get into Diablo Canyon, because he was working at Rancho Seco at the time and the word of it spread fast. Several of them were packing heat, so I kinda doubt they were much of a peace group. That said, they ran headon into the Plant's security guys, and because of the plant's location, it rated Marines for security. Those who didn't give up got shot up, of course.

Matt Wiser said: The Mann: Yeah, we got a case of Sam Adams, via the movie company.

Ohhhh. Sam Adams? All I got was some Rickards Honey Lager, damn it.

Matt Wiser said: Twenty years since the Brownsville surrender? Man, how time flies.

I know, it didn't seem that long ago, does it? Mind you I had just met my future wife at the time, and I now have a 16 year old son, so I suppose it has been that long, hasn't it?

Matt Wiser said: A few days after that is when we got orders to go up to Fairchild AFB.

I got assigned originally to NAS Bremerton after the surrender in Brownsville, and then my unit was one of the first to get moved to CFB Cold Lake once the Canucks got it back. We got it back only a week or so before Ivan finally gave in, so I didn't get many opportunities for action there. Mind you, I got my last kill of the war (Soviet MiG-29) a couple days before the surrender.

Matt Wiser said: We had to wait until our ground convoy got to Fairchild before flying up there, and man, that base was packed! B-52s and KC-135s from SAC's 92nd Bomb Wing, Washington ANG's KC-135s and the Idaho Guard's RF-4Cs, plus the Marines and us AF "orphans" in the 335th.

Whoa, that would be one crowded Air Base. Bremerton was very full, too, two wings of F-111Fs and the SAC's 84th Bomb Wing with its KC-10 Extenders and B-52Gs, plus two F/A-18 squads and a bunch of Wild Weasel F-4s.

Matt Wiser said: Did you ever have any trouble with SA-11? Those things were downright dangerous, period.
I lost a Hornet and a wingman to one of those fucking things over Houston. :mad: Those were the bane of everybody's existence during the siege in Houston, we even lost a B-1 to one of those goddamned systems. The best SAMs the Reds had.

Matt Wiser said: Major Kelly Ann Ray and the Showtime people are busy now: they start filming tomorrow. After filming here at Mountain Home and at Hill, it's off to Puerto Rico for three weeks, and then they go back to California for the prison scenes at one of the studios. We'll have some flying, some scenes shot on the ramp, and an "after the war" scene at Hill.

It sounds like it'll be a helluva movie. I can't wait to see it. If Major Ray is ever in Florida, let me know. I'd like to buy that woman a drink. Any mysogynist hasn't met a woman like that, or like my wife.

Panzerfaust 150

Well,
5 October found me processing EPWs up to my eyeballs, and sorting them for either a trip home, or a trip to a holding or transit camp. This was just before the Indians, Irish and Sweedes showed up to help us get these folks home as well as observe the cease fire. Brownsville had surrendered the week before. It was a mess. Booby traps, abandoned live ammo, burning POL dumps...Brownsville looked like the damn dark side of the moon. But that first night, it was the first night we didn't bother with light discipline since the war began. I remember thinking how we were all going to get killed with all this light around. It was also the day the BC told me I had orders for Reno and to be there by 1 November. So, I asked to stay on for a week or two to train up one of the casuals as my relief. BC cleared it, and by 10 October, I was in the back of a shithook wedged between two crates on a flight to Houston trying to beat Hurricane Fred in. We did...just, but I had to sleep in what was left of the terminal waiting for the storm to blow over. Didn't manage to get out of Houston for three days, then caught a C-130 to Reno.

As for now, we hold a unit picnic...it rotates homes and the host does the grilling..everybody brings food and beer. So, being a bunch of intell geeks, we have a real selection. The wife and I took the weekend and flew back for it this year. Next year, it's going to be at Maxwell at my house..it was tough this year. Wartime buddy of mine told me he's got cancer...Jesus. When the hell did we get old?

As for what I listened to? Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Van Halen (sensing a theme?) and Billy Joel. I feel for him. His Girlfriend (OOC: they didn't marry till 1985) Christie Brinkley, was in NYC when the bastards glassed it. He really has struggled with it. But, he's come out the other side. The song he did, Goodnight, Houston is very haunting. Triumphant, but haunting. I also liked Eric Clapton, it's a real shame he didn't survive the war, but I never found out what happened to him.

Snowman23

Panzerfaust 150 said: As for what I listened to? Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Van Halen (sensing a theme?) and Billy Joel. I feel for him. His Girlfriend (OOC: they didn't marry till 1985) Christie Brinkley, was in NYC when the bastards glassed it. He really has struggled with it. But, he's come out the other side. The song he did, Goodnight, Houston is very haunting. Triumphant, but haunting. I also liked Eric Clapton, it's a real shame he didn't survive the war, but I never found out what happened to him.

Think he got put against a wall in Communist Britain for "profiting off the worker's". No idea where they hell the pulled that out of....

Matt Wiser

Yeah, California had its share of "Peace" groups, and a lot of them crossed the FBI and the various Military CID branches the wrong way. In the prewar period, anyone who sat down in front of a train hauling Air Force or Navy munitions got a night in the slammer and a fine. They found out that once the balloon went up, TPTB were no longer so tolerant. And the fact that UC Berkeley had more...liberal to leftie faculty and students than any other college, made for some...interesting bits on the news, as I found out when I was home on leave after my E&E. I wonder how those who got tossed in the slammer liked it when the real cons found out that they'd been essentially giving aid and comfort to the enemy at the very least?

Expending ammo than people is generally a good thing, but still....using 16-inch or 8-inch shells (it's said one of the ships was Des Moines) to dig out a Spetsnatz team? The word "Overkill" does crop up. We did use CBUs to nail a sniper team making life exciting for the CSPs at Cannon after we retook the place during PRAIRIE FIRE, but that was when we had to abort the planned mission due to weather in the target area.

The Scott Brothers were most generous: besides the Sam Adams, they had a big spread catered in from Salt Lake for everyone on the base who was involved in the filming. From pilots and WSOs, to the maintenance folks, to the base security guys, we all got a big smorgasbord. It was their way of saying "Thanks" for not just what we did in the filming, but what we did in the war.

Where does time go? Lisa and I have a son and two daughters: and all three of 'em are either in the Air Force (our oldest is a Doolie-Freshman-at the AF Academy, our son is going to the AF Academy next year, and our youngest wants UCLA), or planning to be. Only our son is biological: remember the PR campaign about adopting kids orphaned by the war? We adopted a girl from Colorado and another from Oklahoma. Both lost their parents due to the occupation....

5 October '89. Fairchild AFB..One hell of a party on base and in Spokane. Waking up the next morning, even though you still have to fly, but realizing that nobody is going to get killed today. A week earlier, after Brownsville surrrendered, that ground convoy left for Fairchild, and we got there two days before the end. Two orientation rides, going air-to-mud on the 4th, and actually being in the air on the 5th, coming back from a strike, and AWACS tells you "Ivan just plain gave up. It's over, boys and girls." You wonder if you've heard right on the radio. And then when you land, the whole base is celebrating. Strangest day of the war, and it was the last day. At least nobody was caring any more about fraternization....because OSI and NCIS (remember, we had Marine Air with us) would've had to investigate the whole base.

sloreck


One really big mistake the Sov Navy made was not transferring enough assets to the Pacific Fleet. Their Fleet deployments were based on stopping trans-Atlantic traffic (US forces going to NATO, resupply etc) as well as keeping the US subs from getting in to SSBN safe havens and carrier battle groups from getting in to waters far enough north to hit the USSR in that area. The correlation of forces in the Pacific was way against them as they tried to get supplies to Alaska & also stop US resupply from the Pacific nations. Japanese, S. Korean & ROK navies did a good job of keeping the Sovs from interfering with convoys for a good distance offshore, before they handed them over to US forces (Aussies did the same, but few Sov subs when that far).

Trying to force convoys through to Cuba/Mexico in large numbers with Sov escorts was stupidity of the highest order. Our subs were way quieter, and putting their forces in range of land based air (forgetting any CV air) which happened towards the end of the trips no matter what route you sailed, when their own naval air assets (fighters off CV) were so limited was like the Brits with the Prince of Wales & Renown off Malaya in 1942 - with the same results.

Interfering with US/NATO control in the N.Atlantic & Med is not the same as cutting transpac routes and fighting on our side of the water. Gorshkov ended up sending a boy to do a mna's job, having said that they fought like crazy, and took a lot of our guys with them to Valhalla.

The Sandman

It's funny, really. Before the war, I'd never have thought I'd find reason to have any degree of sympathy for Petain and his crew back in the Second Big One. But it's amazing how two years of running Occupied San Antonio and then another year dragooned into running Occupied Texas can give you some perspective.

Of course, I never should have been Mayor of San Antonio in the first place. I was pretty much a low-level functionary when the invasion started, maybe with a bit more influence than usual because I was kind of a general-purpose staffer, but still nobody special. Then Ivan, Juan and Jose came north, and next thing I know pretty much everyone above me is either getting lined up at the Alamo and shot or disappearing into one of the camps in Chihuahua or Monterrey. The new Vice-Mayor was a decent guy, but in way over his head, and the Mayor the Russkies put in... he made the stereotypical collaborator look like Nathan goddamn Hale patriotism-wise.

So I did what I had to do. You guys remember the refugee convoy that the Vice-Mayor got out in? I was the one who set that up, with the help of what loyal staff wasn't dead or already in the bits of Texas we still held then. When we got wind of what the new management intended to do to the local Hispanic population, we knew we had to do something. So we got the Mayor to authorize a refugee convoy, one that was going to be loaded with as many fellow travelers as possible and then sent across the lines to provide a fifth column.

And then on the night it was supposed to go out, we just rearranged the passenger manifests a bit, and gave you folks back nearly 15,000 loyal Texans who were scheduled to be murdered because openly patriotic Hispanic-Americans didn't fit the Fraternal Socialist image, plus another 5,000 Mexicans and assorted Central Americans who were still on the death lists from when the Reds took their countries. Plus, we managed to set everything up to make it look like that fucking quisling weasel had been the real brains behind the scheme, along with as many of the other known True Believers in the Soviet bullshit in the city government as possible. So he and his buddies got to see what the Alamo charnel house looked like from the other side, and my group got put in charge.

We got the Vice out before this because, as I said, he was a decent man. And we knew that if we wanted to try to find some way to keep Ivan from smashing us all, decency was going to be a luxury that we could rarely afford.

Am I proud of the things I did back then? No, not really. I did what I had to do to ensure that when we finally retook Texas, there'd still be a San Antonio left to liberate. And then, when the Governor finally fucked up one too many times, that there'd still be a Texas. That last year, when Ivan just stopped pretending and put in direct military rule, that was the worst by far; I had to personally execute my chief of staff to keep Ivan from simply purging all of us and putting in somebody like that Fred Phelps shitfucker they had running Arkansas for them to be the official "Civilian Affairs Liaison for the Texas Military District".

...do you know what it's like to have to put a gun against your co-conspirator's head and pull the trigger? And to do it while she's thanking you for giving her a quick and clean death, instead of what Ivan would have done to her in the "officer's club" before they finally got bored with her and threw what was left into a labor camp? And then to have to play along with the bastards that told you to do it when they start cracking jokes about her afterwards?

But anyway, as I said, doing what I had to do doesn't excuse it. And I know that. I didn't leave with the Reds because I was afraid of what would happen if I stayed, I left because I thought that if I could find some way of changing post-war Russia for the better then I could at least start to make amends for some of the things I did when I was Governor. And I feel like I'm making some real progress there at last, after two decades of trying to rebuild from the war while simultaneously leading the Russians to the society, economy and government they should have had if 70 years of Revolution hadn't sent them spiraling into the abyss.

But now that Cuba's gone, I have to come back. Because I know that you caught at least two of my people in Havana, maybe more, and they don't deserve what you plan for them because of what I told them to do. And because I'm old, and sick, and tired, and this is the last service I can give them and all the others.

And because after a quarter-century of having to live as an exile in body and spirit, I at least want to die at home.

Matt Wiser

That was what the Navy lecturer at the Air War College basically said. The Soviets had the navy they wanted to fight a NATO-Warsaw Pact war, but not a war mostly on this side of the world. And it wasn't easy to transfer ships from Northern, Baltic, or Black Sea to the Pacific: you have to go through Suez (and the Naval Attache at the embassy in Cairo just sat down in a deck chair alongside the canal, counted ships, and made a phone call to Raven Rock. It wasn't that hard to arrange a reception committee in the Indian Ocean (subs mainly, but if a carrier was escorting a tanker convoy....). Getting subs to the Pacific was easier from Northern Fleet, especially if they were nuclear boats: just go under the icepack into the Bering Strait. Ivan tried fighting a blue-water war on our terms, and paid the price. And so did we. Getting convoys to Cuba and Mexico seems the height of stupidity, and it was, but they got enough ships and stuff across to satisfy the Army. And sending part of Northern Fleet on decoy ops to draw Strike Fleet Atlantic away from the convoys (as they did on several occasions) did help.

The Aussie convoy route was the safest, they say. Only one convoy was ever attacked, but they still had to escort convoys from the West Coast via Hawaii and Samoa before the Aussies took over. If they hit one convoy, they can try for more.

Remember that the Navy did a good job in getting the supply ships headed to and from Alaska: 50% was the average attrition for a convoy. And it's a big reason the Soviets never tried moving south to the U.S.-Canada Border and into the lower 48 in that Spring-Summer '86 offensive. If they had....But that road led to Vancouver instead, and we all know what happened there.

jacobus

OOC:mad: The Sandman: What a post. I think this thread just keeps getting better. Keep it up.

trekchu

Well, The Sandman, you can die at home if you want, but two things: Never, EVER cross my path and tell me who you are, and secondly, better get a new identity while you are at it.

OOC: I second the above statement. It's time we got that perspective in here.

The Sandman

trekchu said: Well, The Sandman, you can die at home if you want, but two things: Never, EVER cross my path and tell me who you are, and secondly, better get a new identity while you are at it.

OOC: I second the above statement. It's time we got that perspective in here.

OOC: Thanks. Although I'm definitely going for more of a Mannerheim-vibe here, I think, although Vichy is also okay; that there would have been some collaborators who chose to do so because they felt that the alternative for their people would be even worse, and that in the worst-case scenario they could try to change things from the inside.

IC: Oh, no need for a new identity. As I said, I'm coming home to die. It's the price for getting my people who ended up in Cuba free. And it's also the only way I can hand over the list of people who I know tried to minimize the Communist atrocities, both in the US and in many other regimes around the world, without it simply looking like some sort of plea for my own absolution.

Besides, the ones who it was most critical to hide the identities of are all dead now. Most were executed by their own people, a few were taken down by your retribution squads, a few more were quietly "retired" by the Reds, and one or two actually managed to die of natural causes. Well, I think they did, at least.

So far as I know, now that Cuba has fallen, Russia is about to inaugurate its first truly democratically and fairly elected President, and China is disintegrating into civil war, I'm the last one left of my Black Orchestra whose position might be affected by the revelation.

Sigma7

jacobus said: I was a kid back then, but my folks were with the underground. Sometimes I wonder who had it worst, the folks in the warzone or those of us living in the "Peace States", as quaint a newspeak phrase as any for out and out right co-operation with Ivan.

The "Peace States"? Ha ha, what a great name! Are you adept at Paint? How about a map of North America too, to show us the extent of these "Peace States" where collaboration was the rule, the parts of the country where resistance to the occupation was so widespread and fierce that the ComBlock had to practically depopulate the entire territory, the irradiated zones, and the places in between.

"Peace States"...in the northeast, Pennsylvania west of the Alleghenys, west New York, once you get out of the city and the suburbs, New Hampshire and the Maine backwoods being the exception, were states that, if I remember the old cannard correctly:

"Sought peace and reconcilliation and a swift cessation of hostilities between the U.S. and the Soviet Union."

Of course, it was all a bunch of bullshit, but with DC gone, in those dark early days after Ivan dumped his bombs and put a lot of panic into an awful lot of people, opprotunists and Soviet appologists, "in the name of peace", of course, elected to try and "negotiate" with Ivan.

Some of those people had been elected, at least at the time they decided they were in charge, a lot of them, no one really recalled ever having voted for, but there were some rough times then; food shortages, medical shortages, riots and such, and someone needed to restore some sense of order.

At first, it seemed like the individual state governments were doing the job, but the political set, the local talkers and gadflys, accademics, campus politicos somehow seemed to take over the process at some point. They said they wanted peace and "dialogue" with Ivan.

That's when the "envoys" started showing up, for "talks". Thing most people noticed was that these "envoys" were so often accompanied by soldiers, small units, but soldiers none the less. "For security purposes" they said. Set up their own little "embassies" in the cities.

Embassies...damn things looked like the old U.S. Embassy in Saigon, except on steroids, with machine gun emplacements and barbed wire atop those high, thick concrete walls. Housed company sized units of Ivan soldiers, amongst other personel...

They were here "to talk" and "negotiate for peace", so we were told.

Seemed like they did a lot more than talk though. They had their black cars, shifty looking characters. Over time, we found out who those soldiers weren't just some random Ukranian farm boys, they were GRU and Spetsnaz, a means to an end.

The end? Keeping their "New American Commrades" in power, or place, depending on your point of view.

When the state National Guard and police forces; both municipal and state, became increasingly "uncooperative", the new political set, that kept invoking "emergency powers" to put off elections, began to rely heavily on the "Gruels" and "Spetters", as they were called, to "maintain order".

Seemed like they spent a lot of time training local thugs for the Bureau of Public Saftey as they called it.

They could call it whatever they wanted, still didn't change what they were.

At that point, you had only a few choices: "cooperate" (submit), resist openly, in which case you either disappeared of your own volition, into the backwoods and foot hills, with The Guard and the cops who refused to become apparatchik or sometime in the middle of the night, in the company of the BPS, or the Ivan alphabet soup; GRU, KGB, etc... or option number three, about the only thing guys like my father, guys with families who feared reprisal on their wives and kids if they don't show up for their work details for long periods of time.

The underground.

Underground life was rough; you lived amongst the stink of the collaboraters and Ivan's "emissaries of peace", did whatever job they needed done that your given skills were applicable to and kept your head down, trying to avoid contact with Beeps and Ivans.

That was your public life.

In basements, abandoned warehouses, safe houses and make-shift forward opperating bases, you had one goal: bring the fuckers down from within and live to do as much damage as possible.

It was like a strange mixture of the old Viet Cong cave systems and Belfast; a network of basements, sub-basements and root cellars, where workshops and communications centers, makeshift field hospitals and stash houses were set up, arms and infiltrators were stashed, bombs and triggers were stashed, stolen medical supplies were cached and the last remaining portal to our old lives, the radios, HAMs, short-waves, CBs, would be turned on for short periods of time, sending coded intel to the outside, at times with no certainty it would ever reach anyone and recieving information from the outside; Radio Free America, Radio Ressistance ("...with your voice of freedom, The Duke") and sometimes some words of encouragement from our men and women in the field.

If you were a kid, generally, you went to "school" or "Red-ucation" as we called it, where you were "taught" that the dictatorship of the proletariat was at hand and that the global revolution for a classless society and total equality would ultimately triumph over the decadent failures of western society.

That was school. After school, you were expected to report to your local "Youth Volunteer League" assemblies, where some dicksmoker college kid would tell you how great the "New World" was going to be, it was going to be the end of racisim and sexism and homophobia and social class structures.

One of the things I always noticed about those assemblies, the only people who did the talking were white and fairly well to do. More often than not, they were men too.

When not on YVL "community service detail" (which seemed to me to be little more than making signs with Party slogans, or greetings for more "envoys", or singing "patriotic" songs for some fucked up Ivans in ICUs and recovery wards at the local hospitals) you did what you could to resist with your mind, if your folks were doing their duty.

Like I said, my sister and I helped my dad build electronic radio bomb triggers and homing devices and repair "prohibited" radios. Stuff like that.

Learned a little bit about computers too.

Dad had an "unauthorized unit" in the workshop.

While dad never built a trigger that failed or homing device that went dead, that computer was where he did his finest and perhaps his most valuable work.

He had a tricked out 286, with custom modules and a "hot-line" modem.

Hacks that shut down sections of the power grid as the prelude to an attack or killed transmission of State TV, Radio, and Telephone services and maybe a couple that might have provided itineraries of "visiting dignitaries" or the daily schedules of certain apperatchiks. Viruses that turned State (and often times "envoy") computers into useless hunks of fdisk scrap. He wasn't alone, and maybe he wasn't even the best.

But he was damn good at it.

As fortunes changed and Ivan and his stooges started to get backed into the corner, things got more dangerous. You stayed off the street, not to avoid the Beeps, but to avoid getting hit by friendly fire in ambushes on Beep patrols or hits on apps, "envoys" and "officials".

At the bitter end, when the collective Guard units that had managed to withdraw to the safe zones in upstate New York made their big push against the "State's Guard Corps" and the SOCOM guys started opperation in our neck of the woods, the underground had surfaced and reprisals against collaborators increased proportionately to the decrease of Beep and SGC protection they had to hide behind. A lot of them fled. The ones who didn't...

Makes no difference now whether they got it then or got out on the last flights and subs out.

So long as their names are still "on The Board", they'll never get a good night's sleep or a second to let their guard down. They and people like them, inevitably, will have their day of reckoning.

It's our job to see to it they do.

[lordroel]

From page 50

trekchu

Weren't most NG units evaced? I mean 14th AD was made up by old NG units from several states, including Texas.

And mind you, most college people stayed loyal. Hell, the Division commander was a ex CPUS!

Sigma7

trekchu said: weren't most NG units evaced? I mean 14th AD was made up by old NG units from several states, including Texas.

And mind you, most college people stayed loyal. Hell, the Division commander was a ex CPUS!
Like I said, it was a bit different up here in New England.

We were in an interesting spot, geographically and also politically.

Colleges and univeristies like Wesleyan and Yale didn't exactly pump out (or cater to) the sort of folks who disagree (much) with the old Soviet canard or "Yankee Imperialism" or "Capitalist Opression", irony being most of those assholes came from the very privilaged backgrounds they sought to "put an end to". Further irony was found in just how badly they wanted to maintain that very "class system" once they got somebody with a gun to back up their mouths.

Ivan was able to put a few on target along the northeast corridor; DC and Philly being the two most prominant targets. They wanted New York intact though, still not clear as to why. From what I've heard, occupying New York was kinda like German 6th Army trying to occupy Stalingrad; by the time they'd cleared resistance to the point where they could actually set up shop, all they really occupied was a heap of rubble.

Furthest they sought to occupy was Westchester County, regardless, or maybe that's as far as they could go with the (relatively) limited force they landed there.

It sort of cut New England off from the rest of the country, not that the "peace delegations" from states like Mass., Vermont and Rhode Island helped any.

The NG in Connecticut had two choices: stay until they ran out of gas and ammo, or withdraw into western Mass., Vermont and upstate New York where they could recieve resupply from Quebec and Ontario (The logistics, I've been told, were a bitch, but so long as they could hold the airfields in Rome in NY, Westover and Barnes in western Mass. and establish control over Burlington in Vermont, the airlift, while often times trecherous, was able to keep them supplied and cycle in fresh troops and gear when needed) and then roll out probing attacks against Ivan's perimeter until they either wore him down or recieved enough reinforcement to smash through.

The Ivan garrisson in Boston was busy trying to maintain order in the city, while fighting an endless street battle against partisan resistance. On top of that, New Hampshire and Maine NG volunteers would often times slip through the back country, stage in Nashua or thereabouts and slip into Boston with "care packages" for the insurgents and provide some command and coordination.

Thing about Connecticut was pennetration. Ivan went about as far as Windsor Locks to secure the airport, tried to stetch it out to take Westover and Barnes but got his dick knocked in the dirt in the largest tank battle outside the great plains.

They tried a pincer, up from Windsor Locks in the south and in from the east out of Boston.

Well, Ivan had shitty intel or something because both drives ran into a wall of armor and a sky full of pain. Almost the entire Mass., CT., N.H., Vermont and Maine, and a huge chunk of NY State's NGs and AGs, with some Canadian Army armor units from Ontario and Quebec, backed with heavy artillary, civs with LAWs, and a mix of Air Guard and Air Force A-10s dumping "Hog Rounds" and tank killer bombs, Apaches with AT rockets, light vehicles throwing TOWs...the whole magilla.

Casualties were heavy on both sides, but the CAP took out their Migs fairly quickly, at which point, the A-10s and Apaches were able to make mincemeat out of their AFVs and tanks. Ivan went into that engagement with limited forces. Sizeable as they were, they used everything they could spare without totally conceding the garrisons in the major cities. The killed their offensive capability in-theater and spent the rest of the war dug in to defensive positions for the rest of the war.

At that point, "The Pail" as they called it, stretched from the Deleware river in the south, through a small corridor arround Philly, Westchester country to the ocean in New York, all of Connecticut, Rhode Island and eastern Mass. from Wooster to the bay, but it was a purely deffensive position. The shipped in a bunch of SAMs, but due to their more pressing needs elsewhere, reinforcement and replacement armor weren't in the cards.

The whole point of taking "The Pail", near as I can figure, was to try and construct a puppet regime and forge some sorth of SSR in the American northeast. That, and they needed ports for their surface ships and pens for their boomers and hunter/killer subs on the North American continent.

We've got portage in spades up here, including a couple of very well equipped (at least, Grotton WAS before the garrison blew it up before abondoning it) sub bases.
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ASoIaF: Of Wolves and Lions, Secrets and Lies, Shadows and Light (NEW!)

trekchu

OOC: Youve never seen the movie it seems. The map below shows the extent of the front at the beginning of the movie.


Sigma7

OOC: I HAVE seen the movie and this whole thread is flawed from the jump as it presumes the war started in 1985, despite the fact that the film's own literature says it takes place "in the near future" (ie; sometime after 1985) and there's ample evidence both OTL (to a point) and IN the movie itself that it couldn't possibly take place in 1985:

According to the Colonel, the whole reason for the Soviet invasion was that they had their "worst wheat harvest in 55 years", a possible reference to the Famine of '32-'34, resulting in food riots all over the Eastern Bloc nations.

At the earliest, that places the war's begining in at least 1987 or as late as 1989.

That's assuming the Cuba and Nicaragua are capable of :

1. Assembling 500,000 man armies. Each.

2. Overrun and control Honduras and El Salvador.

3. Settle a civil war in Mexico decively in favor of the Mexican Communists.

4. Prepare, plan and train for an invasion of the United States.

All in a span of 2-4 years.

Apply that to what we know of OTL and the Cubans and Sandanistas might be able to do 1 and 2 while Reagan's in office. The Dems contol congress, they're not going to authorize any use of force to stop the invasions. The international community will not give a shit enough to give it a second thought, unless they're hardcore Reds rooting on the advance of communism or hardcore anti-communist who nobody's going to listen to anyway.

HOWEVER...

#3 is TOTALLY out of the question. No way in hell Reagan (or most Democrats hoping for re-election, especially the ones from the western and border states) lets a Soviet Client State spring up in a large, populous nation directly on our southern border. If they've got a deal with Guatemala where they're training Zapatistas in Central America or sneking over the border into Mexico to arm and train the Zapatistas, that's plausible, but no way they're going to get Mexico with Reagan in the White House.

[At this point, we must abandon what we know of OTL after Regan leaves office because when the story was written, nobody knew who would succede Reagan or that the Eastern Bloc would begin to implode in 1989. But the writer doesn't know this when he writes Red Dawn so in the POV of the writer, theoretically, the following could happen...]

So, Jan. 20, 1989 at the earliest is when the Cuban/Sandanista forces invade Mexico in support of the Zapatista's that they've been training and equipping for some time now, in the midst of a civil war that could possibly be in it's infancy by now.

They've got at least a million troops (plus the additional troops from Honduras and El Salvadore) plus fairly modern Soviet hardware.

Still going to take time. Even if the initial victory on the ground is quick and unchecked by the U.S., they'll then need to:

1. Establish and secure the new Mexican regime.

2. Re-train, re-fit and re-constitute the Mexican army.

3. Compile the neccessary resources for future operations (especially oil and gasoline).

4. Establish trade agreements, treaties, supply lines and lines of communications throught out this Communista Bloc they've now assembled.

5. Prepare, plan and train ALL of their forces for an invasion of the United States.

If that takes less than 5 years, it'll be a miracle.

So, figure from the invasion of Mexico on Jan. 20, 1989, it takes five years for the the Communista Bloc to be ready.

The invasion in the film, if I recall correctly, took place in September so in September of 1993, the invasion begins AT THE EARLIEST.

However...

This actually could fit another period of poor harvests for the Soviets though, roughly.

At the height of the war on the eastern front in WW2 (1941-1945), I'm figuring Soviet wheat production was in rough shape. As bad as the Holodomor? Probably not, but pretty bad considering how much of the fighting chewed up their farm lands, so you have to figure the wheat harvests of that period were pretty bad.

Say the opperations in Mexico take a little longer (not an absurd possibility) and the whole thing isn't ready until 1996?

Now they're in the window for crappy Russian wheat harvests again.

Point is, what difference does it make what anybody puts into a broken thread.

Besides, the Colonel was only able to give the kids limited info as to what happened to the rest of the country.

For all I know, a Soviet nuke wipes me and my family off the face of the planet in a flash, but that's not a whole hell of a lot of fun to write about, now is it?


en.allexperts.com/e/r/re/red_dawn.htm

The link above is to a site that points to a 1988/89 start point, using the Holodomor as the bad harvest referenced to by the Colonel.
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Panzerfaust 150

The Sandman said: IC: Oh, no need for a new identity. As I said, I'm coming home to die. It's the price for getting my people who ended up in Cuba free. And it's also the only way I can hand over the list of people who I know tried to minimize the Communist atrocities, both in the US and in many other regimes around the world, without it simply looking like some sort of plea for my own absolution.

Besides, the ones who it was most critical to hide the identities of are all dead now. Most were executed by their own people, a few were taken down by your retribution squads, a few more were quietly "retired" by the Reds, and one or two actually managed to die of natural causes. Well, I think they did, at least.

So far as I know, now that Cuba has fallen, Russia is about to inaugurate its first truly democratically and fairly elected President, and China is disintegrating into civil war, I'm the last one left of my Black Orchestra whose position might be affected by the revelation.

You'll forgive me if I am not shedding many tears here. I had to help clean up the mess in the Alamo as a civilian consultant in Reno post-war. The forensics people involved? A full quarter of them have PTSD issues. I won't speak of the mass grave for the kids...you're putting political enemies up against the wall, yeah, I can see the sick logic in that. But their kids? And if you were at the occupied State level, you had to have dealt with Khvostov. Mishkin was dead by then...but Khvostov wasn't. I dealt with those animals. I helped put them away. And I have the nightmares, hyper awareness and flashbacks to prove it. They asked me to do it again for the bunch we caught in Cuba. I turned them down. Why? I've done my bit. Let somebody else have the nightmares. But buddy, whether you danced with the devil because you were trying to save others, or yourself, understand..I don't care to understand. I really don't.

OOC: Great post, my character isn't going to be charitable I am afraid. But good post none the less.

Matt Wiser

For Snowman: you obviously must've been in the Russian Republic in St. Petersburg. The Rump USSR still controls Moscow and much of the Russian heartland (and most of their ICBM force). China got nuked big time, and Taiwan is what most people think of as "China" today. Unless some warlord is super-nasty and his atrocities make the news networks on a slow news day. I won't shed much tears, though: collaboration is still collaboration. Given what we saw as our squadron moved back into New Mexico and Texas, anyone who collaborated with the Reds, unless it was under extreme duress, earns a trip to Federal Prison at the very least. Some of the ones who got to Havana, earned a death sentence (leaders of "auxiliary units" for example), and given how many mass graves we found on RF-4C or SR-71 imagery...those people involved fully deserve whatever comes to them. At least you're coming back to face the music. Get a good lawyer, son; you'll need all the help you can get.

sloreck

Panzerfaust:

Know where you are coming from. I'm not a forensic pathologist, but before I went with the amphibs and I was a doc with the Marine grunts every time we came to an atrocity spot you know the doctor was called to trry and make some sort of preliminary estimates and IDs. I trained at places with major urban knife & gun clubs & trauma units so before the war I had seen a lot so "routine" combat casualties never shook me up like they did some medical folks who had never seen all that before. On the other hand, those graves especially with whole families in them where I had to try & see if we could ID anyone, and estimate COD (cause of death) still haunt me. At one point only the regimental chaplain's bottle of Irish whiskey got me through one night (not Catholic but love that Jesuit). What I saw in Cuba at Gitmo tore open those scabs.

At one point I had to be restrained from shooting wounded POWs by by HMCS - only happened once, but I did snap.

This was all before I found out what happened to my family.

Sorry, but if you took one for the team to try and protect your people, you should have stayed and talked it out when the war ended. Finding an excuse for running to Cuba, sorry don't want you buried in our soil.

On the music note: "We Gotta Get Out of This Place" & "A Little Help From My Friends" were 2 hits for me.

On the how long note: As I said now retired from Navy & medical practice back getting a history PhD. Remarried, son & daughter - he's in med school on Navy scholarship, she's in college Marine option ROTC hoping to fly. My 2nd wife also lost her spouse in the war, a rabbi in the Army reserve who stayed with wounded that had to be left behind with volunteer medical folks because no transport. KGB major with forces that took field hospital had officers line up, looked at chaplain & devices on collar, said "Zhid" shot him in the head. Resistance caught that KGB officer 6 months later & it took him a week to die.

trekchu

I almost feel bad about how my family came through essentialy unscaved. So Sloreck, if you ever need someone to talk to: *insert random e-mail adress*. But I know a lot of people that lost many, many relatives.

Panzerfaust 150

sloreck said: Panzerfaust: Know where you are coming from. I'm not a forensic pathologist, but before I went with the amphibs and I was a doc with the Marine grunts every time we came to an atrocity spot you know the doctor was called to trry and make some sort of preliminary estimates and IDs. I trained at places with major urban knife & gun clubs & trauma units so before the war I had seen a lot so "routine" combat casualties never shook me up like they did some medical folks who had never seen all that before. On the other hand, those graves especially with whole families in them where I had to try & see if we could ID anyone, and estimate COD (cause of death) still haunt me. At one point only the regimental chaplain's bottle of Irish whiskey got me through one night (not Catholic but love that Jesuit). What I saw in Cuba at Gitmo tore open those scabs.

I can only imagine Sloreck. I was an investigator for the prosecution at Tier I and II, why the hell I got the job instead of some Army CID guy I will never know. I not only got to see the aftermath of the massacres, rapes, and god help me, other things I saw...but I had to then do follow ups with the animals accused of doing it. I've been in the same room three times with Sergei Khvostov, twice with Gennady Bratchenko...these were guys with families, people who didn't raise their sons to be butchers...but they were! I'm still trying to make sense of it all..my shrink at the VA helps...as does my wife, but forget...I can't.

Matt Wiser

I don't think there's anyone who didn't lose someone in the war. Friends, close relatives, immediate family, you name it. Prewar, if we lost a plane and crew, you went to a pair of funerals a few days later. During, you had a memorial service with the Chaplain, and five minutes after that, you're back in the cockpit. I had relatives living outside of Dallas, and most of them made it through the occupation. One died of a heart attack that the local "people's medical corps" wouldn't treat, and another was a random selection for a reprisal. One Soviet soldier's UAZ jeep ran over a homemade mine, and they just picked 20 people on the street, lined them up, and hosed them with AK-74s. No "summary proceedings", as Ivan was fond of, just grabbed 20 people at random, and that was that. That cousin was only 16. I manged to look them up after the D/FW business wrapped up in March of '88, and brought several cases of MREs (I had to do a few favors for our supply officer in exchange for the MREs) for them to get by until the Army got food distribution going again.

The Mann: Major Ray will be stopping over in Miami. The movie gear's on a charter, but the actors and others are going commercial to San Juan. Look for a near-lookalike of Demi Moore in AF blues in the transit lounge and that'll be her. Just ignore the scars on the arms from numerous rope torture sessions. Talk to her for a few minutes and you'll see why she wants certain Cubans now in the slammer to die slowly. Like I said earlier, if she'd stayed on active duty postwar, she'd be a bird colonel by now, with her own wing. Given what happened to her in captivity, I don't blame her a bit for getting out for a while.

Anyone who dealt with that bastard Khvostov, "The Butcher of Clear Lake City", has a lot of explaining to do. Don't know if Snowman saw the earlier threads about that SOB, but he took his ire out on a whole town just because the NASA people had evac'd Johnson Space Center lock, stock, and barrel, leaving empty buildings, empty homes, and a note pinned to the JSC Visitor's Center on NASA letterhead saying "Catch us if you can." By that time, they were well across the Mississippi. I met a few of the folks who flew the air evac side: the C-130, C-141, even C-5 and commandeered 747 freighters. Those people earned their pay, and got a lot of people and NASA's equipment to safety. What couldn't be flown, was trucked out, and who couldn't fly, was bused out. Everyone met up at Marshall Space Center in Alabama (Huntsville), and in a few weeks, they were ready to support the first wartime shuttle flight (a still classified payload...).

The Sandman

Panzerfaust 150 said: You'll forgive me if I am not shedding many tears here. I had to help clean up the mess in the Alamo as a civilian consultant in Reno post-war. The forensics people involved? A full quarter of them have PTSD issues. I won't speak of the mass grave for the kids...you're putting political enemies up against the wall, yeah, I can see the sick logic in that. But their kids? And if you were at the occupied State level, you had to have dealt with Khvostov. Mishkin was dead by then...but Khvostov wasn't. I dealt with those animals. I helped put them away. And I have the nightmares, hyper awareness and flashbacks to prove it. They asked me to do it again for the bunch we caught in Cuba. I turned them down. Why? I've done my bit. Let somebody else have the nightmares. But buddy, whether you danced with the devil because you were trying to save others, or yourself, understand..I don't care to understand. I really don't.
Matt Wiser said: ↑
For Snowman: you obviously must've been in the Russian Republic in St. Petersburg. The Rump USSR still controls Moscow and much of the Russian heartland (and most of their ICBM force). China got nuked big time, and Taiwan is what most people think of as "China" today. Unless some warlord is super-nasty and his atrocities make the news networks on a slow news day. I won't shed much tears, though: collaboration is still collaboration. Given what we saw as our squadron moved back into New Mexico and Texas, anyone who collaborated with the Reds, unless it was under extreme duress, earns a trip to Federal Prison at the very least. Some of the ones who got to Havana, earned a death sentence (leaders of "auxiliary units" for example), and given how many mass graves we found on RF-4C or SR-71 imagery...those people involved fully deserve whatever comes to them. At least you're coming back to face the music. Get a good lawyer, son; you'll need all the help you can get.

Watch the news tonight, son; as I said, I wouldn't be coming home if I hadn't finished my work here, and if I hadn't made sure that the reunification treaty included an order for my extradition as part of the official recognition of Soviet war crimes. And have some vodka ready to raise a toast to all those poor bastards who suffered and died over the centuries it took to finally bring Russia to what's going to be happening sometime between 7:00 and 8:00 in the morning Kiev time.

China... as I said, the few members of my Orchestra still there aren't going to be threatened by my revealing their identities; if you want to know why the Uighur Khanate and the Zhujiang Republic managed to pull something a bit more coherent and civilized together out of the collapse of the PRC than, say, in Manchuria, or Yenan, or Shandong, it's at least in part because my people and their Chinese contacts managed to keep those governments from tipping over from "harsh" into "oppressive" during the first six months of the 2nd Chinese Civil War.

Regarding the mass graves in Texas, I still feel that I kept it from being as bad as it could have been. For example, the uprising in Austin in late '87 that got me installed as Governor? Khvostov planned to literally decimate the city. Between the people who couldn't get out before the Soviets overran it in '85 and the people who'd come in from all over the Occupied Zone because of it, along with Dallas and my San Antonio, being one of the only places in the state still guaranteed to have some degree of food and semi-modern medical care, there were well over 700,000 people there when the revolt hit. When I was brought in after they shot the old governor, I managed to get the bastard to settle for only killing 5,000 people, and also got him to keep shipping at least half of the food he had his men "gather" into the cities. Otherwise, he'd have upped the percentage they were sending out to the Communist Bloc to 80%, like he did when he was the Military Governor of Oklahoma.

And I still couldn't save Houston. My only consolation is that most of the city's population was able to get out to Louisiana before the Reds took it, and that the Russian general who ended up running the Houston operation was one of the decent ones. If Khvostov's first pick hadn't been unfortunate enough to run into that surprise ambush on I-10 after someone leaked his travel arrangements, there wouldn't even have been the rooftop gardens or the local fishing that kept the starvation deaths down to only 45,000 or so before we retook the city.

By the way, your clean-up experts were lucky. They didn't have to see the Alamo People's Court while it was still running. And they didn't have to decide between sending entire families up against the wall or sending only the parents and teenagers up against the wall and then watching the younger kids get sent back to Russia for "deprogramming and re-education". The Reds had their quotas for every act of resistance, and they were going to fulfill those quotas regardless of what I did or didn't do.

They also didn't have to choose firing squads and prison guards for the People's Court. Ones that were made of the most decent people in the auxiliaries, the ones who joined because they were forced, or their families needed the rations, or who simply didn't realize the difference between textbook Communism and the real thing until it slapped them in the face, the ones who were most likely to break down or kill themselves because of what I made them do, because they were the only ones I could be sure wouldn't abuse the prisoners and would try to kill them quickly rather than dragging it out for their own amusement.

They didn't have to order the assassination of their own nephew because his plan to attack the Red destroyer squadron based at Ingleside by hijacking one of the oil tankers stuck in Houston and ambushing it when it came to investigate would have put every Red naval and air unit in the Gulf on high alert just one night before the Great Refugee Fleet set sail.

They didn't have to choose which of their people would have to stay behind when the Reds left so that the rest of the Orchestra would have enough time to set itself up in the Bloc before the inevitable retribution squads came hunting for them.

Don't worry about the lawyer, by the way; unless someone out there finds it necessary to make this an even bigger show than it already will be, I'm planning on pleading guilty. It's not as if there's insufficient evidence to convict me. And frankly, while the remorse is never going to go away, I have no regrets. I chose the best options that were available to me at the time, I prevented the Reds from putting in someone far worse when it still mattered, and I went into it knowing the consequences. All I ask now is that those who followed my orders be granted at least some absolution for their crimes. As their leader, it's all that I can do for them now.

sloreck said: Sorry, but if you took one for the team to try and protect your people, you should have stayed and talked it out when the war ended. Finding an excuse for running to Cuba, sorry don't want you buried in our soil.

The people who I'm trying to protect now are the ones I explicitly ordered to go to Cuba in the hopes of changing the regime from the inside. The core of the Black Orchestra, including myself, went to Russia because we were the ones who had the best contacts with like-minded Russians, and because as the critical target for our efforts I wanted to make sure that I had my closest compatriots with me to help.

And quite a few members of the Orchestra did in fact stay and take one for the team after the war ended. You executed them all, which they expected going into it, and which I had no possible way of preventing. But I'd at least like to try to give the people they left behind some peace of mind.
Last edited: Aug 25, 2009

Matt Wiser

They may go to prison instead of getting a noose. But that's not my call. Mountain Home's and Hill's legal officers say though everyone accused deserves the right to a fair trial and an adequate defense (and I know both of 'em pretty good), there's some people they wouldn't defend unless they got orders to do so. Anyone involved in those atrocities fits into that category. The AG and the Justice Department will be making those decisions, though. Be glad it'll be in Federal Court, though: a lot of collaborators faced military justice as the battle line went south in PRAIRIE FIRE. Or they were lynched by the people they'd been oppressing a few days earlier.

Phelps? That slime-licker has more stories 'bout his death than a cat has lives. Unless he's very underground, it's more than likely he's very dead. We never went after him, but the F-111s and land-based Navy A-6 guys and gals went after him several times, and never did get him. One story has F-4s nailing his convoy during the retreat from Arkansas during PRAIRIE FIRE I (on I-30) with Napalm and CBUs, with a final gun run, leaving no survivors. Another has him getting killed in a guerilla ambush in East Texas on the road to Houston (I think U.S. 59). Yet another story has him getting killed in a car bomb in Houston before GULF HAMMER kicked off, and of course, it's said he may have been on one of the evac flights from Brownsville to Havana that the Navy and AF were splashing in the final days of the war in the lower 48. Either way, he got what was coming to him, period. Whichever story you want to believe is up to you. Or come up with your own: he's never shown up in any of the leftie playgrounds postwar (Mexico City, Managua pre-coup, Havana, Pyongyang, or Moscow).

The Sandman

Matt Wiser said: Phelps? That slime-licker has more stories 'bout his death than a cat has lives. Unless he's very underground, it's more than likely he's very dead. We never went after him, but the F-111s and land-based Navy A-6 guys and gals went after him several times, and never did get him. One story has F-4s nailing his convoy during the retreat from Arkansas during PRAIRIE FIRE I (on I-30) with Napalm and CBUs, with a final gun run, leaving no survivors. Another has him getting killed in a guerilla ambush in East Texas on the road to Houston (I think U.S. 59). Yet another story has him getting killed in a car bomb in Houston before GULF HAMMER kicked off, and of course, it's said he may have been on one of the evac flights from Brownsville to Havana that the Navy and AF were splashing in the final days of the war in the lower 48. Either way, he got what was coming to him, period. Whichever story you want to believe is up to you. Or come up with your own: he's never shown up in any of the leftie playgrounds postwar (Mexico City, Managua pre-coup, Havana, Pyongyang, or Moscow).

Well, he didn't really fit in well with the Reds anyway; he and his priesthood worked with them because he thought that the Russkies were God's punishment against the US for not being a snake-handling medieval shithole. Needless to say, when he and a handful of his closest followers got out to Havana, the Reds decided that they might as well get some use out of them, preferably in some place where Soviet officials would never have to see them again.

I think most of them ended up at Kolyma, but I do know that Phelps himself, along with Mr. Falwell, got to spend the last few years in all-expenses-paid accommodations underneath Dzherzinsky Square, so that they'd be available if Russia needed them again for some reason. Like war crimes trials, for example.

While I may be the only one coming home willingly, I'm most certainly not coming home alone.

Matt Wiser

Phelps must've been appealing to Ivan: "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." How they took a religious zealot under their wing, though....the man must've thought he was doing society a favor. Too bad he's still alive: finding out he had more lives than a cat wasn't good to see. Lots of people want him dead. And I mean lots. He'd better have his will probated, sins confessed, and wearing Kevlar, because someone (more likely multiple someones) will take a shot at him.

The Mann: have you gotten any phone calls from the History Channel? I got one today: they're doing another season of Dogfights, and at least three episodes are about battles in WW III. They mentioned both MiG-29 kills of mine-by date and location. And the almost-unheard of: the F-4 killing a MiG-25. I told them that it wasn't a fight, just nailing him on takeoff, but to them....Someone at either AFHC or the Phantom Phanatics has been talking. They're also talking to the Marines and to the Cobra Chicks as well (they had some helicopter air-to-air against Hinds).
And did you see Major Ray on her layover? If you did, how'd things go?

So the Rump USSR and the Russian Republic are getting back together west of the Urals, eh? Good luck getting the Far East back under Moscow's thumb, though. That Far East Republic may be more than half Russian, but they like their independence. And they've got their own ICBMs (the SS-17 base at Svbodnyy), a few of the Pacific Fleet's boomers (Delta IIs and IIIs), and what remained of both Air Force and Naval Aviation's Backfire force. The ROKs, Japan, and Taiwan do a lot of business with them.

sloreck

Panzerfaust:Thanks. My wife and I have used each other over the years to put our respective demons in bottles. Been off sleep drugs for many years now, and only get a little bonkers when something triggers certain memories. Only thing I can't take is the smell of rotten meat - one whiff of roadkill on the highway and a mass grave opens.

There were 2 kinds of leaders who worked for the Judenrats under the Nazis - those who were appointed, and did the best they could never realizing it was heads I win tails you lose. Other leaders found reasons to use the situation for self-aggrandizement & used the Nazis as an excuse. There were plenty of "collabos" who were sleepers for the resistance and they came out after the war was over & their role was clarified. None of them had the balls to claim they had a vast clandestine organization that was going to (after the war) topple what was left of the USSR. Unless you have a burning bush, good luck.

OT: I suggest to reader "The Warsaw Diaries of Adam Czierniekow" to see the agony of a Judenrat leader trying to save his people by triage, who finally realized there was no way out.

The Sandman

Matt Wiser said: Phelps must've been appealing to Ivan: "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." How they took a religious zealot under their wing, though....the man must've thought he was doing society a favor. Too bad he's still alive: finding out he had more lives than a cat wasn't good to see. Lots of people want him dead. And I mean lots. He'd better have his will probated, sins confessed, and wearing Kevlar, because someone (more likely multiple someones) will take a shot at him.
Well, he's coming back with me. So if he gets shot, then you miss the trial.

Let me tell you, getting to inform Messrs. Phelps and Falwell of their impending return to the States was one of the few things I've done over the past 25 years that I can honestly say I enjoyed.


So the Rump USSR and the Russian Republic are getting back together west of the Urals, eh? Good luck getting the Far East back under Moscow's thumb, though. That Far East Republic may be more than half Russian, but they like their independence. And they've got their own ICBMs (the SS-17 base at Svbodnyy), a few of the Pacific Fleet's boomers (Delta IIs and IIIs), and what remained of both Air Force and Naval Aviation's Backfire force. The ROKs, Japan, and Taiwan do a lot of business with them.

Indeed they are. I believe that their hope is that they can eventually get the FER to rejoin; the new Russian Federation is... considerably less centralized than the empires of the White and Red czars ever were. It took some work to get them to agree to that for all of the shattered bits of the old USSR, but they finally came around once they figured out that it was the only way they'd ever have a chance in hell of getting the Ukrainians to sign on.

But I suspect that I will soon no longer be in a position to worry about how things will go between the Russians and the FER. So I'll just have to leave it up to them.

sloreck said:
Panzerfaust: Thanks. My wife and I have used each other over the years to put our respective demons in bottles. Been off sleep drugs for many years now, and only get a little bonkers when something triggers certain memories. Only thing I can't take is the smell of rotten meat - one whiff of roadkill on the highway and a mass grave opens.

There were 2 kinds of leaders who worked for the Judenrats under the Nazis - those who were appointed, and did the best they could never realizing it was heads I win tails you lose. Other leaders found reasons to use the situation for self-aggrandizement & used the Nazis as an excuse. There were plenty of "collabos" who were sleepers for the resistance and they came out after the war was over & their role was clarified. None of them had the balls to claim they had a vast clandestine organization that was going to (after the war) topple what was left of the USSR. Unless you have a burning bush, good luck.

OT: I suggest to reader "The Warsaw Diaries of Adam Czierniekow" to see the agony of a Judenrat leader trying to save his people by triage, who finally realized there was no way out.

My Orchestra wasn't as large as you might think. At its height, it consisted of myself and about 70 or so other members of the Occupation governments who wanted to find some way to atone for what they were forced to do, working alongside pre-existing reformist elements among the Red governments and militaries. Yes, they did exist, some of them for a very long time indeed. 20 members stayed behind in the US after the war, to buy time for the rest of us. Another 8 were discovered and killed by the Reds during the war, fortunately for resistance activities that didn't risk exposing the rest of us. 6 more died during the Red evacuation from Texas. Another 3 died in Mexico, 1 apiece in Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala. 2 in Poland, 1 in the DPRK, 1 when the Vietnamese disposed of their Soviet advisors, 7 over the course of the Chinese Civil War, 2 when the old Soviet Union finally came apart, another 9 of natural causes...

And in all honesty, this was something my chief of staff, my treasurer and I started trying to put together after my first week as Mayor of San Antonio. It was something that helped us get through the months that followed.

Matt Wiser

Concur with that, Sloreck. This guy had better have some proof. Otherwise....he'd better get a lawyer anyway for the penalty phase.

Not too many bad dreams or flashbacks, thank heavens. But some bad memories do pop up. Especially when someone brings out that RF-4C or SR-71 imagery of either a mass grave, especially if it was open, or of a POW or labor camp. Knowing what would've happened if Ivan caught me and my fellow aircrew when we were doing our E&E with the guerillas....it does make my skin crawl. And I saw some of that being done: a random reprisal for a couple of Cubans shot by a sniper. Just pick 40 people at random out of Trinidad or Walsenberg, make them dig, then they were lined up and machine-gunned. Later on, during PRAIRIE FIRE, we saw enough liberated POWs, labor camp inmates, and just plain folks who'd been throughly terrorized by the ComBloc. And that "Officer's Club" at the D/FW Airport Hotel, with an interrogation center and mass grave at the old Airport Security Office.....whoever gave orders for that forfeited their right to live.

At least Major Ray will be back in time for the Victory Day Air Show at Mountain Home: Hill's is a week after, so air show duty back to back. And my F-4E makes its debut at Mountain Home, with a brand-new paint job, civilian registration (as small as possible), and maybe some flying.

Snowman23

Matt Wiser said: have you gotten any phone calls from the History Channel? I got one today: they're doing another season of Dogfights, and at least three episodes are about battles in WW III. They mentioned both MiG-29 kills of mine-by date and location. And the almost-unheard of: the F-4 killing a MiG-25. I told them that it wasn't a fight, just nailing him on takeoff, but to them....Someone at either AFHC or the Phantom Phanatics has been talking. They're also talking to the Marines and to the Cobra Chicks as well (they had some helicopter air-to-air against Hinds).

And did you see Major Ray on her layover? If you did, how'd things go?

It seems lots of people are interested in WWIII now. I didn't get a call from the History Channel but I got a call from a guy named Hornfischer. He is a vet himself, but is trying to write books on the war, and he interviewed me on my service aboard the Ticonderoga during the Petropavlovsk raid. He was only a naval reservist due to some health problems from what eh told me, but he's writing all these books on WWIII at sea. I told him of my other services and he said he's save the number because he plans on writing a lot of books. He said this book should be out in one more year at most, 3 months at best, 6 months most likely, and we probably be called "A Navy's Fury: The Raid on Petropavlovsk and the Battle of Kamchatka". I'll have to buy it.

trekchu

Btw, 14th AD was asked to take part in the next Victory day Parade, and since my M1 is the divsional one from that time that still exists, you might get to see a 120mm armed one with Colorado plates when you watch it on TV.

jacobus

We've got portage in spades up here, including a couple of very well equipped (at least, Grotton WAS before the garrison blew it up before abondoning it) sub bases.

Great job, Sigma7! Wonder how many Seebees and SEALs demolition people sacrificed themselves, working to the last minute to destroy the submarine base, even as the enemy were rolling into town? God bless them.
Obviously, someone knew his history, and recalled previous debacles, like the fall of Singapore in 1942, or Cam Ranh Bay in 1975, where in the chaos no one made any effort to destroy the port facilities before the surren

[lordroel]

From page 51

Snowman23

Matt Wiser said: For Snowman: you obviously must've been in the Russian Republic in St. Petersburg. The Rump USSR still controls Moscow and much of the Russian heartland (and most of their ICBM force). China got nuked big time, and Taiwan is what most people think of as "China" today. Unless some warlord is super-nasty and his atrocities make the news networks on a slow news day. I won't shed much tears, though: collaboration is still collaboration. Given what we saw as our squadron moved back into New Mexico and Texas, anyone who collaborated with the Reds, unless it was under extreme duress, earns a trip to Federal Prison at the very least. Some of the ones who got to Havana, earned a death sentence (leaders of "auxiliary units" for example), and given how many mass graves we found on RF-4C or SR-71 imagery...those people involved fully deserve whatever comes to them. At least you're coming back to face the music. Get a good lawyer, son; you'll need all the help you can get.

don't ya mean Sandman?

Pepper13

What happened.

I remember quitting school and rushing over to the Midwest to help out on the American Front. I was recuruted into my Uncle's makeshift group, The Wanderers. We were sent out all over the Mid West, finding any others trapped in the abandoned towns and small Soviet patrols. I totaled over a hundred Russians in the Battle for Omaha and were the heroes of that battle when we hijacked a Soviet Tank and smashed though the perimeter of the Soviet Base and command center. One of our last battles in the upper Northwest was to take over Eppley Airfield. After the Soviets decided to launch thier escape flight out of the city, my Uncle shot it down with an RPG. The Wanderers are now deployed into any Soviet occupied area that is known as a Red Zone. Though the group has changed drasticly, Dax and I are the only remainin members of the original Wanderers.

TheMann

Matt Wiser said: I don't think there's anyone who didn't lose someone in the war. Friends, close relatives, immediate family, you name it.

Yep. My brother's best friend died on USS America, and his first girlfriend was a doctor who died when some Russian sub commander asshole sank USNS Mercy. (Whoever did that, you better hope we don't find you, you worthless piece of shit.) One of my buddies bit it in the cockpit of a F-16 over Colorado, and my best friend is a paraplegic after getting shot down in an A-7 over Western Canada. Yeah, I doubt there is anybody who didn't lose somebody. But if anything, it just made all of us more determined to kill these Red bastards.

Matt Wiser said: Prewar, if we lost a plane and crew, you went to a pair of funerals a few days later. During, you had a memorial service with the Chaplain, and five minutes after that, you're back in the cockpit.

Yep, and I do remember a couple cases back when I was flying the F-4s. But then again, losses among fighter pilots does tend to happen. The thrills do come with risks, and when you are flying at six hundred miles an hour a hundred feet off the water, it doesn't take much to crash into something.

Matt Wiser said: I had relatives living outside of Dallas, and most of them made it through the occupation. One died of a heart attack that the local "people's medical corps" wouldn't treat, and another was a random selection for a reprisal. One Soviet soldier's UAZ jeep ran over a homemade mine, and they just picked 20 people on the street, lined them up, and hosed them with AK-74s. No "summary proceedings", as Ivan was fond of, just grabbed 20 people at random, and that was that. That cousin was only 16.

Being that my family is mostly in the Pacific NW I never had to deal with that, but I know many, many people who did have to deal with that sorta crap. Did the commie morons not think that random reprisals had absolutely no effect on people's morale, and if it did it was to piss them off and cause even more problems then they already had?

Matt Wiser said: The Mann: Major Ray will be stopping over in Miami. The movie gear's on a charter, but the actors and others are going commercial to San Juan. Look for a near-lookalike of Demi Moore in AF blues in the transit lounge and that'll be her. Just ignore the scars on the arms from numerous rope torture sessions. Talk to her for a few minutes and you'll see why she wants certain Cubans now in the slammer to die slowly. Like I said earlier, if she'd stayed on active duty postwar, she'd be a bird colonel by now, with her own wing. Given what happened to her in captivity, I don't blame her a bit for getting out for a while.

I don't blame her, either, for wanting to get out. I'll be there. Maybe if she's got a little time, I'll take her up in the A-7. :cool: I have a big scar up the right side of my head from when my first hornet got shot down by a flak cannon, so scars if anything are to me just proof of what sort of person I am dealing with. And if she really does look like Demi Moore, I doubt I'll even notice the scars on her arms. I hope she knows that this is the "Superbird" from Keegan's books and from the movie that she's talking to.

Matt Wiser said: Anyone who dealt with that bastard Khvostov, "The Butcher of Clear Lake City", has a lot of explaining to do. Don't know if Snowman saw the earlier threads about that SOB, but he took his ire out on a whole town just because the NASA people had evac'd Johnson Space Center lock, stock, and barrel, leaving empty buildings, empty homes, and a note pinned to the JSC Visitor's Center on NASA letterhead saying "Catch us if you can." By that time, they were well across the Mississippi. I met a few of the folks who flew the air evac side: the C-130, C-141, even C-5 and commandeered 747 freighters. Those people earned their pay, and got a lot of people and NASA's equipment to safety. What couldn't be flown, was trucked out, and who couldn't fly, was bused out. Everyone met up at Marshall Space Center in Alabama (Huntsville), and in a few weeks, they were ready to support the first wartime shuttle flight (a still classified payload...).

I know one of the guys who evaced the Johnson Space Center, and you are right - they sent anything that could carry anything that way. I know some of the NASA boys got ferried out to USS Oriskany on a Chinook from the Space Center, and a Greyhound took 'em from Oriskany to Pensacola. They even sent up C-119s and C-123s to Johnson, to make sure EVERYTHING was packed up and moved out. No point in leaving anything the Red pigs could use, right?

Matt Wiser

The Mann: sinking a hospital ship really puts you on the wanted list, but we'd be court-martialing a corpse, as the K-386 (a Victor-III) was the guilty sub, and she was sunk on the way to Cienfuegos in Cuba (Ivan had an advanced sub base there), by U.S.S. Indianapolis. So the guilty captain paid, and fed the fish on the bottom of the Caribbean. The Caribbean, btw, was a shooting gallery for everyone involved, and neutrals stayed away for very good reason.

I've told her about you, and she should enjoy the meet during the layover. I don't blame her a bit for getting out for a while, either. But given her experience....one thing she says is that when she was at the March AFB hosptial a few days after coming home, they ran an experiment. She went to bed, and after she fell asleep, an orderly walked the hallway and jangled some keys. She woke up at once in a sweat, the feeling "Not again...", then she remembered where she was.

The ComBloc must've been following what the Germans did in Russia from 1941-44. The more reprisals against civilians, the more the civilians turn against you.

JSC was stripped clean, and I mean clean. From what one of the C-130 guys said (he was at the Air War College with me), they got everything out. All that bastard Khvoshtov found were empty buildings at JSC, and the homes of NASA employees empty. One of the assault carriers had finished up an overhaul at the shipyard in Mississippi at Pascagoula, and they sent Belleau Wood over to help with the evac. She carried people not only in the troop compartments, but on the hangar deck. And she carried the disassembled Saturn V that had been on display outside JSC, along with some of the other Rocket Park exhibits.

TheMann

I knew of Cienfuegos - I bombed it a couple times when I was in the F-4s - but I didn't know that somebody got that bastard. Good on the crew of USS Indianapolis. I think it's one of the Los Angeles class subs which survived the war, too. I know a bunch didn't make it.

I'm looking forward to meeting Major Ray. As for the experiment, I hope somebody smacked whoever thought that was a good idea. I was lucky enough to never have been a POW, and I thank God every day for it. I would hope that people ate a hospital would know better, too. As for reprisals, as I understand the smarter Soviet commanders avoided such things and actually tried to make like somewhat comfortable for the people in occupied zones. I doubt it made much of a damn, but at least these guys used their heads, and probably lived long enough to be tried for war crimes instead of beaten to death by an angry mob.

The Sandman

TheMann said: I'm looking forward to meeting Major Ray. As for the experiment, I hope somebody smacked whoever thought that was a good idea. I was lucky enough to never have been a POW, and I thank God every day for it. I would hope that people ate a hospital would know better, too. As for reprisals, as I understand the smarter Soviet commanders avoided such things and actually tried to make like somewhat comfortable for the people in occupied zones. I doubt it made much of a damn, but at least these guys used their heads, and probably lived long enough to be tried for war crimes instead of beaten to death by an angry mob.

If it had only been that pleasant for them. Most of the Soviet commanders who still had a core of honor and decency were either purged by Khvostov and his KGB buddies when Khvostov was made a Marshal and given command of the entire American theater in early '88 or committed suicide when they just couldn't take what the war had turned them into anymore.

The rest... as far as I know, the only decent Soviet commanders who made it out were the handful who had been sent to the labor camps back home instead of being shot out of hand during the purges. The rest stayed behind with their men and were either lynched or captured and tried.

You want to know what was really funny, in a twisted sort of way? The GRU was actually one of my best allies on the "try to restrain the atrocities" front, albeit more from practical concerns. Looking back on it, I don't think it was coincidence that Khvostov's promotion and the wide-scale adoption of his methods happened a week or so after all of the GRU operatives in the occupation force were replaced by KGB agents.

Matt Wiser

Khvoshtov was the KGB chief in Texas, which by that time was just about 2/3 of Texas, after PRAIRIE FIRE I and II. I've read that there were several attempts on his life, and not just from resistance people. Panzerfaust mentioned his superior, found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, mentioning in his diary that Khvoshtov and his methods had fueled more resistance activity than he'd managed to suppress. I'll bet the GRU tried to kill him, and given KGB/GRU rivalries, that'd be no surprise. The guerillas tried at least once, and the sick bastard burned a whole town to the ground in retaliation. Panzerfaust also mentioned the...creature's trial, and the sicko basically defended himself right into a noose. They say both Goering and Juilus Streicher did the same at Nuremberg, so no surprise that some of these scum-suckers would do the same here.

Keegan has a chapter on the Winter of '87-88, where both sides were building up for what even his Russian Republic sources say was the expectation that, unless the U.S. screwed up big time, would be similar to the Vistula-Oder offensive in 1945, with the ComBloc in the Germans' place. Several convoys, despite the USN's best efforts, arrived in Mexican ports and delivered enough stocks of fuel, ammo, and replacement vehicles to get the ComBloc defense organized. But the U.S. and its allies were building up as well, though we were hampered by a lot of torn up railroads and roads, and supplies were slow to build up at first. In addition, Schwartzkopf and Powell met in OKC with the JCS and hammered out the plan for LONG RIFLE: the return to the I-10 line, and even did some preliminary work for BORDER FURY: the return to the Rio Grande. The ComBloc commanders knew that come spring, a large U.S. and Allied offensive (ROKs, Aussies, etc), was coming, and there wasn't much that they could do to stop it, after the failure of Midland-Odessa, which had burned up nearly all of their reserves. Raids, skirmishes, and other activity were the norm along a 700-mile front, from El Paso in the West to the I-45 corridor in the East. All the Soviets could do was wait for what was coming, and try some spoiling attacks in the meantime.

The Mann: how'd the meeting go? I did tell her about you, and she was looking forward to the meeting. Chances are, when you flew over Cuba, she may have seen your F-4 from one of the POW prisons.

TheMann

It went quite well, thank you. You got the part about her being a Demi Moore lookalike right, they do look alike. Though I must admit to the fact that seeing a woman like that being treated so badly by those Cuban pigs makes my blood boil that much more. Call that masculinity, hormones or whatever the hell ya like.

I didn't get a chance to take her up in the Corsair, but I did tell her all about my exploits in my F-4s and F/A-18s. She knew my name and a fair bit about my efforts (I think I know where she got the info from, Matt ), but I must admit I didn't know as much about her as I wish I did. I said right up front that if I asked a question she didn't want to answer, I'd drop the subject right there. That never came up, though. She's got quite a bit of willpower, that woman. I think anybody who says that women cannot fight as well as men needs to meet this woman. Seriously.

Matt Wiser

Find her book, it's on Amazon. The paperback for the movie tie-in should be out soon, though. She dedicates the book to her WSO, who didn't come back from Cuba. Kelly Ann was the pilot, and responsible for her backseater. Call it survivor's guilt. She came home in March '90. He didn't. That explains some of her not staying in for a while after homecoming. Then she got that job as a Deputy Sheriff in Pocatello, and then joined the 419th-she was there before I was-but we've gotten along fine. In fact, when she returns from this TDY for the movie, she'll be the new ops officer for the 419th-the previous one got transferred by Delta from SLC to Chicago, so he has to pack up and leave the 419. There's an F-16 unit in the Illinois ANG at Springfield, so he's joining the Guard His loss is Kelly Ann's gain (and hopefully a promotion to Lt. Col., if I have anything to say about it). And she's likely going to be on Court TV anyway, if the trials are going to be televised like the Tier I and II ones were, or the Grim Reaper's.
You still run across some of those Neanderthals every once in a while, unfortunately. After four years of war, the Cuban blockade post-Armistice until Fidel cried uncle, and all the postwar skirmishes, expeditions (Salem's bombardment in Yemen, for example), and the like, women have proved themselves time and again (ask the Cobra Chicks, my wife, that female Cav Squadron CO in 3rd ACR, or Lori Sheppard-the former guerilla now Sheriff, to name a few examples). Major Ray gave a talk at Utah State last year, and there were a few who wanted to go back to the prewar days as far as women in the military go, but they were a distinct minority.

What were you doing that winter of '87-88 while getting ready for LONG RIFLE? We were helping clean up the D/FW mess, so flying 3-4 times a day as weather allowed, and wondering why the Army was taking so long to clear out the D/FW Metroplex. Schwartzkopf went through one Corps Commander and two division commanders before he got the performance that "The Bear" was demanding. Quiet winter, as some of the books say? Not in that part of Texas. And it was a long winter and Spring rainy season-LONG RIFLE didn't kick off until mid-May.

Matt Wiser

Guys, has anyone read a book by a Brit author-Beevor I think is the guy's name-which goes into the war from PRAIRIE FIRE to BORDER FURY? If anyone's got any positive (or negative) reviews on it, put 'em out there, because I haven't seen it yet, but it's been advertised in the Borders in Ogden, and at the one in Pocatello as well. Bowden's got his book on the Cobra Chicks coming out by Christmas, and that's one I'm looking forward to reading.

Also, any news on the FOX series on the Wolverines? IIRC Senator Mason was going to be a technical advisor to the show, but her campaign for Governor of Colorado might get in the way.

One precondition to LONG RIFLE was the wrap-up of the Dallas-Fort Worth campaign, and it wasn't until 10 March 88 that the last of the ComBloc forces in the Dallas-Fort Worth area were rooted out. Schwartzkopf could finally concentrate on LONG RIFLE prep, and get Fifth Army ready to move south. Sixth Army-now commanded by former III Corps Commander Gen. Fred Franks after Gen. Michael Brandon died of a heart attack-also had took until March to wrap up what was left of Midland-Odessa and get set for the next round. And of course, Third Army (Powell) was set and ready to break out to the north out of Houston to push up the I-45 corridor to meet up with Fifth Army, somewhere between Houston and Dallas.

trekchu

I haven't read the book, but several blogs on the internet have good to very good reviews. Some moan about how they concentrate on the Commonwealth contributions, but that's only to be expected.

Chuck Mandus

Matt,

I just talked to the man with the Sopwith Camel, he will be willing to exhibit his plane, just give him a call and it will be arranged. He will even fly it at any airshows you might schedule too.

Matt Wiser

Chuck, I've gotten in touch with him: he'll be going to Scott AFB for the National Victory Day Air Show-the Scott AFB folks will be handling the details. And yes, he gets a C-20 ride with his family, his Camel rides in a C-17, and they get put up in VIP Quarters on the base. Hope he enjoys it.

The Air War College had a study on the non-Soviet ComBloc contribution when I was there in 1991-92. It's been declassified for about ten years, and I got a copy via AFHC. They rated the Cubans, East Germans, and North Koreans as most willing to do any mission. The Poles and Czechs were loyal as long as the ComBloc was winning, but when PRAIRIE FIRE started, they began to have other ideas: at Cannon AFB after it was retaken, we had a number of Czech AF people in the EPW compound, and they wanted to work on the base. You'd have 40-50 Czech EPWs, with only one or two guards, and none of them escaped or caused trouble. One day, as we were going out to the flight line to mount our aircraft, we found that every AF and Marine F-4, Marine A-4, and Marine A-6 had been washed until it was spotless, along with the Army and Marine Medevac choppers-inside and out. I've heard the Poles were just as cooperative once they were captured. Libyans and Angolans were more...unreliable-and one Soviet officer called both of them "absolutely useless, with Mexicans not far behind." The Nicaraguans were the same as the Czechs and Poles. But there was one interesting thing: as BORDER FURY pushed down to the Rio Grande, the Mexicans often fought like lions. They had been told that if they lost north of the river, the U.S. would grab several Mexican states on the border as "compensation" for Mexico's involvement in the war. III Corps in San Antonio was the first to find this out, along with X Corps in El Paso. I'll bet that II MEF in Corpus Christi did the same.

Getting the NASA stuff out took a lot of doing, but it was done. C-5s, C-141s, C-130s, requesitioned 747 freighters, you name it, by air. Several freighters, along with the assault carrier Belleau Wood, hauled what couldn't be flown out or trucked out, and several long convoys of trucks and buses hauled everything from people to the JSC Visitor's Center exhibits, to moon rocks, shuttle simulators, you name it, they hauled it away to Marshall Spaceflight Center in Huntsville, AL. One of the naval history magazines a few years ago had an article on the Belleau Wood's participation in the Houston evac-seeing the dissassembled Saturn V, in pieces on the flight deck, in photos was something. All three stages were next to each other on the flight deck, and one of the Little Joe boosters used for abort flight tests right behind that! That flight deck was crowded with rockets and other outdoor exhibits.

Trekchu: thanks for the update: I'll check those online reviews.

Matt Wiser

Trekchu: I did find some reviews, and yeah, he covers the Commonwealth a little more than the U.S., but hey, they helped us out big time, and one can say the favors owed from the two previous world wars were repaid. You can tell, one of the bloggers says, when the first picture in the photo section is of a British Cheftain and a Canadian M-113 "somewhere on the Alberta-Sasketchewan border, June, 1986." what he's emphasizing. He also treats the Aussies and Kiwis a lot, and one blogger gives credit where it's due, as there hasn't been a book (in North America anyway), dealing with the Aussie 1st Division's contribution, serving with III Corps.

One thing NASA learned since the war is to have a backup mission control ready just in case something happens in, or to, Houston. Ever since the end of the war, NASA has a fully operational mission control on standby at Marshall Space Center (their wartime home), just in case. A couple of times in the '90s, they had to activate the backup when hurricanes threatened the Houston area and a shuttle was in orbit. Glad to see wartime lessons still being heeded.

The Mann: you were in Corpus Christi after it was retaken, right? Were the Mexicans as tough there, like they were in El Paso and San Antonio? The Air War College study says they were, but I've read other accounts that present a mixed picture: some did fight like lions, but others were more like Italians in WW II: fire a few rounds, then surrender and they'd thank you for not killing them. Given that a lot of 'em had not much of a choice to join the Mexican Army, the latter doesn't surprise me at all. But others, though....San Antonio, Laredo, Eagle Pass/Del Rio, and El Paso, were quite the opposite.

And here's the best way to encounter a T-72: this one was a victim of PRAIRIE FIRE in Central New Mexico. One of our former ALOs had all of his wartime photos scanned and put on a CD, and he sent me this pic.

T-72_spalony.jpg

Dathi THorfinnsson

Matt Wiser said: Trekchu: I did find some reviews, and yeah, he covers the Commonwealth a little more than the U.S., but hey, they helped us out big time, and one can say the favors owed from the two previous world wars were repaid. You can tell, one of the bloggers says, when the first picture in the photo section is of a British Cheftain and a Canadian M-113 "somewhere on the Alberta-Manitoba border, June, 1986." what he's emphasizing. He also treats the Aussies and Kiwis a lot, and one blogger gives credit where it's due, as there hasn't been a book (in North America anyway), dealing with the Aussie 1st Division's contribution, serving with III Corps.

OOC: Alberta-Manitoba border!?:confused: Talk about a dystopia!

Matt Wiser

OOC: Sorry about that, I'll edit it to be Alberta-Sasketchewan. That's what happens when you're typing and the allergy meds are kicking in....

sloreck

Grad school first classes are tomorrow - quite a summer - finish classes, back on active duty & down to Cuba with the Marines - now back to school. Be interesting to see if I run into any types here who bemoan the demise of "Socialist-Progressive Cuba". All 3 ROTC branches got together for a seminar on the lessons of Cuba & I'll be talking about amphib warfare & military medicine. Also first 2 weeks of January, before Christmas break is over I'll be giving a series of lectures to the officers at Marine Corps University on the development of medical doctrine for amphibious warfare, and medical planning input for major OPLANS. On a less salubrious note was informed either deposition or prescence may be needed for the new war crimes trials as I was senior medical officer when we found the Gitmo graves.

My experience with the Mexican POWs I either treated or had to clear medically (before i went to the Tarawa ) was that most of them were campesinos drafted & indoctrinated that they were going to liberate their oppressed brethren in el Norte, and inciddentally liberate the wealth of el Norte as reparations for Gringo misdeeds. Hispanics in the US military freaked them out, and they wer genuinely shocked that "los Marinos" did not torture them as a matter of course. Of course a few were hard cases.

Matt Wiser

Let us know, Sloreck, if you run into such people. Some college campuses haven't caught up with the times, it seems. Kinda galls you, doesn't it? You put your life on the line defending this country against the worst foreign invasion it's ever seen, we've had millions dead, millions more homeless, a good chunk of the country was torn to hell, and you still have people bemoaning the fact that we won. And now they wail about us settling old scores with the Cubans? You might ask around and see if there's any fellow vets on campus. Maybe you can dig up some old secrets on those people. Hidden service in an "auxiliary" unit, perhaps? Or serving on one of those "Soviet-American Friendship Committees" in occupied territory. Do some digging, put an ad in the Campus newspaper, then sit back and watch the fireworks.

If I were you, I'd get ready for testifying at whatever tribunal is being established. Hell, one of the Tier II trials had some of our CSPs and the squadron flight surgeon testify about a mass grave they found in New Mexico, and since the doc was the first medical officer there, he got called in to testify. Doc Curtis never did say what he'd seen, not even at squadron reunions. The CSPs, though, did tell us that there "about a hundred" bodies in the grave, and they looked like they'd been dead for a year or so. This was west of Fort Sumner, btw. Quite a few locals came from Fort Sumner to see if missing loved ones were there, and some of them were, unfortunately. One more score to settle....

[lordroel]

From page 52

The Sandman

Matt Wiser said: Let us know, Sloreck, if you run into such people. Some college campuses haven't caught up with the times, it seems. Kinda galls you, doesn't it? You put your life on the line defending this country against the worst foreign invasion it's ever seen, we've had millions dead, millions more homeless, a good chunk of the country was torn to hell, and you still have people bemoaning the fact that we won. And now they wail about us settling old scores with the Cubans? You might ask around and see if there's any fellow vets on campus. Maybe you can dig up some old secrets on those people. Hidden service in an "auxiliary" unit, perhaps? Or serving on one of those "Soviet-American Friendship Committees" in occupied territory. Do some digging, put an ad in the Campus newspaper, then sit back and watch the fireworks.

Ah yes, these people. I remember them quite well. The Reds were always pretty careful to keep them well away from the worst areas; didn't want any of the useful idiots to get a good long look at what they were really supporting. The one time they got the timing wrong, when that group from Reed College ended up in Laredo just as the local garrison was suppressing the food riots, all of the students and half a dozen Red lieutenants and NCOs ended up in front of the Alamo to keep things quiet. That was back in... mid '87, I think? I honestly can't remember at this point, given that I spent most of that summer just trying to keep San Antonio from getting treated like Laredo or Houston.

If I were you, I'd get ready for testifying at whatever tribunal is being established. Hell, one of the Tier II trials had some of our CSPs and the squadron flight surgeon testify about a mass grave they found in New Mexico, and since the doc was the first medical officer there, he got called in to testify. Doc Curtis never did say what he'd seen, not even at squadron reunions. The CSPs, though, did tell us that there "about a hundred" bodies in the grave, and they looked like they'd been dead for a year or so. This was west of Fort Sumner, btw. Quite a few locals came from Fort Sumner to see if missing loved ones were there, and some of them were, unfortunately. One more score to settle....

I'll second that suggestion. The first batch of Class A and B war criminals from the former Soviet Remnant came into St. Petersburg just two days ago, and the other two shipments are coming in later this week. Figure that the formal extradition of all the outstanding war criminals from the American front should be happening by next week at the latest. Including myself, of course. Obviously, I'm no longer in a position to know precisely what either the U.S. or Russian governments are doing, but when I officially turned myself over after Reunification Day they were finalizing security arrangements to make sure that I and the others would make it to San Antonio alive. Or Austin, or Dallas, or wherever they finally decided to put the big show. Though I'm hoping San Antonio. I'd at least like to see her again before I go.

Matt Wiser

For some of those "useful idiots", they have found out that people still have long memories, and in many cases, won't forgive or forget anyone who collaborated with the enemy. And many of those in "auxiliary" units actually took part in atrocities-go back to some of the earlier posts and look at what some of 'em did to a farm family in Colorado who helped me and my back-seater on our E&E. The daughter (now the County Sheriff) was the only survivor, and that because she was still on her way home after getting us to the guerillas. There was also a UC Boulder prof who hid his service in an auxiliary unit, until some blogger exposed him. The resulting firestorm wound up driving the guy not only out of Colorado, but out of the country (He's in Mexico City now, and he broadcasts and blogs from there-he needs a laser-guided wake up call real bad). Too bad he got out of the country before the FBI got to him: they say there was a grand jury indictment waiting to be unsealed after his arrrest. It's still sealed, but talk in Colorado (I was giving a lecture to AF Academy Cadets at the time) was that the charge was Treason.

Well, having been one who flew missions in Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin, San Antonio, and Laredo, there was plenty that had been trashed. In San Antonio, 1st Cav got to the Alamo via a gap in the Cuban-Mexican lines, and cleared the area around it, and Kelly AFB was taken by 5th Marine Division, but most of the rest of the city was a mess. Some grounded Cuban paras held out in the area along the River Walk, and that was a brawl, getting them cleaned out. 27th Marines had that one, with no quarter given or asked by the Cubans. The Marines returned the favor: no prisoners were taken. San Antonio's been largely rebuilt: the Phantom Phanatics had their reunion there last year at the Mariott on the River Walk, and except for the bullet and shrapnel holes along parts of the River Walk, you'd never know there'd been a pitched battle there (except for the T-62 sitting in front of the hotel...). Too bad you won't see much from your jail cell, if they do send you there.

The Mann: Major Ray wrapped up the Puerto Rico filming today. Man, how time flies. Now it's off to SoCal and the studio, for all the interior scenes, including the prison ones. She has a cameo in one of the scenes they've already shot at Hill, btw.

Matt Wiser

This one's for Chuck and The Mann: One thing that the Raven Rock mess involved were some PA ANG A-7s; they had been prepping to deploy to Chanute AFB in Illinois when the Spetsnatz made the botched drop, and the A-7s were called in to do some strafing runs as the 42nd ID and Marines cleaned the Spetsnatz troopers up. This pic was posted online, but was originally in the Osprey Book USAF A-7D Corsair Units of World War III. It's of one of the PA ANG birds heading out to Raven Rock, taken from a wingmate's aircraft. And The Mann: if you haven't gotten a copy yet for your friend, that'd make a great gift for his birthday or Xmas, whichever is first.



Pyro

Matt Wiser said: Well, having been one who flew missions in Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin, San Antonio, and Laredo, there was plenty that had been trashed. In San Antonio, 1st Cav got to the Alamo via a gap in the Cuban-Mexican lines, and cleared the area around it, and Kelly AFB was taken by 5th Marine Division, but most of the rest of the city was a mess. Some grounded Cuban paras held out in the area along the River Walk, and that was a brawl, getting them cleaned out. 27th Marines had that one, with no quarter given or asked by the Cubans. The Marines returned the favor: no prisoners were taken. San Antonio's been largely rebuilt: the Phantom Phanatics had their reunion there last year at the Mariott on the River Walk, and except for the bullet and shrapnel holes along parts of the River Walk, you'd never know there'd been a pitched battle there (except for the T-62 sitting in front of the hotel...). Too bad you won't see much from your jail cell, if they do send you there.

I heard it the Alamo took some extensive damage, how did the restoration go?

TheMann

Thanks for the headsup Matt, but I already got a copy of it for the Buddy. Hit birthday is next month. They mention his unit by name in the book, the 276th Tactical Fighter Wing, and their operations during the Siege of Vancouver and over the Pacific NW, as well as over Western Canada.

I was in San Antonio last year, and the Alamo's repair went just fine. They are still working on trying to get the shading of the ruins right, but that's a tough process trying to match to a 170-year ruin.

USS Texas finally got moved back to its old berth in Houston, too, you guys hear? It's great to hear. I was in Florida when a couple of (very) brave tugboat crews yanked the thing loose and dragged it all the way to Tampa. A bunch of guys from Houston actually wanted to dry dock it and put it back in the fight, but the Navy didn't think the old beast would do any good. That didn't stop a Texas vet from WWII who just happened to be a Wall Street big shot from paying for its restoration, figuring once it was active, the Navy WOULD commission the thing again. I don't know if the Navy ever did, but I know just before I left Florida for the Midwest, the rag-tag crew drove the thing out of Tampa and out into the Caribbean. I fully expected to get called in with ASW torps to save their butts, but they drove it all the way to the Big Easy and back, no sweat. I'd say that was the biggest case of civilians saying "ya know what, fuck the Russkies, I wanna do something about them." Restoring a 27,000 ton battleship gets attention.

Workable Goblin

The problem with the Texas is that it has the old 14"/45 Mk. I guns, and while the Navy might have plenty of old 16"/50 ammunition lying around for the Iowa's, it probably doesn't have much ammo designed for guns almost 30 years older. So, it would probably end up being an expensive liability in terms of actual war-fighting ability. Still, driving it across the Gulf in the face of the enemy...that crew had some guts.

TheMann

truth is life said: The problem with the Texas is that it has the old 14"/45 Mk. I guns, and while the Navy might have plenty of old 16"/50 ammunition lying around for the Iowa's, it probably doesn't have much ammo designed for guns almost 30 years older. So, it would probably end up being an expensive liability in terms of actual war-fighting ability. Still, driving it across the Gulf in the face of the enemy...that crew had some guts.

That's what I figured the problem was. But yeah, you gotta have guts to drive a ship that size across the Gulf, when enemy subs could still sneak in and Cuba is only a couple hundred miles away......

Matt Wiser

The Alamo wasn't all that banged up on the outside, other than small-arms fire, but remember what Panzerfaust said earlier? The ComBloc used it for an interrogation/torture/execution site, and the Mexicans had pretty much desecrated the interior before 1st Cav got there. I've heard the place was wired, but some engineers from 1st Cav's 2nd Brigade managed to cut the wires and prevent the demolition. The River Walk and the HemisFair Plaza, OTOH, the Marines compared those two to Seoul and Hue. After Kelly AFB was declared open by AF Engineers, 335 deployed there from Bergstrom AFB outside Austin, and we did some CAS inside San Antonio: wheels up, orbit, ID the target the FAC or ALO was describing, drop your ordnance, then get into the traffic pattern, land and rearm, a quick brief, then get in line to take off and do it again. We could've gone to Randolph AFB northeast of San Antonio, but the F-111 guys had blasted the runways too good, and they were still under repair. Nice to see an entire MiG-23 Regiment still sitting on the ramp in the RF-4C pics as the Army closed in....too bad 23rd ID didn't leave any intact for us flyboys and girls to play with. An M-1 battalion simply rolled onto the base, found the MiGs, and shot up the whole bunch. General Tanner (10th AF CO) was pissed to say the least. His intelligence officer went ballistic.

Hey Mann, glad to see your buddy has the book. They're coming out with a companion book on the Navy A-7s (both land- and carrier-based) soon. And Osprey's also got one of their Elite Aviation Series coming on the 4th TFW. Seems someone has been getting in touch with F-4 guys from all four squadrons from the 4th, and this fella's doing a book on the whole Wing.

Major Kelly Ann Ray is now in L.A., where they'll be shooting the prison interior scenes and some other shots for the Showtime pic. She said in a phone call that some of the actors playing guards are uniformed so accurately that she had to pinch herself to remind her it was a movie set and not the real deal. The cell blocks and other prison sets "took me back", she said. The movie should be out in time for the 20th anniversary of the POW release from Cuba next March.

Moving a World War I era battleship? Those guys had guts. It beat scuttling her, though.

Now that the film crews have all left, I can finish Keegan. Next up is LONG RIFLE: from the I-20 to the I-10 line.

The Sandman

Matt Wiser said: Well, having been one who flew missions in Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin, San Antonio, and Laredo, there was plenty that had been trashed. In San Antonio, 1st Cav got to the Alamo via a gap in the Cuban-Mexican lines, and cleared the area around it, and Kelly AFB was taken by 5th Marine Division, but most of the rest of the city was a mess. Some grounded Cuban paras held out in the area along the River Walk, and that was a brawl, getting them cleaned out. 27th Marines had that one, with no quarter given or asked by the Cubans. The Marines returned the favor: no prisoners were taken. San Antonio's been largely rebuilt: the Phantom Phanatics had their reunion there last year at the Mariott on the River Walk, and except for the bullet and shrapnel holes along parts of the River Walk, you'd never know there'd been a pitched battle there (except for the T-62 sitting in front of the hotel...). Too bad you won't see much from your jail cell, if they do send you there.
Hmm, I was more hoping that the tribunal would be held there. As I personally expect that I'll be rather beyond the need for a jail cell afterwards.

...

Is the Cathedral of San Fernando still there? Or the old houses along King William Street? The Brackenridge Park Zoo, did they restore it, or the little train through the park?

And is the Fiesta as grand as it was in the old days? Even though I knew it was the right thing to do, canceling it while I was Mayor felt like tearing the heart out of my childhood.

Did my city come back, stronger and better than it was? Please, give me at least that much, for everything I surrendered in her name!

Please.

Matt Wiser

It was interesting, seeing places us Phantom drivers, both USAF and Marine, had flown over, and in many cases, bombed. There's a few buildings downtown that are kept as war memorials or museums, and there's a large museum with war relics-from AKs to T-80s and a Hind-D helo, at Fort Sam Houston. Kelly AFB's airpark has not only Air Force relics, but a pair of Cuban MiGs (a -21 and a -23) on display. The zoo's been restored, as have a lot of the historic buildings, but remember that the Cubans, Nicaraguans, and Mexicans fought like tigers to keep III Corps from taking the city. There's also a Sea World Texas, complete with shipwreck aquarium-the wreck depicted is a Kresta-II class cruiser....In San Antonio, you do have to look a little to find war damage, but it's there. When Lisa and I were there for the Phantom Phanatic reunion, there was some excitement as a nearby construction site had to be evacuated-seems the workers dug up a live 152-mm shell and EOD from Fort Sam Houston had to be called in. Took 'em a few hours to get the round out of there.

Matt Wiser

Well, finished Keegan's next chapter, which deals with LONG RIFLE; here's Part I:

The U.S. Summer Offensive in 1987 that went from the I-20 to the I-10 line. The offensive actually started on 30 April, a few hours before May Day dawned in Moscow, with the idea of giving the General Secretary an appropriate May Day wake-up call. Sixth Army from Midland-Odessa to Fort Worth, Fifth Army from Fort Worth to Tyler, and Third Army was roughly along U.S. 59 from the I-20 junction down to Houston, and along the Houston Perimeter. Keegan notes (and I saw, flying over Sixth Army's AO), that in that part of Texas, the battle lines were very fluid and open, with the ROK Expeditionary Force, II Corps, and III Corps going through Ivan's lines "like crap through a goose", as Patton would've said. Schwartzkopf had a tougher time with Fifth Army's attack down both I-35 and I-45, as the Soviets had scraped together an ad hoc reserve built around HQ 3rd Shock Army and four tank divisions that hadn't finished their rest and reequipping after Midland-Odessa, and that reserve was committed against Fifth Army. Third Army had a slightly easier time than Schwartzkopf, but Powell unleashed the 101st Air Assault Division in a division-sized air assault north of Houston at Huntsville, which unlocked I-45 for the rest of XVIII Airborne Corps.

Lots of guerilla activity, and Keegan's Russian sources say that one Soviet general (CO, 20th Guards Army) compared the guerilla activity to that before BAGRATION in 1944. You name it, the guerillas attacked it: fuel and ammo dumps, supply convoys headed to the front, sabotage of telephone and power lines/poles, culvert mines on the roads, the whole bit. The ComBloc in many areas fought fiercely, and contrary to what was happening in parts of West Texas, it was a fighting retreat. But there were signs that the ComBloc was getting fragile, with 3/3rd ACR rolling into Waco without firing a shot, and the Cuban CO there deciding that enough was enough, formally surrendering his division to Lt. Col. Monica Vansen, commanding officer of 3rd Squadron, 3rd ACR.

It took two weeks for XVIII Airborne Corps and XV Corps from Third Army to link up with VII Corps from Fifth Army on the I-45, the former pushing up I-45 past Conroe and Huntsville, and the latter breaking out of the Lufkin area. The meet with 13th ACR (the Hell's Angels) was not even at a town, but at mile marker 171 on I-45. To the west, though, V Corps was encountering stiff resistance, and south of Waco, III Corps found the going getting tougher the further south they went. Not until 10 June did III Corps retake Fort Hood, its prewar home station, after a pitched battle involving two KGB Motor-Rifle regiments, and the 3rd Guards Tank Army (from the Kiev Military District). Believe me, it was pitched-the KGB boys didn't retreat, counterattacked whenever they could, and refused to give up, period. 3rd GTA, running low on fuel after a road march from Victoria, stood firm and refused to budge. Then we in 335 and the Marine A-6s discovered a new tactic: "tank plinking". III Corps had their MLRS guys deal with the air-defense radars and SA-6s/-11s, and then both squadrons used laser bombs to kill dug-in tanks and APCs. 23rd ID and 5th MarDiv thanked us a lot for that, but give the Russians credit; they held on until it was no longer possible, and what was left of 3rd GTA pulled back towards Austin. The two KGB Motor-Rifle Regiments literally fought to the last man and last round-like the Japanese in WW II. Then it was on to Austin for III Corps. V Corps and VII Corps teamed up for Bryant/College Station-we didn't fly there, but it was a brawl, from what we heard.

TheMann

That was your guys in the F-4s at Fort Hood, Matt? Shit, we mighta met at some point then. We got called in when III Corps finally made it back to Fort Hood, too, because the Russkies needed to keep that base and knew it. Damned Frogf**ks again made life difficult (though III Corps' infantry guys now had plenty of Stingers, which ate the Hinds for breakfast) so they called us in to clear the airspace. The Russians figured this out pretty quick, and shot at us with the SA-6s, but that just gave away their positions. Whatever III Corps commander who thought of blasting those things with the MLRS, thank you. Very Much. That musta been you guys going tank plinking then. You mighta noticed my guys doing the same. They tried to send a relief convoy from Austin. My squadron and one of the A-10 squadrons fixed that problem, there wasn't much left when they made it to Fort Hood.

I was there also for Powell's Air Assault, my unit was covering the 101st as they went in. The ComBloc guys in Huntsville panicked when the 101st came at 'em, and we added to the panic when a bunch of F-111s showed up with Maverick and Shrike missiles, and lots of 500 and 1000 pound bombs. The ComBloc guys called for air support, which in this case meant Su-27s from Houston. (God, I hate those damned things.) Worse still, we had no AWACS support after a lucky Russian got the E-3 that was with us from behind. (Bastard.) We lost two Varks, two Phantoms and an Eagle (taking four MiGs and a Sukhoi with us though) before a E-2, which scrambled out of Memphis, caught up to us and got our AWACS back online. The Frogf**ks that followed the Flankers caused Powell a few headaches, though five of them got shot down doing so. (At least one ate lead from a M167, because by that point they had DU rounds for the 20mm Vulcan. Nice shooting by the M167 shooter.)

Kevin in Indy

Good News!

Had to give a shout out to one of my nephews, who completed Marine Basic Training in California this week! Not sure where he's heading, but I know some of you folks would appreciate it.

(OOC - really happened - not sure if there's a way to work him into any story lines, but hey...)

Matt Wiser

The Mann: yeah, chances were, we met in the air and didn't know it. When we did our tank plinking, it was with four GBU-10s or -12s, a Pave Spike pod in place of the right front Sparrow, and a centerline tank in case we had to loiter before going in, plus a full load of 20-mm for the Vulcan, JIC. The 36th TFW (formerly at Bitburg in West Germany) did top cover for us in their F-15s, and kept the Fulcrums and Floggers at bay. And the MiGs didn't bother us. Were you down by College Station and Bryan? That was a real brawl with V and VII Corps and 20th Guards and 1st Guards Tank Armies. Back and forth for, what was it, two weeks, before VII Corps finally took College Station and Ivan evac'd Bryan because he'd been outflanked.

I think it was the Marine FACs with 5th MarDiv who suggested taking the SAMs away via MLRS. III Corps said "why not?" The rest you know. It was a race between 1st Cav and 5th MarDiv to get to Hood: the Cav didn't want their prewar home station recaptured by Marines, and 1st Cav won-but the Marines blocked the retreat of those two KGB Motor-Rifle Regiments; not that they wanted to retreat in the first place.

Kevin, your son might wind up either in Gitmo, or with 5th Marine Division in Baja. Yeah, Baja is a "hardship station", but it's the strangest one I've seen. It's practically a state for all intents and purposes: the locals either have petitioned for statehood or have the intent of doing so, English is taught in school alongside Spanish, all the networks have affiliates in Esenada and La Paz, etc. Oh, the Mexicans squawk every so often about taking it back, but they don't have (a) the forces, and (b), an ally to rebuild their military. Having half a dozen different insurgencies going on down there also has something to do with it. He'll like the fact that many of the businesses down there offer military discounts to the garrison-AF, Army, Navy, and Marines.

TheMann

Matt Wiser said: The Mann: yeah, chances were, we met in the air and didn't know it. When we did our tank plinking, it was with four GBU-10s or -12s, a Pave Spike pod in place of the right front Sparrow, and a centerline tank in case we had to loiter before going in, plus a full load of 20-mm for the Vulcan, JIC. The 36th TFW (formerly at Bitburg in West Germany) did top cover for us in their F-15s, and kept the Fulcrums and Floggers at bay. And the MiGs didn't bother us. Were you down by College Station and Bryan? That was a real brawl with V and VII Corps and 20th Guards and 1st Guards Tank Armies. Back and forth for, what was it, two weeks, before VII Corps finally took College Station and Ivan evac'd Bryan because he'd been outflanked.

I think we probably did meet, then. Our Hornets worked with the 36th TFW on that one. They kept the Flankers off our backs too, while we got the job mostly of busting the Frogf**ks before they hit anybody and then doing a little damage ourselves. Most of the time, the loadout was four Sidewinders, four Mavericks and a centerline tank, plus a full loadout on the 20mm Vulcan, of course. The Sidewinders were for the aircraft (and any helis that hadn't been shot down yet), and the Mavericks usually were for shooting at command posts and the like. You could blast a tank with one but we mostly left that to you Phantom drivers, because GBU-10s and -12s are cheaper.

Yeah, my squadron got called into it at College Station. Two dozen sorties in two weeks, two MiG-29s shot down and lots of Mavericks and GBU-10s and -12s later, and we'd done our jobs. (To the utmost.) Two of my squadron's planes fell to SA-11s during that time, my first run in with those forsaken things.

Matt Wiser said: I think it was the Marine FACs with 5th MarDiv who suggested taking the SAMs away via MLRS. III Corps said "why not?" The rest you know. It was a race between 1st Cav and 5th MarDiv to get to Hood: the Cav didn't want their prewar home station recaptured by Marines, and 1st Cav won-but the Marines blocked the retreat of those two KGB Motor-Rifle Regiments; not that they wanted to retreat in the first place.

And not that 1st Cav or the 5th MarDiv wanted them to get away anyways, not after what some of the KGB guys did in Texas. We wanted those divisions drawn, quartered and displayed for all to see, and thanks to their determination, that's what they got. The Marine FACs played smart then. Using an MLRS to knock out SAMs is like shooting a chicken with a 12-gauge. Bloody effective, but you have a lot of pieces to pick up afterwards.

sloreck

Mann:

Speaking of 12-gauges I took my Remington 870 wingmaster with me when I was called up right after the start, got a 24" barrel for it. Used 3" mag buck loads for it and carried all the time with 4/14 & 14th Marines, 1st FSSG & took it with me when I went on the Tarawa, as well as a .45. In my BAS it was right by the front of the tent so whoever was running casualty receiving had it right to hand. Nobody ever gave me any grief about "personal weapons" either.

Came in handy during the Petropavlosk raid. We were going through the HQ building (where we left a "present" on the CO's desk). Some doors were locked and when the Marines saw the doc with a shotgun, I obliged by doing it the cop way - 1 shot for each of the hinges, one for the lock - "open sesame". Early on in the war did have to use it a couple of times when infiltrators got in to the arty HQ area where the BAS was - one Cuban stepped in to the BAS figuring fun with the medical folks - a microsecond later he looked like the headless horseman in a bad horror film.

Matt Wiser

Our CSPs had some shotguns, usually Remington 870s, but a few of 'em went to Vegas on R&R and came back with SPAS-12s. Those things came in handy a few times. When going off-road on a weekend pass, we'd usually pack M-16s. In the air, we'd carry a 9-mm or a .45 in our holster, and one of the parachute riggers designed a holster for a CAR-15 or an Uzi-sized SMG inside your parachute harness. How he did it, I have no idea, but he sold it to General Tanner when he came by in June of '86. And it was adopted by the Air Force later that year. In peacetime, it would've taken two or three years at least before the AF would adopt such a piece of gear. In wartime, it took six months at most. Most downed crews who evaded capture or weren't picked up by the CSAR folks had to have more firepower than a pistol, so...a Phoenix gun dealer did a nice business in Uzis and HK-94s (civilian version of the MP-5) before we could get them via official channels-and yes, he gladly modified them to go full auto, free of charge.

When we weren't tank plinking, a usual CAS or BAI load was six Mark-82s on the inboard pylons, six M-117 750 pounders on centerline, two wing tanks, three AIM-7s, and an ECM Pod. With Sidewinder rails just above the TER rack for the Mark-82s, we had four AIM-9s in most cases. And of course, a full load of 20-mm for the Vulcan cannon. Mark-20 Rockeye CBUs often replaced the M-117s or Mark-82s if armor was expected, and a dedicated anti-armor mission would have up to six Maverick missiles (2 or 3 on the triple launcher), plus CBUs, the Sparrows, and the ECM pod. And on many occasions, napalm was the requested ordnance, and dropped.

One thing that people may find interesting: TacAir buzzed Waco just before Lt. Col. Monica Vansen rolled in to accept the surrrender of the Cuban garrison. It wasn't us, but I would imagine that seeing a bunch of fully laden A-7s or A-10s buzzing Waco would have given the Cuban CO in Waco more reasons to sign on the dotted line instead of fighting it out.

The Sandman

Location:A twisty maze of passages, all alike
OOC: Do we have some sort of rough unified timeline going here? It would help a lot just to be able to quickly skim that for major details instead of having to go back through all 50 pages.

Matt Wiser

War begins 14 September 1985.

PRC is hit by nuclear attacks and ceases to exist as unified country. UK Government flees to Canada after Soviet Air and Naval attack. Stalemate on both U.S./Canadian Border and Plains by end of October. Beginning of widespread guerilla activity in occupied territory.

ADVENT CROWN, first U.S. counteroffensive, begins April 22, 1986. Repulsed and Soviet bloc Spring-Summer offensive begins. Offensive fails to take Lincoln, NB, St. Louis, and cut I-90 in Wyoming. U.S. counterattack returns ComBloc to start line. Soviets begin British Columbia campaign in June, resulting in Battle of Vancouver, which lasts until Feb 1987. Siege of Denver continues.

1987: Soviets pull back from Vancouver in Feb. PRAIRIE FIRE, the first successful U.S. Offensive, begins in May. Siege of Denver lifted mid-May. By August and September, U.S. and Allied forces are on the Red River (TX-OK State line) and have cleared Arkansas, Eastern New Mexico, Eastern Colorado, and the Texas Panhandle. Both sides dig in for fall and winter. BAOR "administratively returns" to UK, and Collaborationist Government is removed. HM Government returns from exile in Canada. First signs of unrest in Warsaw Pact countries. GULF HAMMER, the airborne and amphibious assault on the Houston area, is executed in early Sept. Midland-Odessa offensive in December-January is repulsed by U.S. and Allied forces.

1988: Near-Coup in West Germany topples Green-dominated government. West Germany declares all Green government actions "null and void", and openly calls for German reunification, by force if necessary. Other "neutralist" governments in former NATO countries have similar turnovers in government. First signs of unrest in Soviet Union's Transcascucus Republics and in Central Asia. Operation LONG RIFLE begins 30 April, the advance to the I-10 line in Texas. I-10 line is reached by 1 July, but battle for San Antonio lasts until 25 July. El Paso falls on 20 July. U.S. Third Army pushes further south, to Corpus Christi, which falls on 1 Aug. Hurricane season forces both sides to dig in again, as four storms between mid-August and mid-October affect operations in the Gulf of Mexico, Texas, and the Carribbean. Limited U.S. and Canadian offensive in Alberta.

1989: Widespread unrest spreads throughout Warsaw Pact states, in Soviet Central Asia, and Transcauscus. Civil War begins in Uzbekistan, spreading to other Central Asian Republics by June. Kazakhs declare Independence 1 July, followed by other 'stans. Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia follow. West Germany attacks Soviet forces in East Germany. East Germans rebel, and Poles declare formal withdrawal from Warsaw Pact, as does Hungary and Czechoslovakia, essentially coming to a separate peace with U.S. and Allies. Soviets try last-ditch offensive to retake Corpus Christi and fail. BORDER FURY-the drive to the Rio Grande, begins 1 August. By end of August, U.S. and Allied Forces are on the Rio Grande everywhere but South Texas-Roma to Brownsville. Soviet and ComBloc pocket is gradually squeezed until Soviets formally surrender on 5 October 1989. (Now celebrated as Victory Day) Mexico asks for armistice same day. Civil War spreads across USSR, with Baltic States, Beylorussia, and Ukraine declaring independence, and a Russian Republic is declared in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). A Far East Republic (Siberia and Maritime Provinces) is declared as well. Soviet forces in Alaska and Canada ask for cease-fire and permission to withdraw. Unconditional surrender is demanded by both U.S. and Canada, and accepted on 1 Nov. Cuba and North Korea refuse to accept Armistice. Rump USSR agrees on 31 December.

1990: Civil War is widespread in USSR. U.S, ROK, and Australian forces retake Guam from North Koreans. NK Government accepts armistice in Feb. Cuba accepts armistice 1 March after U.S. naval blockade becomes total.
Peace agreements between former Soviet Republics and U.S. agreed in July, with Russian Republic in August, and Far East Republic in Sept. Rump USSR, Mexico, North Korea, and Cuba refuse. U.S. and Allies remain technically at war with all four countries until Cuba invaded by U.S. forces to support anti-Castro uprising in 2009. Baja California occupied by U.S. Forces at request of Baja's two state governments, and becomes a U.S. protectorate.

[lordroel]

From page 53

Matt Wiser

Hey trekchu, where were you for LONG RIFLE? V or VII Corps? You may have seen our F-4s over Central Texas (we didn't just support III Corps, you know) on more than one occasion.

trekchu

We were wit VII for LONG RIFLE. Unfortunately we spent most of the early stages refitting.

Matt Wiser

Which means you missed the fun at Bryan-College Station. Be glad you did, because that one was a knock-down, fangs out, full-fledged brawl. Both cities changed hands at least twice, before College Station was taken by VII Corps, and Ivan pulled out of Bryan because he'd been outflanked. I've read that was the first time the U.S. Army ran into the ALA punks, any truth to that? III Corps did run into some in San Antonio-some just threw their AKs down and raised their hands-you know, the ones who joined just to get three meals a day and some extra ration cards for their families, and you did feel sorry for them, and the ones who'd been press-ganged into joining. The more...dedicated ones had to be rooted out, and these ones had a habit of not making it to the EPW compound, if you know what I mean.....

Hey Mann, did you ever hear the call sign "Starbuck" on the radio in Texas? That was then-1st Lt., now Lt. Col., Kara Sackhoff. She drove her F-4 like she'd stolen it, and did a few things in the air that made me, as squadron CO, question her sanity. Even now, I can't believe some of the stuff she did, but the three DFCs she got prove it. Like taking on eight MiG-21s with only two Phantoms-Herself and her wingie? She got three, the wingie got two, and the rest headed back south in wild disorder. By rights, one of those F-4s should've gone down, but both made it back to Bergstrom (this was after Austin had been liberated) without a scratch, but the maintenance guys had to check her plane-she'd tripped the G-Meter and had potentially overstressed the airframe. Her crew chief lost count of how many times he had to do that-Kara was that wild in the air. She runs the 390th TFS at Mountain Home, but if she gets promoted (as is somewhat likely) she'll go down to George AFB at Victorville as XO in the 35th TFW, or to La Paz AB in Baja to help run the composite wing there. (one squadron each of F-15Cs, one of -Es, and one F-16C squadron) If she gets Baja, I told her during the movie filming to "Pack your bikini."

Whatever happened to Ralph Nader since the war ended? He was pretty liberal, or "progressive" as they used to say amongst themselves, but since the immediate postwar years, he's kept a low profile. He wasn't in occupied territory as far as I know, but has anybody heard what exactly he did, or was he keeping his head low (and on his shoulders) for the duration? At least he's kept his mouth shut about the new muscle cars coming out of Detroit-the retro looking Mercury Cougar/Dodge Challenger and the '60's looking Camaro. This fighter jock wants one of the former.

TheMann

Matt Wiser said: Which means you missed the fun at Bryan-College Station. Be glad you did, because that one was a knock-down, fangs out, full-fledged brawl. Both cities changed hands at least twice, before College Station was taken by VII Corps, and Ivan pulled out of Bryan because he'd been outflanked. I've read that was the first time the U.S. Army ran into the ALA punks, any truth to that? III Corps did run into some in San Antonio-some just threw their AKs down and raised their hands-you know, the ones who joined just to get three meals a day and some extra ration cards for their families, and you did feel sorry for them, and the ones who'd been press-ganged into joining. The more...dedicated ones had to be rooted out, and these ones had a habit of not making it to the EPW compound, if you know what I mean.....

As one who flew air support several times during the Bryan-College Station slugging match, you aren't joking. I could see the guys on the ground, and if I was flying low level it often got hard to aim, because I REALLY didn't want to misplace my bomb and hit a M1 with it. That got easier once we started getting Mavericks in number, then we just went straight over their heads and fired once we were over the front lines, and the Mavericks always hit something.

Matt Wiser said: Hey Mann, did you ever hear the call sign "Starbuck" on the radio in Texas?

More than once. That was a couple nutcases in a F-4 who just about got themselves killed a bunch of times. I got told more than once to move out of the way for them, and they came blasting through, burners on, a hundred feet (if that) off the ground. Lunatics.

Matt Wiser said: That was then-1st Lt., now Lt. Col., Kara Sackhoff.

That was her? You shittin' me? :eek:

Matt Wiser said: She drove her F-4 like she'd stolen it, and did a few things in the air that made me, as squadron CO, question her sanity.

No question to me. Anybody blasting in at better than the speed of sound in a heavily loaded Phantom at a hundred feet off the deck is either awesomely brave or completely, totally insane.

Matt Wiser said: Even now, I can't believe some of the stuff she did, but the three DFCs she got prove it. Like taking on eight MiG-21s with only two Phantoms-Herself and her wingie? She got three, the wingie got two, and the rest headed back south in wild disorder. By rights, one of those F-4s should've gone down, but both made it back to Bergstrom (this was after Austin had been liberated) without a scratch, but the maintenance guys had to check her plane-she'd tripped the G-Meter and had potentially overstressed the airframe. Her crew chief lost count of how many times he had to do that-Kara was that wild in the air.

I tripped the G-meter a few times in the Phantoms over the Carribbean, usually when a Cuban AF plane of some sort showed up, but what I saw of this woman and what I've heard tells me she is either totally nuts or awesomely brave.

And yes, against eight MiG-21s, both Phantoms shoulda gone down, but then again, the quality of Russian pilots was horribly unequal even at the best of times, and we all got kinda good at kicking the Flying Brick into doing what we wanted them to.

Matt Wiser said: She runs the 390th TFS at Mountain Home, but if she gets promoted (as is somewhat likely) she'll go down to George AFB at Victorville as XO in the 35th TFW, or to La Paz AB in Baja to help run the composite wing there. (one squadron each of F-15Cs, one of -Es, and one F-16C squadron) If she gets Baja, I told her during the movie filming to "Pack your bikini."

I haven't been to Baja, but from what I've heard calling it a 'hardship station' is pretty idiotic, the locals love us down there. I know the huge Hispanic community in Miami makes sure I am always practically drowning in free drinks. I bring my Air Force ID along with me, and that's usually enough to get into anywhere I wish. If I get lucky, somebody recognizes the callsign, in which case my food and drink is often on the house. When I was a younger man, lots of the ladies would want me, too. Of course, being married by then to a former special forces soldier means I don't go for any of those women, her finding out could be a rather big problem if I did dabble around, and I'm not so stupid I think I could hide it from a woman who made a living tracking down Spetsnaz.

Matt Wiser said: Whatever happened to Ralph Nader since the war ended? He was pretty liberal, or "progressive" as they used to say amongst themselves, but since the immediate postwar years, he's kept a low profile. He wasn't in occupied territory as far as I know, but has anybody heard what exactly he did, or was he keeping his head low (and on his shoulders) for the duration? At least he's kept his mouth shut about the new muscle cars coming out of Detroit-the retro looking Mercury Cougar/Dodge Challenger and the '60's looking Camaro. This fighter jock wants one of the former.

Nader showed up in Florida last year, speaking to Florida's Hispanics. His best quote got a lot of attention here - "America isn't perfect, but it sure as hell beats most of the alternatives, and at least we here can change our fates." He was NOT a fan of the guys who sided with the Reds, calling them "a disgrace to American liberals." He's still pretty critical of comporations and the US Government, but he's still quite obviously pro-American and anti-Soviet. Glenn Beck called him a Red last year on CNN and Ralph punched him out for it.

As for the cars, I'm a proud owner of a 2000 Chevrolet Corvette with a lift-off roof. 5.7 liter V8, six-speed stick shift and a raft of upgrades. I bought it after it had been in an accident, and one of my old squadron mates' son owns a body shop in Miami Beach, and he fixed it for me for peanuts.

The upgrades came from a Cuban refugee, a local Pioneer distributor, who was a Mariel boatlift survivor who got to go see his old home after we kicked over Castro. He read about my unit in the papers (one newspaper did a story on me being an ace in WWIII who 20+ years later added three more kills to my sheet), and called me and my squadron up, wanting to thank us for the work we had done and the sacrifices we made, and whether we wanted any work on our cars done. Eight of us said yes, and he made a few calls to his buddies. My car got, and I'm conservatively guessing here, at least $20,000 in work done - new stereo, bodywork modifications, wheels, seats, exhaust system, GPS unit, paint, window tint, the whole works. It went from Red to being color-changing blue to green. I love it, and I demanded the guy who did it sign his name on the dash as a thank you for doing it.

I gotta agree on the new Camaro, though. I like the Challenger better myself, but both look very nice indeed. :cool:

Matt Wiser

The Cobra Chicks were pretty active there as well. If you heard the call sign "Angel" from a female voice, that was them. Only these were the Angels of Death. Popping tanks with TOWs from treetop level, or killing Shilkas (ZSU-23-4s) and SA-9s or SA-13s to make it easier for the fast movers were their specialties. Those gals never had a problem buying their own drinks, from either the armor or infantry people, or from us fixed-wing types-anyone making air-defense assets go away is always a friend.

Yeah, Kara was (and still is) pretty wild. Only now, Kara is Lisa's problem. At least my wife only sticks her nose into Kara's squadron when she has to, which isn't often. Kara often flew as my No. 3 when I led four-ships, and she listened to me until I called "Fight's on", and she and her wingie did their stuff their way, not mine. The previous CO (rest his soul) she nearly drove crazy, but there was no arguing with results. There was a time at Sheppard when we had problems with low-flying MiG-21Rs doing recon runs, and never could get in the right place at the right time to intercept. Kara went up on a "maintenance check flight" with her wingie, listened to AWACS report the -21Rs inbound, and she pounces like a mountain lion jumping on a goat. Kara took the lead Fishbed and nailed him with AIM-9, saw the other one break right, and killed him with AIM-7. All within 45 seconds. She landed back at Sheppard, and the then-CO just shook his head. (I had just become XO) For a squadron that mostly did air-to-ground stuff, we had our share of aces, and quite a few with two or three kills, but not enough to get the magic number of 5. Kara has 10 kills confirmed, plus four or five more unconfirmed. And we never had any problems with the recon MiGs again. They got the message to stay away. Air-to-ground? I'll go with incredibly brave. Her WSO was offered a new pilot if she wanted one, but said no, so you had either two incredibly brave people in that plane, or just two crazy ones. Or both.

Baja's the cushiest "Hardship Station" there is, but as long as the Mexicans keep squawking about retaking it (not likely)..... so enjoy the 20% hardship-duty bonus in your pay. At least the resorts still plan on offering military discounts after statehood goes through. Ever notice that every year, the Mexicans demand the UN do something about Baja, and the UN either votes it down or just plain ignores it? Guess the fact that the statehood referendum passed with what, 75% of the vote, and the status quo (protectorate) had 21% has a lot to do with it. (the remainder were either for reuniting with Mexico, or outright independence)

I've got a '69 Mercury Cougar convertible along with the Jeep Grand Cherokee-which still has a couple of bullet holes, while Lisa is a Mustang fan-she has a '72 Mach 1 Mustang. But I do want that new Cougar coming out.

trekchu

I'm still driving the 1977 V8 Vantage Coupe I got my hands on after we liberated a small town in Texas. Some Ivan had appropriated it somewhere, so it was in a sorry state when I got it, but now it's in prime condition again.

Chuck Mandus

Matt Wiser said: This one's for Chuck and The Mann: One thing that the Raven Rock mess involved were some PA ANG A-7s; they had been prepping to deploy to Chanute AFB in Illinois when the Spetsnatz made the botched drop, and the A-7s were called in to do some strafing runs as the 42nd ID and Marines cleaned the Spetsnatz troopers up. This pic was posted online, but was originally in the Osprey Book USAF A-7D Corsair Units of World War III. It's of one of the PA ANG birds heading out to Raven Rock, taken from a wingmate's aircraft. And The Mann: if you haven't gotten a copy yet for your friend, that'd make a great gift for his birthday or Xmas, whichever is first.

BTW, it is ironic you mention the PANG A-7's since the 112th was based here in Pittsburgh. My neighbor was in charge of their maintenance shop until they closed up in 1993 OTL. He just passed away too, but I do remember some of his stories. I was going to do an ATL on his obit, with name changed of course as well as the events for this ATL. He was in PANG since we had P-51's stationed there.

Matt Wiser

OOC: That'd be nice to see, Chuck.

IC: Hey, Mann, it wasn't just Kara, but her wingies, too. I asked her wingies (she had three total-two crews shot down, with one KIA, two MIA, and one POW) if they wanted to go to another flight, and they declined. They all did stuff that made you shake your head. They had a sign in their corner of the squadron office that said "You don't have to be crazy to fly with us, but it helps!" If you weren't a lunatic to begin with when you joined Kara's flight, you soon became one. We all were good at coming in low and fast, popping up to deliver your ordnance, and getting the hell away, but she was a master at it. She still is-Kara's a frequent visitor to the Wendover Range whenever live drops are permitted. How she managed to stay in the peacetime AF and get this far, I don't know. But Lisa's glad to have Kara running one of her squadrons, and not many of us with combat experience from the 1980s are still on duty, active or reserve.

One MiG driver who "dropped in" at D/FW had this to say when LONG RIFLE got started. It kinda sums it up from the ComBloc perspective, wouldn't you agree? "This war has been lost since July of 1986. Only the old men in the Kremlin won't admit it. All these exhortations for 'The final victory of Socialism' mean nothing, and everyone who fought and died for that slogan has died in vain." This was an SAF Colonel, mind you, who "dropped in" on D/FW Airport after an I-HAWK nailed his MiG-27 attack bird just before LONG RIFLE kicked off. Many Soviet (but not many Cuban) field-grade officers and above had such feelings, but kept them to themselves, naturally. He gave the minimum required under Geneva, but when an AF intelligence officer gave the man a cup of real coffee, he opened up and kept talking as long as the coffee kept coming. This fellow had been a Senior Lt. when the war began, got promoted as guys above him got themselves killed or captured, and was running a Regiment (three squadrons) when he was shot down. He also mentioned that the KGB was constantly on the lookout for "Defeatists and Traitors" as things got worse for the ComBloc from '87 to '89. "Non-belief in our Victory" was a frequent charge for those who were arrested, he said, and that penal battalions, rather than execution, were the preferred means to get rid of those arrested.

Anyone hear this: seems Hollywood's finally getting in on the Cobra Chicks. CNN's Showbiz Weekend reported that a deal is in the works for a movie based on the soon-to-be released book by Mark Bowden on the all-female chopper unit. No word on casting, but the deal's being finalized.

sloreck

Anyone else in on the liberation of Guam? I was MEF surgeon attached Tarawa on Victory Day, it was right after that I found out about my family and got some leave time to go back to where I had been when I was called up out of my fellowship with 4/14 when the war started - I mentioned all that went down in an earlier post so won't go over it again. When I got back to the ship told the MEF CO I was going to stay in & asked to stay with the mef for a while as there were the family I had left. We were part of the force that took Guam back a few months later.

It was really ugly. Reading the history books it was like the worst WW2 assaults against Japanese held islands, plus the battle of Manila where the Japanese used the civilians for cover. The NKs did all that and more. We had to go over the island inch by inch took zero EPWs, nada, zilch. There were no US POWS on the island, all killed or disappeared back to the DPRK or who knows where, and the local Gumanians were not treated much better. Some locals from the NG unit there managed to hide out in the jungle and keep in radio contact with US - we sent some SEALS and Marine Recon folks in to join them before the actual invasion. Just like the Japanese after WW2 a few NKs managed to hide out & last a year or two, however unlike Japanese stragglers they did not get to surrender when caught or finally gave up - the locals would just bring heads & any papers they had on the island constabulary posts.

sloreck

oh - on a brighter note thanks for the tip about the discount for military in Baja. Over Christmas break my (second) family & I will be headed down there for some R&R away from the books & Wisconsin winter.

Matt Wiser

Anytime, Sloreck. Lisa and I have been down there a few times, once before tying the knot (the squadron knew what we'd been doing most of the time when Doc Curtis, our trusty flight surgeon, saw that both of us were sunburned all over), and a couple of times since. Last time I was there was when I was XO of the 419th and our two week reserve stint took us to La Paz AB. All the street signs are bilingual now, with one change: they've taken kilometers off and changed to miles. All the TV networks have affiliates in both La Paz and Ensenada, there's talk of building I-5 further south to La Paz, and the list goes on. About the only sign of the war in La Paz that we saw was the abandoned SA-2 site outside the airport, which is also the AF base. Keep an eye on the news: their statehood petition goes before Congress pretty soon, and chances are pretty good they'll get it.

TheMann

trekchu said: I'm still driving the 1977 V8 Vantage Coupe I got my hands on after we liberated a small town in Texas. Some Ivan had appropriated it somewhere, so it was in a sorry state when I got it, but now it's in prime condition again.
An Aston Martin? Nice. I know a few Astons, TVRs, Jaguars, Caterhams, Jensens and the like came over here during or after the war, in a bunch of cases by British service guys who felt their cars would stand a better chance here than there, and lots of ships carried service guys and their stuff over.

One of my old wingmen from the war has a BMW M1 that (apparently) he salvaged, busted to all hell, from a former KGB forward base west of San Antonio. A KGB chickenshit was using it as his personal wheels. Now, getting parts for the thing post-war was difficult at best, so it got a bunch of ad-hoc modifications - Ford V8 engine and automatic gearbox, Corvette seats, mostly American bits and pieces. After the war, once BMW USA foiund out about it, they couldn't believe the state it was in, and they decided to fix it for him at no charge, as long as he promised to keep it a BMW. He made that promise, and he got it rebuilt for him. He's still got it, and he still loves it.

TheMann

Matt Wiser said: IC: Hey, Mann, it wasn't just Kara, but her wingies, too. I asked her wingies (she had three total-two crews shot down, with one KIA, two MIA, and one POW) if they wanted to go to another flight, and they declined. They all did stuff that made you shake your head. They had a sign in their corner of the squadron office that said "You don't have to be crazy to fly with us, but it helps!" If you weren't a lunatic to begin with when you joined Kara's flight, you soon became one. We all were good at coming in low and fast, popping up to deliver your ordnance, and getting the hell away, but she was a master at it. She still is-Kara's a frequent visitor to the Wendover Range whenever live drops are permitted. How she managed to stay in the peacetime AF and get this far, I don't know. But Lisa's glad to have Kara running one of her squadrons, and not many of us with combat experience from the 1980s are still on duty, active or reserve.

Not many of us are left because we're all getting old, ya know? We're all getting towards the downchecks and age is catching up with all of us. That said, we're all still doing it, and most of us can still teach these young bucks a thing or two. I sometimes get a cocky young flier who has his godlike I-can-kick-anybody's-ass attitude, who then asks himself why his CO is an old guy who has been flying fighters for 25 years. Then we go up, I school his ass in how to make a Raptor move, and that arrogance goes away. I don't have to do that very often though, but my guys now often talk about when the FNG is gonna show up.

Matt Wiser said: One MiG driver who "dropped in" at D/FW had this to say when LONG RIFLE got started. It kinda sums it up from the ComBloc perspective, wouldn't you agree? "This war has been lost since July of 1986. Only the old men in the Kremlin won't admit it. All these exhortations for 'The final victory of Socialism' mean nothing, and everyone who fought and died for that slogan has died in vain." This was an SAF Colonel, mind you, who "dropped in" on D/FW Airport after an I-HAWK nailed his MiG-27 attack bird just before LONG RIFLE kicked off.

I'm sure he wasn't the first to say that. I know a Soviet Major said the same to the intel guys after his shot-up MiG-25RB landed on one engine at my base during the Siege of Houston. The war was definitely lost by then, just the dimwits in Moscow didn't have the balls to admit it or were too blind to see the truth. I'm guessing its the latter, if I'm honest. They got kinda delusional over there.

Matt Wiser said: Anyone hear this: seems Hollywood's finally getting in on the Cobra Chicks. CNN's Showbiz Weekend reported that a deal is in the works for a movie based on the soon-to-be released book by Mark Bowden on the all-female chopper unit. No word on casting, but the deal's being finalized.

I did know about that, because my cousin Sarah and my niece Julia are out in LA right now, trying to get parts. Apparently Rihanna and Anglina Jolie are among those who want in on that movie. A great start, if you ask me. A bunch of the top male actors are also fighting to get in it, according to my family members.
Last edited: Sep 8, 2009

Matt Wiser

Picking up Ivan's ill-gotten gains and putting them to good use, hmm? No problem with that, since it's likely the previous owner either disappeared into a camp or just plain disappeared, period. One thing I think Panzerfaust, if he's still around, would probably highlight was Ivan's list to loot, and not just from factories. Lots of senior officers driving around in Cadillacs or other luxury cars, appropriating million-dollar houses, things like that. They also gave each Combloc soldier a 10 kilo package a month to ship goodies back home, and when we started pushing them back, you'd be surprised at the amount of looting and pilliage that went on. And at what they took. You had Soviets from remote villages in Central Asia or Siberia shipping electronics back home, even though their homes had no electricity, for example. Some thought a VCR could work without the TV, etc, etc. Speaking of cars, Lisa found the Mach 1 Mustang in Wichita Falls, just sitting in a garage. All it needed was a new battery and some gas in the tank. Nobody came forward postwar to claim the car, and she's had it ever since. There's an Intermountain West Mustang Show in Salt Lake every year, and we take the Mustang there if duty permits.

Hey Mann, how'd you like the sign Kara had over her part of the squadron office? Given the way she flew and the company she kept, it doesn't surprise me at all. Some pipsqueak of an inspector tried complaining to General Tanner (think of this guy as Lt. Fuzz in Beetle Bailey-only worse) about the sign and how I was running the squadron generally, but this was an idiot who read the book only, and didn't know when to throw away the book. Tanner came by D/FW (this was about a month after I got the squadron) and brought the inspector with him. Everything went fine: I got confirmed as CO and promoted to Major, the squadron was reccommended for an AF Unit Commendation, and some supply requests that had been delayed were fixed-right then and there, thanks to the General getting on the phone and telling the supply people to send us what we were asking for. Oh, and the pipsqueak? Tanner had him reassigned-to some Air-Defense radar in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. General Tanner doing things like that is what made 10th Air Force do anything for him. He took care of everyone under his command; including the land-based Navy and Marine squadrons. Not to mention his flying around in a C-130 when he could've had a C-20 Gulfstream or that DC-10 flying hotel I mentioned earlier. We were his "kids." And heaven help anyone who got in the way of his "kids" doing their jobs.

The Sandman

Location:A twisty maze of passages, all alike
One person in particular that I still wonder about is Rafael Guillén. He was an interesting character; leftist views, but with a unique spin on them, what seemed to be actual concern for the situation of the poor and the indigenous peoples in Mexico and Central America, and a definite sense of... "realism", I suppose you might call it, after seeing what the Communists were doing to said poor and indigenous peoples. I met him back in, oh, 1990 or '91, when the Russian Republic was working on getting some of the inherited Soviet assets out of Mexico before the expected US invasion; he was teaching at UAM in Mexico City at the time, and he and his students were already being watched by the regime.

I tried to convince him to get out of Mexico while he still could and come to the Russian Republic, where we could have used his viewpoint, but he wasn't willing to abandon his people like that. Since I was pretty sure that he was going to say that anyway, I didn't begrudge him that, but I did try to stay in contact with him via letters and reports by the handful of friends I'd placed in Mexico after the war. Last I heard, about a year or two back, he was somewhere in Chiapas province, but I don't know what he's been up to since, and was hoping one of you folks might have access to some sources I don't.

OOC: You may know this guy better as Subcomandante Marcos of the Zapatistas in OTL. I figure that he's had a similar political trajectory in this world, except that he would have gained a strong dislike for Communism after getting an up close and personal view of it in practice. I'm thinking that he'd be some sort of nonviolent anarcho-liberal, and have taken to heart the Soviet joke that "the difference between capitalism and communism is that in capitalism man oppresses man; in communism it's the other way around."

trekchu

TheMann said: An Aston Martin? Nice. I know a few Astons, TVRs, Jaguars, Caterhams, Jensens and the like came over here during or after the war, in a bunch of cases by British service guys who felt their cars would stand a better chance here than there, and lots of ships carried service guys and their stuff over.

One of my old wingmen from the war has a BMW M1 that (apparently) he salvaged, busted to all hell, from a former KGB forward base west of San Antonio. A KGB chickenshit was using it as his personal wheels. Now, getting parts for the thing post-war was difficult at best, so it got a bunch of ad-hoc modifications - Ford V8 engine and automatic gearbox, Corvette seats, mostly American bits and pieces. After the war, once BMW USA foiund out about it, they couldn't believe the state it was in, and they decided to fix it for him at no charge, as long as he promised to keep it a BMW. He made that promise, and he got it rebuilt for him. He's still got it, and he still loves it.

My Aston barely ran until after the war, but when the company began to operate in the US again, I managed to have it fixed at a symbolic charge ( $1 ) by them, they even painted it in British Racing Green, provided I lent it to them for a few photographs after it was done. The wife was not happy that I kept this almost wreck in the garage for almost five years.
Last edited: Sep 7, 2009

Matt Wiser

Well, since we haven't invaded Mexico yet (Give us time, it took twenty years to settle old scores with Cuba...), he's probably still in Chiapas. Remember, though, there's at least half dozen rebel groups down there, and some militantly anti-Communist, some demanding Mexico resume the war (even though Mexico's in no shape to do so-hell, they can't fight a real COIN campaign, let alone pick another fight with the U.S.), you get the idea. Why we didn't grab the oil fields along the Gulf Coast when we had the chance, I don't know. If we'd rejected the Mexican call for an armistice on the border and pushed south....then said "OK, you want out of the war, here's what you have to do." The lefties who still broadcast from Mexico City into the U.S. are good for laughs if nothing else. All the hard-core ones went to Havana (and some are now in jail awaiting trial), Pyongyang, Caracas, or Moscow.

Hey Mann, as long as I can pass a flight physical, and the AF will let me, I'll keep flying F-15Es. Same for Lisa, too. And our kids are all going to be AF-two to the Academy, one to UCLA and AFROTC. (she got a Volleyball scholarship) There's still vets from the 1982 Lebanon War and from here still flying for the Israelis, and I guess DOD doesn't want to lose the combat vets until we all hit retirement age. Here in 419 we've still got over a dozen pilots and ten WSOs with combat time from the 1980s, and there's a lot of Reserve and Guard squadrons with the same thing. Active duty, though... Lisa, Kara, and maybe a dozen total in the whole 366th. Same thing elsewhere.

Entertainment Tonight also had the Cobra Chicks movie story: Kelly Preston is also trying for a role, as is Lucy Liu. The Army is being very cooperative, they say.

TheMann

Matt Wiser said: picking up Ivan's ill-gotten gains and putting them to good use, hmm? No problem with that, since it's likely the previous owner either disappeared into a camp or just plain disappeared, period.

Ain't that the truth. Though once the war was over, damn near anything that people wanted that the Commies left behind got salvaged, and we got osme in return, though sometimes I wish we hadn't gotten some of it. They have real problems in Texas and some of the Plains States with criminals packing AK-47s and other Russian weapons, left behind by the bastards. (Though apparently, lots of stuff got appropriated by local police forces after the war. Let's not forget how the Texas Rangers solved that compound standoff near San Angelo a couple years back, knocking down the gates and driving the Rangers into the coumpound with a handful of ex-Russian BMP-2s.

Matt Wiser said: One thing I think Panzerfaust, if he's still around, would probably highlight was Ivan's list to loot, and not just from factories. Lots of senior officers driving around in Cadillacs or other luxury cars, appropriating million-dollar houses, things like that.

I seem to recall that the Governor's mansion in Oklahoma City for a while was owned by some Russian bigshot at his personal home. I know a helluva lot of people fled out of the way of the Russians during the war, too, which meant that plenty of stuff did get away from those vultures.

Matt Wiser said: they also gave each Combloc soldier a 10 kilo package a month to ship goodies back home, and when we started pushing them back, you'd be surprised at the amount of looting and pilliage that went on. And at what they took. You had Soviets from remote villages in Central Asia or Siberia shipping electronics back home, even though their homes had no electricity, for example. Some thought a VCR could work without the TV, etc, etc.

I knew of that too. We found a base that we took over that the Russians had stripped clean, along with most nearby towns. They didn't bother with any cars, just took pickups and four wheel drive vehicles. I didn't take us long to figure out why, either. We had it confirmed when one USS Barbel sank a Russian ro-ro trying to get away from Houston. When it was raised, it had no military vehicles on it, it was all vehicles from the USA headed to the USSR. A few Cadillac and Lincoln luxury sedans, but mostly pickups and SUVs. (Though they did find a Lamborghini Countach on it. I hope somebody killed that bastard.)

Also, with regards to looting, I wasn't in it, but I know some of the A-10 guys shot the hell out of a convoy of retreating Russians heading south on Texas Route 77 from Corpus Christi, and they didn't have the military vehicles to get away, so they ran with whatever wheels they could get, from trucks to motorcycles. They picked up hundreds of bodies from that one, and the A-10 drivers were all hoping to hell they hadn't strafed the hell out of a convoy of civilians. They were real nervous for a while.

Matt Wiser said: Speaking of cars, Lisa found the Mach 1 Mustang in Wichita Falls, just sitting in a garage. All it needed was a new battery and some gas in the tank. Nobody came forward postwar to claim the car, and she's had it ever since. There's an Intermountain West Mustang Show in Salt Lake every year, and we take the Mustang there if duty permits.

Nice. My brother similarly found a Maserati Bora at a ComBloc base they had abandoned. It apparently was the base commander's wheels, and he'd been killed by an air strike, and he'd scared the air crews so bad that nobody even touched it after he was gone. Bro won it off his fellow fliers in a poker game, and he's still got it.

Matt Wiser said: Hey Mann, how'd you like the sign Kara had over her part of the squadron office? Given the way she flew and the company she kept, it doesn't surprise me at all.

It didn't surprise me either. Though I imagine that a few guys in the AF probably didn't like it much.

Matt Wiser said: Some pipsqueak of an inspector tried complaining to General Tanner (think of this guy as Lt. Fuzz in Beetle Bailey-only worse) about the sign and how I was running the squadron generally, but this was an idiot who read the book only, and didn't know when to throw away the book. Tanner came by D/FW (this was about a month after I got the squadron) and brought the inspector with him. Everything went fine: I got confirmed as CO and promoted to Major, the squadron was recommended for an AF Unit Commendation, and some supply requests that had been delayed were fixed-right then and there, thanks to the General getting on the phone and telling the supply people to send us what we were asking for. Oh, and the pipsqueak? Tanner had him reassigned-to some Air-Defense radar in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. General Tanner doing things like that is what made 10th Air Force do anything for him. He took care of everyone under his command; including the land-based Navy and Marine squadrons. Not to mention his flying around in a C-130 when he could've had a C-20 Gulfstream or that DC-10 flying hotel I mentioned earlier. We were his "kids." And heaven help anyone who got in the way of his "kids" doing their jobs.

Tanner was yours, and when I was in the Midwest, Brigadier General Hayman was our man. He died of a heart attack last year, sadly, but during the war, we were his boys, and he took that seriously. It was always good to have a boss who knew what you were fighting for, and knew when to say "look, son, the book rules aren't helping here, so don't try to enforce them too hard, alright?" I have the similar story of the bozo who didn't want to send me a chopper, who Hayman over-ruled. The Generals on our side, by a year or so in, knew exactly what they were oding, who they were fighting for, and they knew that it was our job to shoot at people, it was their job to lead and make sure we got what we needed to do the jobs we had been given. They all took that seriously, as I'm sure we can all attest to.

Matt Wiser

Didn't some reporter call Hwy. 77 "The Highway of Death?", or some other such nonsense? It had to be the same schmuck who called U.S. 177 south of Stillwater the same thing after we hit the retreating ComBloc REMF types with CBUs and napalm. Yeah, there were some civilian vehicles there too, but they'd had a coat of green paint slapped on and a red star, so they were being used by the bad guys. One thing about Ivan: he could improvise when he had to: one of the AA mounts we saw often in both Oklahoma and Texas were open-bed trucks: Fords, Chevys, etc. with either ZU-23s or Quad 14.5s in the back. Nobody got nailed by them in 335, but you had to be careful-all it'd take was one lucky gunner. And they paired those gun trucks with grunts packing SA-7s or SA-14s. But they could be deadly to choppers, though, and often were.

We heard about Hayman, too. He's the kind of guy we would've served under if we didn't have General Tanner. Too bad we had some deadwood last nearly the whole war. How high did Hayman get? Tanner retired as a four-star and Vice Chief of Staff of the AF. He runs a defense think-tank in the L.A. area last I heard.

Osprey's got another book coming that is going to raise some eyebrows: they've gotten some Russian Republic and Cuban sources now, and soon to hit the bookstores is a work on the MiG-29 in World War III. Now that the Cuban records are available, another chapter in the air war can get told. (without the propaganda spin Fidel used to put out)

It's official now: Col. Cindy Moreau's husband Rich is now CO of the 320th Bomb Wing at Mather AFB, outside Sacramento. SAC now has its first pair of Wing COs who are husband and wife. Makes you wonder what LeMay would've thought if he was still around. But I remember what he said to me at the first Victory Day air show at Scott AFB: "Times change, Major, and the Air Force has to change with the times. Congratuations on your marriage, and many happy landings." This was after he decorated then-Major Cindy Moreau for one of her Eastern Siberia runs.

The Sandman

Matt Wiser said: Picking up Ivan's ill-gotten gains and putting them to good use, hmm? No problem with that, since it's likely the previous owner either disappeared into a camp or just plain disappeared, period. One thing I think Panzerfaust, if he's still around, would probably highlight was Ivan's list to loot, and not just from factories. Lots of senior officers driving around in Cadillacs or other luxury cars, appropriating million-dollar houses, things like that. They also gave each Combloc soldier a 10 kilo package a month to ship goodies back home, and when we started pushing them back, you'd be surprised at the amount of looting and pilliage that went on. And at what they took. You had Soviets from remote villages in Central Asia or Siberia shipping electronics back home, even though their homes had no electricity, for example. Some thought a VCR could work without the TV, etc, etc.

Heh, I remember those types. One of the things that helped keep their depredations a bit lower in Texas, at least the bits where I had any semblance of authority, was that they were oh so very ignorant about what exactly constituted the latest and greatest in technology. My personal favorite was seeing an entire truck filled with Atari 2600 cartridges on its way towards Corpus Christi. Hope they enjoyed E.T. as much as we did.

Of course, the other thing that helped was that after Houston and Laredo, not to mention all of the other usual day-to-day executions and people getting shipped south to Mexico, there were a lot of people who weren't going to be needing their stuff anymore. Encouraging grave robbing is better than having to watch the living stripped of everything they own at gunpoint, but I can tell you that keeping that in your head helps less than you might think.

TheMann said: I seem to recall that the Governor's mansion in Oklahoma City for a while was owned by some Russian bigshot at his personal home. I know a helluva lot of people fled out of the way of the Russians during the war, too, which meant that plenty of stuff did get away from those vultures.

Unless my memory is completely failing me, that would have been Khvostov. Although frankly, I'd be surprised if he really made use of the place. Given what I saw of the bastard's living habits the couple of times he was in Austin while I was Governor, he was one of the true believers. Felt that "bourgeois comforts" were beneath him, and had his rooms stripped of anything he felt was not befitting the New Soviet Man.

He was also the one that made me shoot my Chief of Staff. That, I remember quite clearly. Especially the way that his Mexican and East German counterparts were practically salivating as he described what he was going to have them do to her if I didn't denounce and shoot her right there, but Khvostov himself never so much as changed inflection. Just... a vague tone of disinterest in the whole proceeding, and a clinical detachment that I still hear in my nightmares.

I hope he finally broke when he was about to die, so that he finally got the chance to see how things looked from the other side of the torture chamber. But given the way the world seems to be most days, I doubt it.

I knew of that too. We found a base that we took over that the Russians had stripped clean, along with most nearby towns. They didn't bother with any cars, just took pickups and four wheel drive vehicles. I didn't take us long to figure out why, either. We had it confirmed when one USS Barbel sank a Russian ro-ro trying to get away from Houston. When it was raised, it had no military vehicles on it, it was all vehicles from the USA headed to the USSR. A few Cadillac and Lincoln luxury sedans, but mostly pickups and SUVs. (Though they did find a Lamborghini Countach on it. I hope somebody killed that bastard.)

Wait, was that Lamborghini black with white and gold stripes? If it was, I think I know the man who used to own it. Legally purchased for real money and full value, plus a bit extra for custom paint job. Russian general named Pavel Andreyevich, he was one of the good guys. Of course, the Imperial Russian decor didn't sit very well with the chekist minders, or his habit of actually leaving receipts for what he requisitioned for his men, or the way his troops tended to "discipline" Cubans or Mexicans who didn't at least try to behave with some basic decency to the civilians.

Khvostov had Andreyevich and the rest of his command staff lined up at the Alamo and shot after Midland-Odessa, of course. I heard rumors that he'd actually considered decimating the rest of the division before the new commander told him that there just weren't enough men left in it to make the punishment effective. I'd always thought he'd had the car destroyed afterwards as a final gesture, but I guess even he couldn't do that to a Lamborghini. Or more likely somebody close to the Politburo wanted it and overruled his demolition order.

[lordroel]

From page 54

Panzerfaust 150

Sorry all,
Work has been lotsa fun, but busy, and I had tons of papers to grade and a few grad seminars to run. In any event...yeah, we got our share of "repo loot" as we used to call it..though mine was more subtle..I carried around and used a Sov officer's map case because as a non combat arms NCO, I didn't merit one...yeah, go fig. I also got my hands on a walkman I took from a Russkie EPW..he'd had a gas mask bag full of tapes from some girl named "Terri Halloway"..I hope she made it through the war, she had good taste in music.

As for bigger stuff...well, I mentioned that earlier. If it ran, we gave it a rough CARC-like pattern and a black star and flew a US flag and air rec panels when we weren't in contact and off we went. Our battalion still has a UAZ out front of the armory that made the march with us from Houston Intercontinental, to Odessa/Midland, to Brownsville and the end. Damn thing wound up the BC's ride for many years post war till it threw a piston rod and it was retired as a gate guard out front.

But yeah, the Combloc guys were all engaged in some looting. We used to search them constantly for security reasons. You could follow EPW movements by the mounts of confiscated crap they'd somehow managed to hide on their persons up to that point. When the line doggies searched them, they were only interested in disarming them really, so they left stuff like that alone for the most part (shaking down EPWs is a Geneva convention no-no), but...it happened. And, whatever the line doggies didn't find...we and the MPs did.

And yeah, post war, there was a VERY large elicit arms trade in abandoned arms from the Combloc..we managed to keep unsavory folks from grabbing the larger stuff..but remember the shootout in North Hollywood ten years back? half a dozen gang bangers held up a Wells Fargo with Combloc AKs, RPKs and RPGs. It took the FBI getting involved after what? a 4 hour gun battle? Yeah, that's one of Ivan's legacies....not to mention the remote areas they seeded with PMN mines to deal with the partisans...people and animals are STILL setting them off.

trekchu

That's only one of the reasons why I stick to the roads when we take the Aston out. Imagine how surprised I was when it featured in the first post-war Bond....

OOC: That's where I fell in love with that car. Say what you want about "The living daylights".

Matt Wiser

How do you like working with the blue-suiters, Panzerfaust? Got any LONG RIFLE stories? The breakout from Houston must've been fun.

Any small "repo loot" you generally got to keep. Large stuff, like, say, a tank or APC, became a unit's trophy, at least in the Air Force. Almost everybody went home with a couple of AKMs or AK-74s and some ammo in our squadron. (My AKM is on my office wall-it's the AK I carried on my E&E after some Cuban no longer needed it...it was made in East Germany, btw) Hoods nowadays have access to lots more firepower-you hear about armored cars being hit with RPGs, shooting the engines so that they can hit the contents. And yeah, I do remember North Hollywood-it was on freakin' CNN that whole day. Just before LAPD SWAT and the FBI finally killed those guys, the Mayor was on the phone to the Governor asking for some National Guardsmen and their firepower. Outside the 419th's HQ building, besides the F-105 and F-4 gate guards, is a ZSU-23-4, plus single SA-6 and SA-8 launchers. (in the maintenance shop is a T-72 they strafed, but it needs an engine to complete the restoration. If anyone knows of a T-72 engine sitting somewhere, let me know so the maintenance guys can finish the job.)

The EOD problem is going to be with us for some time, unfortunately. Some areas of Dallas, OKC, various Denver suburbs, and many other locales have EOD techs on 24-hour call as any kind of construction work has a chance of digging up something. Either you find unexploded ordnance, or you find human remains. Then the coroner gets involved, and often DOD if it's either U.S. or ComBloc military remains. Still, fifty years from now, people will still be casualties of World War III as unexploded ordnance gets set off.

Panzerfaust 150

It's nice...hours are reasonable...people ask questions here because they want to know something, not the usual: "Will this be on the Exam?"

LONG RIFLE was fun in that we got to do some open field running, but whatever V and VII Corps bypassed, we had to deal with, George West, Port Lavaca, Corpus Christi (that was really unpleasant), McAllen and Harlingen, yeah, we helped retake them all. That's when we had literally columns four deep of EPW marching North with maybe a platoon of MPs and rear area types watching an acre or two of EPW. We ran out of pre-made tags for them the 2nd DAY of LONG RIFLE...by the end, we were using box tops with a hole punch.

What really struck us was the variety of prisoners we took. Everything from KGB MRR, to auxiliaries, to Red Army line doggies, to Cuban civil engineers, to the one that stands out...A VPA band that was brought in for hearts and minds stuff..yeah, that's right...a band...instruments and all. They surrendered near McAllen when we began to seal the Brownsville pocket. They came up the road towards our column unarmed with a white flag playing a fairly good version of "Stars and Stripes Forever". Yeah, my war got weird at times...there was also the East German Vet who had 50 guard dogs in his custody in a kennel in Corpus Christi. We'd seen a lot, but nobody had it in them to shoot the dogs..and the East German vet was a decent guy...so, we did what we could..I understand many of the dogs found new homes...

trekchu

An East-German Vet you say? Was his name Konrad Steiner by any chance?

Matt Wiser

The I-45 push must've been fun...some of the bad guys fought like tigers, others couldn't wait to surrender (thanks to the com guys setting up a satellite dish so we could get CNN-they had a crew with the 101st Airborne on that division-sized air assault and they ran the whole spectrum of the enemy-they even had some Nicaraguans surrender to the camera crew) Having the Hell's Angels (13th ACR) leading VII Corps must've done wonders for the ComBloc resisting-I've read that EPWs feared the Hell's Angels-they were told they'd either be run over by their Stingray light tanks or be dragged behind said tanks or LAV-25s if the Hell's Angels caught them. Sorta like the BS the Zampolits told their men about Marines-to join the Corps, one had to kill a family member to prove how tough he or she was before signing up.

Just remember that you're dealing with tomorrow's squadron and wing commanders. I'll bet that my successor at 419 and Lisa's in 366 might be one of your students.

I've heard that name; it's been a while, though. And yeah, we adopted stray dogs and cats as we went through New Mexico and Texas. One thing that pipsqueak inspector wailed about to General Tanner was all the dog and cat food I had the supply officer get. Oh, the CSPs had guard dogs, but we were getting more than they used. But when Tanner saw the squadron's pets, even the office dog (a nice Golden Lab), he just laughed and told the pipsqueak (before really blowing up about something else and sending the guy to an air-defense radar in Michigan) to shut up. All those dogs and cats had good homes postwar; when we got new assignments, we just took 'em with us. You know, coming back from a hairy one, you've lost friends, and being down in the dumps, and a cat or the office dog comes and nuzzles up to you, well, it makes a rotten day go to just a bad one. It didn't make the letter-writing easier, but it helped.

Matt Wiser

More from Keegan on LONG RIFLE, and his Russian Republic sources make no bones about it: the Soviet General Staff knew that the end in North America was at most, a year off. Considering that it took another year to wrap things up in the lower 48, they were right. Torn up roads and railroads, blown bridges, air bases and civilian airports looking like trash heaps, it took time to build up supplies for us to finish Ivan off in Texas. Then we could think about moving north to push him out of Canada and Alaska.

Taking care of bypassed pockets took another month, but by 10 July, Fifth Army, Sixth Army, and Third Army were ready to roll again. Third Army pushed south along the Gulf Coast, while Fifth Army went south from Bryan/College Station, and Sixth Army along the I-35 and points west. Austin was taken by a coup de main thanks to 23rd ID's 3rd Brigade, which got into the city before the Cubans and Nicaraguans could react. Instead of a week, it took only two days to clear Austin, but not before there was some savage fighting on the University of Texas campus. One thing that was become clear was that the Soviets were putting their surrogates out in front, to soak up U.S. firepower, while their own forces pulled back to more defensible positions. III Corps went down both I-35 and U.S. 281 towards San Antonio, while V Corps pushed south, and 3rd ID was the first unit to reach I-10 in Fifth Army, with VII Corps soon there. XVIII Airborne Corps from Third Army got unleashed again, with both 24th ID and 10th ACR pushing south of the I-10 and along the coast, with Corpus Christi as their objective. (Mann and Panzerfaust, you guys were there for that one, right?)

As for San Antonio, man that was a nasty one. The Cubans, Mexicans, and Russians didn't want to give up for nothing. 1st Cav looped around to the west, past I-10 to U.S. 90, and pushed in, taking both Lackland and Kelly AFBs, while 5th Marine Division went down U.S. 281, taking San Antonio IAP, and on the Marines' left was 23rd ID. For some reason, the main ComBloc defenses were in the Northeast, along I-35, and nobody there expected being caught in the vise they wound up in. But they didn't want to give up, and everyone, Soviets, Cubans, Mexicans, all fought like tigers. While the Alamo was retaken intact, and many of the historic buildings were also found intact, the HemisFair Plaza and the River Walk were bitterly contested, as was both Fort Sam Houston and Randolph AFB.

Ivan had his Theater HQ at Fort Sam Houston, and while the command staff escaped via I-37 and then U.S. 281 towards Brownsville, a grounded VDV division, the 104th Guards Airborne, defended the base literally to the last man. The only EPWs 23rd ID took were wounded. And the Mexicans, who had in PRAIRIE FIRE and LONG RIFLE I not fought very hard? Not these ones, they fought like the Japanese did in WW II. No quarter given or asked, and very few were taken prisoner, other than wounded. What was hoped to be a two-week battle wound up taking five. And what was it like for us in the air? Gawd, moving down to Bergstrom AFB from D/FW Airport by road and by air,and the guys who did the road say I-35E and I-35 had areas that looked like there'd never been a war, then you'd pass through towns that were heaps of rubble and burned-out military vehicles. Columns of EPWs being marched north, civilians coming back to their homes, or what was left, die-hard snipers causing whatever mayhem-and local ex-guerillas gladly hunting them down. Bergstrom was a mess: no buildings left intact, bomb craters in runways repeatedly filled in, unexploded ordnance (ours and theirs) lying around, you name it. We were actually glad to get down to San Antonio and Kelly AFB-thanks to 1st Cav, it was taken pretty much intact. Still, flying 7-8 times a day, it got to be a real chore sometimes just getting into the cockpit. Take off, orbit, talk to FAC, strike targets FAC wants hit, land. Then do a hot rearm, get a bite to eat, then go back and do it again. Just like Dallas-Fort Worth. Only this time, it was hot! And I mean hot, as in triple-digit hot. Oh, and the occasional artillery or rocket attack didn't help things any as well.

Panzerfaust 150

Corpus Christi..it was one long nasty slog for about 10 days till 1-116th raised the flag over the shattered barracks block at Corpus Christi NAS. The defenders were the shattered remains of Soviet 94th Guards MRD, reinforced with leavings from half a dozen Combloc nations. And they fought well, but I wouldn't say they were fanatical. They'd usually fought till the ammo ran out, or they were all wounded or dead, then they'd give up. I think the division commander knew the jig was up, but he was ordered to make SOME sort of stand. Honor of the flag and all that. The kennel I spoke of was on the grounds of the NAS, and we took a lot of Combloc a/c in various states of repair. I can say, for those interested, the runways were well and truly cut. They looked like the surface of the moon by the time we took it.

Matt Wiser

That had to be the Navy: IIRC from the naval lecture at the Air War College, John F. Kennedy , Eisenhower, and Oriskany were in the Gulf, supporting LONG RIFLE at that time. All I know is that we never went to Corpus Christi, and neither did the Marines we flew with. No doubt the Seabees had their work cut out for them to get the NAS and the airport up and ready.

94th GMRD..they were from GSFG originally, weren't they? Well, with the KGB at your back, he had no choice, really, but to make a stand. Weren't the Marines complaining that Powell didn't let them do an amphib landing south of Corpus Christi on North Padre Island? They wanted to get behind the ComBloc and cut them off, but he refused for some reason. How'd XVIII Airborne Corps get along with the Hell's Angels, with VII Corps on their flank? I would imagine some of those from Hudson High were surprised to see a Cav regiment formed from a cycle gang. Schwartzkopf said in their defense that he couldn't ask for better soldiers, given the high number of Vietnam vets in the 13th. If they didn't get assigned a mission, they went out and found one on their own, with Operation REINDEER being only one of many. It was said, though, that their unit parties were only equaled by the Cobra Chicks, so you get an idea of how wild they got. If those two units had been off the line at the same time...

TheMann

Matt Wiser said: That had to be the Navy: IIRC from the naval lecture at the Air War College, John F. Kennedy , Eisenhower, and Oriskany were in the Gulf, supporting LONG RIFLE at that time. All I know is that we never went to Corpus Christi, and neither did the Marines we flew with. No doubt the Seabees had their work cut out for them to get the NAS and the airport up and ready.

Nimitz's Air Wing was also in on it. The carrier itself was docked at Bremerton for repairs (as was Wisconsin at the time), and so the Navy went the Air Wing down to Texas to back up the carriers already there. They flew from Austin at that point. I remember it well because Bro and I often were watching each other's backs, usually him watching mine as I did an attack run.

Matt Wiser said: 94th GMRD..they were from GSFG originally, weren't they? Well, with the KGB at your back, he had no choice, really, but to make a stand.

Or they coulda just shot the KGB morons and surrendered, as some ComBloc units did when we went on the offensive. An entire ComBloc regiment (Polish or Hungarian, IIRC) surrendered to VII Corps in West Texas, I seem to recall. Maybe one of the guys on the ground can fill my memory blanks in on that one.

Matt Wiser said: Weren't the Marines complaining that Powell didn't let them do an amphib landing south of Corpus Christi on North Padre Island? They wanted to get behind the ComBloc and cut them off, but he refused for some reason.

Powell is a brilliant guy (We became POTUS for a reason), but I never understood that. I think Powell's argument was that the Army could just keep on shoving them back that way and that an amphib landing was too risky, but considering how stubborn a fight the 94th GMRD put up, surrounding them might have been the better idea IMO.

Matt Wiser said: How'd XVIII Airborne Corps get along with the Hell's Angels, with VII Corps on their flank? I would imagine some of those from Hudson High were surprised to see a Cav regiment formed from a cycle gang. Schwartzkopf said in their defense that he couldn't ask for better soldiers, given the high number of Vietnam vets in the 13th. If they didn't get assigned a mission, they went out and found one on their own, with Operation REINDEER being only one of many. It was said, though, that their unit parties were only equaled by the Cobra Chicks, so you get an idea of how wild they got.

The bikers were batshit insane, but they got to be some good soldiers by the end of the war, I must say. They went out and made missions, of course, but they made intelligent ones most of the time.

I got called out of bed at 3 AM one time because they had done another of their call-in-the-DNR-request-just-before-we-hit-the-front-line-at-eighty-miles-an-hour stunts, only by this point a base colonel had called their departure in to division HQ, and Stormin' Norman figured they'd be hitting a power station at Karnes City being used as a rear-echelon command center for a KGB regiment. He guessed right, of course. They got into the station alright and blew the shit out of a tank battalion covering the place with TOWs, but the KGB guys quickly called in a bunch of Frogf**ks on 'em, and me and a couple wingies had to save their asses, along with two Tomcats and a Hawkeye from Kennedy that were in the right place at the right time. They got back OK and brought a KGB one-star back with 'em, though he had a bullet in lower back. (He survived.) One of their Majors bought me a couple beers in San Antonio the night after.

I saw some of the Cobra Chick partying in Memphis, if some of the AF straight-lace types had been they'd have just about shit themselves. My squadron CO at the time had one of them jump off a bar into his arms as he walked into a bar one time, and the woman was piss drunk and wearing nothing but a thong, he said. I'm always amazed how they stayed in the military, but I guess when you are effective as those ladies were in saving the asses of the ground-pounders, I guess the brass figured that the combat effectiveness was more important than their off-duty insanity.

Matt Wiser said: If those two units had been off the line at the same time...

Budweiser would had to go into emergency production mode and there would been a bigass riot somewhere, if you put those two groups anywhere near each other.

Matt Wiser

Given how both Austin Regional Airport and Bergstrom AFB were torn up, if the Seabees could get either one operational in a short time to get Nimitz's air wing there, my hat's off to 'em. Our own engineers just cleared some ramp space, patched the runway at Bergstrom, put in some fuel tanks and hot refueling gear, and that was it. As usual, we lived in tents, and used office trailers for squadron business. Hope the Navy enjoyed the accomodations at Bergstrom or Austin Regional: even the Army wanted to leave the latter ASAP, given how torn up it was. And we were glad to leave when Kelly AFB was taken-practically intact. But did we leave the tents? Nope: the offices and living quarters at Kelly were booby-trapped. So until Army and AF EOD cleared each and every building, we had to rough it. Nothing new: we'd done it ever since crossing the Rio Grande in New Mexico.

Poles, I think, to II Corps, out near San Angelo. They just shot the KGB "monitors", and that was it. The ROKs said a Czech Regiment did the same thing near Fort Stockton. One of our ALOs with II Corps asked a captured Polish officer (a Polish AF Captain, IIRC) why his unit surrendered without a fight, and he got this in response: "We didn't fire back as that would have been a mistake." Sound civilian logic. Remember that out in West Texas things were a lot more fluid and the terrain was more difficult. Not to mention sparsely populated. You could easily outflank someone and fall upon their rear and they wouldn't know you were coming until it was too late. One story has an ROK Marine battalion going on foot around a Cuban leg infantry regiment that dismissed some rough terrain as "impassable." The ROKs taught them otherwise-those who survived, that is.

Yeah, the Cobra Chicks were pretty wild. Someone a while back said things got so wild the MPs had to be called in to end the festivities prematurely. Just be glad everyone didn't have a camcorder back then, even one of those VHS or 8-mm ones, or there'd be some wild footage goin' round.....Some of those gals, when they did get out of the Army, did pose for certain magazines, wearing much less than their flight gear. I remember Schwartzkopf saying something to the effect "I can't ground these girls: they fight!" REMF types who didn't fly into combat-and this is true of the AF, too, don't understand the feeling "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you may die." Have a good time on your stand-down; you may not be alive in a few days, so enjoy yourselves. We did on our off-road trips....often you'd forget there was a war on. Unless you were...interrupted.

Since a lot of the bikers were Vietnam vets, no surprise they became very good. If one saw their Cadillac-Gage Stingrays, LAV-25s, and upgunned Hummers nearby, you knew trouble was coming. Either they'd been assigned a mission, or were going out and finding trouble (or creating it) on their own. At least the Army kept the 13th ACR (Medium) in the postwar force structure. And yeah, we flew CAS for them in the D/FW mess, when VII Corps tasked them with finding a way to bypass Dallas. They found it. Too bad they didn't do it in September or October of '87, instead of January, '88. (one of the reasons Schwartzkopf fired the VII Corps commander-he wasn't aggressive enough in ending the D/FW mess)

Mann: the Scott Brothers called. They've gotten someone to play the CSP gal: Kristy Swanson. Nice choice. And they will be incorporating that...event with her going off after those Cuban SOF wearing only her combat boots and waving an M-16 into the movie. They said that Kristy is at George AFB in Victorville with the 35th TFW's CSPs before she does her scenes (doing some shooting with M-16s, no doubt).

trekchu

You know, I sometimes wonder how things would have played out without the war... THere is some good speculative literature on that..

Back on topic, we once encountered most of an East-German Tank Brigade that surrenderred without a shot. It seems that they had been fighting a running battle with some 14th AD units for weeks, and when their KGB advisers demanded a counterattack, they simply shot him.

Matt Wiser

There's been a few books that try and speculate as to how things would've been if there'd been no war. With a Whimper, Not a Bang, is one AH that has the Cold War ending in what was it, 1990? With popular revolts in Eastern Europe, followed by the USSR just peacefully breaking up. You'd need some Kremlin honcho who was a lot different than the ideologues and back-stabbers we had to deal with for that scenario to happen. And we do know what happened to those who suggested that the ComBloc cut their losses: unmarked graves somewhere outside Moscow.

Just saw this on CNN: Bob Ballard, they guy who found the Titanic after the war, just announced he's found the wreck of the carrier Forrestal, about 400 miles SE of New York. She got ambushed by a pair of Oscar-class SSGNs and hit with a dozen SS-N-19s, and half the crew was lost in the sinking on 7 Oct 1985, barely a month into the war. The Navy's been notified, and since she's a war grave, no artifacts can be removed from the wreck. He also found a Victor-II sub nearby that the escorts sank during the rescue op. Ballard himself was a Navy Reservist who got called up during the war, and did his thing at CINCLANT in Norfolk, working the ASW side of the naval war. (OOC: Ballard was a reservist at the time the Titanic was really found in 1985, and retired a Commander in the USN Reserve)

Matt Wiser

I do remember from the Air War College that the commander of II MEF was furious, and it almost got him relieved of command. As it turned out, a regiment from 6th MarDiv wound up driving down the entire length of Padre Island when the time came, and there were just scattered groups of either Cubans or Nicaraguans, guns pointed out to sea, and though most were surprised to see Marines coming down on them, the vast majority were glad to surrender and get it over with. The rest of II MEF just went down the coast towards Harlingen when the time came.

The battle line at the end of LONG RIFLE (again, with hurricane season putting a damper on things-literally) was basically the I-10 line from El Paso to San Antonio, then following U.S. 181 down to Corpus Christi. Two attempts to get down I-37 failed, and when Hurricane Jason arrived, the JCS decided to halt and not only allow the season to end, but the usual supply shortages were starting to bite, and so Sixth, Fifth, and Third Armies were ordered to stand fast on their current positions. Again, torn up roads, airports, and railroads, and with the Ports of Houston, Port Lavaca, and Corpus Christi in major need of repair, meant that BORDER FURY would have to be postponed indefinitely. In addition, the need to help reestablish state and local government in Central Texas was also a factor. 1988 was an election year, and there was a desire to have things "as close to normal" as possible. (Politics...ugh!) And there were several approaches to the Soviets via the Swiss and Swedish governments, offering the remaining ComBloc forces in Texas, Canada, and Alaska safe passage home if they would agree to a cease-fire, and in all cases, the Soviet leadership refused. Even a back channel via the U.S. Ambassador in Vienna and his Soviet counterpart failed-while the Soviet Foreign Ministry could see that their North American adventure had failed, the General Secretary and the Politburo would not. And they ignored the rumblings of discontent not only in the Warsaw Pact, but in their own republics, discontent that led to not only open revolt in the Warsaw Pact, but outright civil war in the USSR after the end of fighting in North America.

Anyone here get a call from the historical society in either Victoria or Port Lavaca? They're looking for LONG RIFLE vets to contribute to oral histories that both have ongoing about both the defense of Texas in those frantic early days, and in the liberation of Texas. I didn't have missions over those two cities, after checking my logbook, but if anyone here fought in either one (or both-especially in LONG RIFLE), they're looking for you guys.

Matt Wiser

Hey Mann: Major Kelly Ann Ray just got back from SoCal today. The filming's done on the Showtime flick, and all that needs to be done is the SFX and the usual post-production stuff. Incidentally, she was thrilled when I told her she's the new 419th Ops Officer. Now that the movie work's all done, we've been released from our TAD status.

One of the F-16 guys across the tarmac at Hill (he was a enlisted airman during the war, and went to OTS postwar-he had no family left after the occupation of Tulsa, so the AF became his family) brought me an old Playboy from 1990: seems a couple of the Cobra Chicks who left the Army took off their flight suits-and a lot more! Yow....now I know what you guys saw who saw them in their stand-down time.

Anyone notice who's flying a MiG-23 around at airshows? Whoever he is, both Hill and Mountain Home would like to have him. Only flying MiG-23 in civilian hands that anyone here's aware of.

(OOC: A sad note to report for fans of the original Red Dawn: Patrick Swayze, who played Jed, passed away today from Pancreatic Cancer. RIP)

TheMann

(OOC: Swayze is in a bunch of the movies I like. Rest in Peace, Patrick. )

Congrats to Major Ray. Lord knows she deserves some good luck after all the crap she's had to deal with. Hopefully now she'll have her better job and enjoy herself. Especially since before long she's gonna be famous, when that movie comes out. Plenty deserved, if you ask me.

I'm not surprised some of the Cobra Chicks showed off their more private parts. Lord knows a few of them were rather promiscuous during the war when they were out on R&R, and Jesus did they ever party hard. We all did that a few times - I woke up buck naked in the bedroom of a female (and rather attractive) bar owner one time in Jacksonville one time and didn't have a damned clue how I got there, but they had me (and everybody else - well, maybe not the Hells Angels guys) covered by miles. The Hells Angels guys were, honestly, often pretty fucked up in the head, especially with some of the stuff they pulled. That said, I don't think they win the "How the f*** did you THAT off?" award. 5th Squadron, 9th ACR that that honor, hands down. That squadron took out an entire Cuban Division in taking back Rocky Flats in March '87. Lord only knows how the hell they pulled that off, outnumbered at least 20-1.

FYI, I asked the Bro where the Seabees flew from during that ridiculous affair, he said it was Bergstrom AFB they flew from. And he agrees with your assessment, too, as his wife barked at him for calling it a shithole within earshot of his six-year-old daughter. Oops. I don't have anything over Victoria or Port Lavaca either.

I'm most glad to hear they found Forrestal. One of my high-school buddies died on it, lord knows his parents - who were both absolutely devastated with the loss of their only son - will want to get to that site as fast as a jet can carry them there. Their daughter managed to keep them from totally falling to pieces, and dad decided to enlist himself. I know because he got assigned as my Crew Chief for a while - another favor from Brigadier General Hayman, who found out about the dad's enlistment in the AF through my squadron commander, who I told about him after I got a letter from him explaining that he was enlisting to, quote, "kill some motherf--king Russians." Did I mention how much General Hayman kicks ass? I was hoping he'd end up Chief of the Air Force, but he retired with three stars on his shoulder and a Medal of Honor. If he ever turns up in my necks of the woods, his beers are on me.

Matt Wiser

Now, if I can get her that promotion to Lt. Col., it'd be perfect. I may have to call in a favor or two. Good advice, Mann: she will be famous when that movie comes out. The paperback reprint of her book will tie in with the movie, and it'll be out just before Showtime premieres the flick.

Btw, how'd you like the choice of Kristy Swanson to play the CSP gal? I called the DOD movie liasion office and asked how the SoCal filming's going, and they said it's going great. The 35th Security Police Squadron at George AFB taught her to shoot an M-16, and they have some filming in the desert for that scene coming up in a few days. And they told me Kristy has no problems wearing only combat boots and an M-16 for that particular scene....She's also shortlisted for the Cobra Chicks movie, apparently.

Ballard's also looking for the wreck of the Kirov, but since it's Hurricane season in the Gulf of Mexico, it'll have to wait a while longer. And it's not just the Navy that wants a look-see: NOAA wants to do a radiation survey of the wreck, to see if the wreck is leaking any radioactivity from the two nuclear reactors.

You told us a lot about Heyman; too bad he and Tanner didn't get to be AF Chief of Staff. Both of 'em weeded out the deadwood pretty fast, didn't they? And they were both murder on the idiots who still had no idea when to throw the book away in wartime. Interesting on how so many air-defense sites in New England or in Newfoundland had new officers show up,thanks to the two generals....

Panzerfaust 150

Ah Port Lavaca and Victoria...I saw both of those garden spots UP CLOSE. We got there after our line doggies bled in spades for both. We didn't take many prisoners there...most of the defenders were Mexicans and Cubans who couldn't retreat FAST enough out of Houston. But it was house to house...V and VII Corps had, of course, bypassed them and we had to clear them the hell out.

Took us a week in Port Lavaca...and the bastards tried to blow a LNG tanker in harbor...I think the SEALs put paid to that...we didn't know for sure. Victoria was a week long slog. Casualties weren't light, but they weren't ruinous.

As for R and R, or as we called it: I and I (Intoxication and Intercourse), we partied hard. Not as hard as the "biker cav" but we did run across the Chopper Chicks one weeklong pass in New Orleans...I think there's some barkeeps on Bourbon Street who swore we were the Soviet invasion they'd been fearing (this was right after Houston fell, but before LONG RIFLE). I don't remember too much...but I do remember waking in a hotel with a note shoved in my mouth. "You were wonderful, -Maxine". My wife cringes when she hears that story, but I know from several of her surviving company members that she was as much a partier in her own right.

TheMann

Matt Wiser said: Now, if I can get her that promotion to Lt. Col., it'd be perfect. I may have to call in a favor or two. Good advice, Mann: she will be famous when that movie comes out. The paperback reprint of her book will tie in with the movie, and it'll be out just before Showtime premieres the flick.

Bet that book goes high on the bestseller list. My wife has a copy of the hardcover, has worn some of the pages. She'll have a lot of interviews and the like to do, I hope she's ready for it.

Matt Wiser said: Btw, how'd you like the choice of Kristy Swanson to play the CSP gal? I called the DOD movie liasion office and asked how the SoCal filming's going, and they said it's going great. The 35th Security Police Squadron at George AFB taught her to shoot an M-16, and they have some filming in the desert for that scene coming up in a few days. And they told me Kristy has no problems wearing only combat boots and an M-16 for that particular scene....She's also shortlisted for the Cobra Chicks movie, apparently.

Heh heh heh......I wonder how many boners guys are gonna get wondering "did that chick with the gun look like that in real life?!" Swanson is a great choice for that role. Hope they are careful not to show her front naked figure though. A few people will undoubtedly call an objection to that. (Whiners, those people are. What's the problem with frontal nudity, anyways?) She's gonna be in Cobra Chicks movie, huh? If they want full accuracy, they'll need a Jenna Jameson to fully display how crazy the Cobra Chiucks got......

Matt Wiser said: Ballard's also looking for the wreck of the Kirov, but since it's Hurricane season in the Gulf of Mexico, it'll have to wait a while longer. And it's not just the Navy that wants a look-see: NOAA wants to do a radiation survey of the wreck, to see if the wreck is leaking any radioactivity from the two nuclear reactors.

I can see why the radiation leaks would be a worry, yeah. Especially since there is enough sub wrecks in the Atlantic, and at least two Soviet and one USN nuclear subs had reactor punctures after they got sunk. Three nuclear messes is bad enough, thank you.

Matt Wiser said: You told us a lot about Heyman; too bad he and Tanner didn't get to be AF Chief of Staff. Both of 'em weeded out the deadwood pretty fast, didn't they? And they were both murder on the idiots who still had no idea when to throw the book away in wartime. Interesting on how so many air-defense sites in New England or in Newfoundland had new officers show up,thanks to the two generals....

It sounds like Tanner and Hayman were in the same mold, two fathers for their guys. He'd always seem to be the overwatcher, looking out for the guys going into harm's way and the guys keeping the guys going into harm's way safe, and letting the staff weenies know when to get the hell out of the way and let us do our jobs. Yeah, none of us did everything exactly by the book, something that it seems most of the high rankers in the US military knew by the end of the War. How else did the Hells Angels Hellraisers, the VA-122 "Fire Lancers" ("Fuckin' Loonies" we'd call them) and the Cobra Chicks stay in the military? Simple - they got the job done, and in war, that's all that matters.

Matt Wiser

How'd Powell like that-XVIII Airborne Corps being used to clear Fifth Army's rear and deal with bypassed towns that he felt Schwartzkopf should've taken the time to secure? The Marines weren't happy with no amphib bypass of Corpus Christi, but they were more angry with Powell for vetoing that than anyone else. That was one of the few disagreements that Powell and Schwartzkopf had the whole war, IIRC. At least when Powell was POTUS, he had Schwartzkopf as his National Security Advisor.

So the Cubans and Mexicans were the defenders there. How'd you guys find that out? Either the SR-71 or RF-4C imagery told you, or it was found out the hard way....Did any of the Cuban or Mexican EPWs repeat that story the Soviets told 'em, about the U.S. slicing off parts of Mexico if they lost? One thing that was talked about a lot at the Air War College when I was there as a student was why didn't we do just that? Grab the oil and gas fields on the Gulf Coast and keep 'em until the reparations were paid out of the proceeds? Mexico City still owes about half of what was assessed postwar.

General Tanner looked the other way when the Cobra Chicks were on AF bases; he knew folks had to blow off steam somehow. He felt their off-duty hijinks were the Army's business, not the AF's. We never ran into them off duty, but did fly shotgun for them in the air as things headed from Dallas south. Keep in mind that the RF-4C guys could often be perverts: they showed us some overheads of one of their unit parties....so yeah, we knew how wild they were. And this is well before the cease-fire on the border. I'd hate to think how wild it got when those gals got the word it was over. On second thought, it probably made their New Orleans or Memphis blow-outs seem like a Sunday School by comparison.

Kristy will be...fully displayed, the liasion office said. She had no problems with the part. Remember that the incident took place at night, and there was not only a moon, but we still had a campfire going some, so yeah, that CSP gal showed it all. I still feel sorry for the poor Cuban who got dragged in. He probably never got over being shot and captured by a naked gal.

[lordroel]

From page 55

Panzerfaust 150

Matt Wiser said: So the Cubans and Mexicans were the defenders there. How'd you guys find that out? Either the SR-71 or RF-4C imagery told you, or it was found out the hard way....Did any of the Cuban or Mexican EPWs repeat that story the Soviets told 'em, about the U.S. slicing off parts of Mexico if they lost? One thing that was talked about a lot at the Air War College when I was there as a student was why didn't we do just that? Grab the oil and gas fields on the Gulf Coast and keep 'em until the reparations were paid out of the proceeds? Mexico City still owes about half of what was assessed postwar.

We found out (we being our Intell btn) when the line doggies got us EPWs to speak to...though there weren't that many. The nature of the fighting in both places made prisoners a bit scarce on the ground. I will say this much...were EPWs shot out of hand...yes. Especially at this point with guys dying with the end in sight. Pissed a lot of line doggies off, hell, pissed all of us off. I saw a few instances. Professionally, it pissed me off..personally, I understood. Hell, there was some guys in some of the line units...you just didn't leave EPWs in their care.

Matt Wiser

Panzerfaust, were you guys happy with the overheads that came your way? The SR-71 guys didn't have a problem the entire war, but the RF-4Cs and the Navy's RF-8s and the F-14s with TARPS pods took their share of lumps. Too bad the RA-5C had been retired in '79....some got reactivated from AMARC, and did good work. And there were some Vietnam vets with Vigilante time in their logbooks who came back to the cockpit. We always bought a case or two of "whatever they drank" to the recon guys for getting us the pre- and post-strike imagery.

Killing EPWs out of hand is something nobody wants to talk about, but it did happen. Not just this time, but in every war. It seems that KGB or DGI guys and some members of "auxiliary" units had a hard time making it back to the EPW compounds. When there was a big one outside Cannon AFB, the MPs said that those two categories were least represented among the EPW population. And anyone who was a sniper almost never made it back, the MPs said.

The Army kept the Cobra Chicks active postwar: They were reflagged, and they're now known as 5-229 Avn (Attack), part of XVIII Airborne Corps' Aviation Brigade, with AH-64s and a few Blackhawks. One thing the Army learned from the war was to have a Ranger company or a Ranger-qualified infantry company attached to attack helo units to provide muscle in Search-and-Rescue missons. So the Cobra Chicks now have a company of air-assault troopers who are all Ranger qualified to go with 'em on Combat SAR.

Panzerfaust 150

Matt Wiser said: Panzerfaust, were you guys happy with the overheads that came your way? The SR-71 guys didn't have a problem the entire war, but the RF-4Cs and the Navy's RF-8s and the F-14s with TARPS pods took their share of lumps. Too bad the RA-5C had been retired in '79....some got reactivated from AMARC, and did good work. And there were some Vietnam vets with Vigilante time in their logbooks who came back to the cockpit. We always bought a case or two of "whatever they drank" to the recon guys for getting us the pre- and post-strike imagery.

Killing EPWs out of hand is something nobody wants to talk about, but it did happen. Not just this time, but in every war. It seems that KGB or DGI guys and some members of "auxiliary" units had a hard time making it back to the EPW compounds. When there was a big one outside Cannon AFB, the MPs said that those two categories were least represented among the EPW population. And anyone who was a sniper almost never made it back, the MPs said.
Yeah, having helped run a few of those EPW cages, I can attest to the validity of those statements. Hell, the worst time we had was when a bunch of returning locals in some small town in Southeast Texas found out we were using their city square (what was left of it) as a temporary EPW enclosure. I'm there, with about oh, 4 MPs and 2 other interrogators and a half-dozen casuals. So, 10 folks watching about 500-600 EPWs, many of them Soviet and Cuban line doggies (we'd already processed and sent on the officers and KGB/Auxiliaries). There wasn't much intell value to most of the prisoners, so, we were babysitting them till a transpo company showed up with some duce and a halfs for them in the morning. Well, a caravan of cars and trucks show up...it seems the local populace was coming back..and they were none too happy with us...or the Commies about what had been done to their town. And there was about 3-400 of them...and they had everything from clubs to AKs and they wanted to start lynching EPWs.

Well, happily, the two HMMWVs we had were both armed...and after an object lesson with a .50 cal and someone's Volvo....the townspeople decided to leave us alone...I'll be damned if all of us...EPWs included weren't happy to leave at 0520 the next morning.

As for imagery, I dealt with human collection, so I didn't deal with imagery much. But, from what I saw, we got good takes from you all. Post-war with the releases of information, the takes are nothing short of startling. Though, NRO and SAC are being tight-lipped about their IMIGINT and ELINT take during the war.

Matt Wiser

Well, speaking as one of the users of the imagery, the recon people did a great job. Even if the Tac Recon guys and gals took their lumps: some units had 50% attrition in the early days. You know the saying the recon folks have: "Alone, Unarmed, and Unafraid." Or the other verison: "Alone, Unarmed, and Very Much Afraid." Either one applies. Then there's their other motto: "In God We Trust: All Others We Monitor."

Seeing locals want revenge on EPWs was pretty common during PRAIRIE FIRE, LONG RIFLE, and BORDER FURY. When the squadron was moving from D/FW Airport to Bergstrom (wish they'd sent us to Waco Regional Airport instead), the fellas running the squadron's ground convoy said that locals living near I-35 would throw whatever was available at passing columns of EPWs. And those guarding the prisoners reminded them that if anyone escaped, it was more than likely that they'd be lynched by the locals, so they'd best not try. There were some that did try, however, and the corpses hanging from trees and telephone poles served as an adequate deterrent to anyone else trying to escape.

You guys also deal with escaped POWs-meaning ours? That happened with us on several occasions in both New Mexico and in Texas. It just made you not only feel sorry for those guys and gals, but when you heard them tell their stories....not only did it make you glad you weren't captured, but it just got your blood boiling. Given that we had squadron mates and other friends who were POWs, it just made you that more determined to win.

sloreck

Before I used the GI bill (first time) to go to med school I was a navy intel type for 5 years at the end of Vietnam. worked with RA-5C imagery then. Those birds used to drag race F-4s & win every time, but were restricted to 2nd tour pilots cause their landing characteristics were really rugged & they were known as ensign killers. The TFs that hit Petropavlosk during the war, and Guam to take it back from the NKs had a few Viggies on the carriers. Beautiful in the air but got nervous every time one landed in marginal conditions. You fly guys ever see a "Viggie-Zippo". They'd do a low pass through the TF dumping fuel, then hit the afterburner - wow during the day unreal at night.

Never got to have much of a wild time on R&R, left a wife & 2 kids when got called up 1st 24hrs of the war - they ended up behind enemy lines & I spent most of the war thinking of them, did not find out they were dead until after the surrender. Ol doc bear could drink Marines under the table however, my secret was a special vitamin mix I downed before partying.

Grad school is going well, gave my first lecture to the ROTC guys last week. Not much squawking about Cuba here, but there are a few, and one particularly obnoxious type never watched cop shows I guess, because a glass he put down at a department party somehow ended up getting dusted & we are awaiting the results.

I won't admit I saw any EPWs shot out of hand, but there were some mighty quick applications of the UCMJ with immediate execution of sentence.

Matt Wiser

Hey Panzerfaust, did you guys have any...similar incidents? Or did word get around the locals not to mess with you guys re: EPWs? And did you guys debrief any of our escaped POWs? Our squadron intel shop and the Marine Air Group's had that duty a few times. Not pleasant reading, those debriefs-we got briefed on them.....

One thing that we had a laugh about was when one of New Mexico's Senators (he'd been out of D.C. at his ranch near Santa Fe on Invasion Day) came by Cannon to thank us during Phase I of PRAIRIE FIRE. Our then-CO (rest his soul) was explaining some recon imagery, and the guy was wondering what "occupied" and "unoccupied" meant on the photos. Remembering that JFK had asked the same question during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the CO showed the Senator some RF-4C pics of a ComBloc bivouac, with a field latrine: there was a guy sitting on the commode and that was labled "occupied", the latrine next to him was labeled "unoccupied." The Senator understood perfectly.

Well, I got a call from AFHC at home yesterday; the final paperwork's in the mail to confirm the three kills I had as probables. The record has been amended to list the three kills previously reported as probables to confirmed, so the bureaucrat said. Once the paperwork's on my desk, then I can have the crew chief paint those three extra red stars on the Wing CO's bird.

Matt Wiser

OK, guys, the next chapter of Keegan's book deals with events between September '87 and May of '88, which both sides feel was the calm before the final storm in North America. The Soviets tried to resupply and reequip their remaining forces in Texas as best they could, and the same was said for their efforts in getting supplies to Alaska. At best, only 40% of what was needed got through the USN's anti-shipping efforts in the Atlantic and Caribbean to Mexican ports such as Vera Cruz and Tampico. In Alaska, it was somewhat better, but only half of what was shipped made it. And what was the Kremlin's response? Both the Commanders of the Northern Fleet and the Pacific Fleet were "retired." (the latter post was filled three times during the war....) The other problem in supplying Alaska and Canada was SAC: their Eastern Siberia runs causing delay after delay in shipping supplies to ports on the Soviet Pacific Coast.

In Europe, the neutralist governments in the Low Countries, Norway, Denmark, and Italy were either being turned out of office via the ballot box, or in Italy's case, the threat of a coup forced the Communist-dominated government to resign. West Germany had a similar turnover in Government, after revelations in the popular magazine Der Spiegel revealed that a number of ministers in the Green-dominated government were either Soviet agents or otherwise on the Soviet payroll. A number of Bundeswehr general officers, together with their Luftwaffe counterparts, decided that matters could not wait, and openly denounced the pro-Soviet attitude of the now-shaky Green Government. When it was finally revealed that the Green Chancellor was a paid KGB asset (via a BND file that suddenly found its way to the TV Network ZDF), and had been for several years before and during the war, that was enough. The government fell, and many of those listed as KGB agents, fellow travelers, or "useful idiots" fled to the Soviet Union. And the new government renounced the neutrality declaration of its now-discredited and disgraced predecessor, and openly called on the East German Army and People to rise up against the Soviets. The French called on the Soviets to either accept the latest U.S. offer of a cease-fire and Soviet withdrawal, or she too, would openly support the U.S. war effort "by whatever means are available." When the Kremlin refused to reply, the French openly began shipping war materiel and food to the U.S. East Coast, the former including Milan ATGMs, Roland SAMs, and NATO-standard artillery, mortar, and small arms ammunition, in convoys escorted by U.S. and French warships.

Unlike the previous winter, the winter of 1987-88 was a quiet one in Texas, as this time, the ComBloc was biding its time, waiting for the axe to fall come spring, and they would need every soldier, tank, and piece of equipment they had. However, in Alberta and British Columbia, a limited Soviet offensive did take place, to try and "pinch out" some bulges in their lines. While the attack in British Columbia failed, as one of the two Soviet divisions involved was cut to pieces and routed by very determined Canadian and U.S. defenders, the Alberta phase did pinch out two small salients, both fifty miles from the Montana border. Both attacks were division-sized, as the Soviet supply situation (not to mention deteriorating weather) ruled out a major Army-level operation. And one raid by a tank brigade towards the Montana border resulted in demands from the Montana Governor for additional troops in the state, resulting in the transfer of the newly-arrived 96th ID from the Mexican border in Arizona to Montana (trading heat, scorpions, dust, and spiders for frightful cold, blowing snow, and ice-hard ground- "shudder").

Pyro

The winter of 87-88 in Lethbridge was pretty bad to my recollection. Food and heating was pretty scarce because the Soviets took pretty much everything. Unfortunately it wasn't uncommon to hear that a kid my age died from starvation, or the cold.

Matt Wiser

Hey Pyro, from what you've read, did Trudeau ever say or do anything to atone for his military cuts? Some of the Congresscritters here who'd been anti-military in the '70s and early '80s paid at the polls in '86 and '88 (even in wartime, we still had elections, like in the Civil War), those who weren't in D.C. that is. A few were unapologetic, but most realized that they wouldn't get reelected, and didn't run. Those who were unrepentant about their anti-military attitudes lost-every one of 'em. And some were targets of death theats, harassment, etc.

Typical Ivan: take everything not nailed down for himself, and leave the civilians to fend for themselves.

trekchu

What I find the strangest thing about the Germans during these years was that they still put a Social-Democrat into Office as Chancellor. But that's maybe because he had been one of the most vocal opponents of the neutrality before... That was what cost him the election before the war, but now they all knew that he had been right all along.

OOC: "Der Spiegel" as saviour of German Democracy... Awesome!

Pyro

Matt Wiser said: Hey Pyro, from what you've read, did Trudeau ever say or do anything to atone for his military cuts?

Not to my knowledge. He was adamant in his belief that he never could have foreseen the invasion and never apologized for it, so there were not a lot people that mourned his passing nine years ago. While WWIII united the country is some ways, there is some lingering bitterness between Western and Central Canada because British Columbia and Alberta took the brunt of the invasion while Ontario was barely even touched. There are even a few fringe parties that favor the West's secession from Canada and annexation to the United States.

Matt Wiser

Well, none of the anti-military congresscritters here did the same. Same excuses and all the rest. The Democrats were actually glad to see those people gone, as they've had a hard time getting over their anti-military image they had ever since McGovern in '72, and more recently, Mondale in '84.

Fringers asking for U.S. annexation of B.C. and Alberta? They want to be like Baja, I take it? Even though they were allied and not enemy territory.

When's that airshow you talked about earlier? Tell those in charge about the husband-and-wife wing COs down here and we'll gladly fly up. I won't be in the F-4, as it's not ready yet (i.e. fully demilitarized-I still have to deactivate the gun and the fire-control system). But his-and-hers F-15Es will be there if we get the invite.

Pyro

Reconstruction in Western Canada has been slower than was in the former occupied states, despite the fact our economy is recovering at the same pace. (To this day people are still wondering why more money was put into upgrading Lethbridge's airport than repairing Calgary and Edmonton International). So there are few people who think Alberta and B.C. would rather deal with Washington than they would Ottawa. I'd also chalk up to the fact that we Westerners feel a certain kinship with the United States. I remember how there was I went on "billet exchange" in Scouts when I was thirteen, some scouts from Colorado came up to Alberta for a Jamboree one weekend, and we went south around two months later. Had the time of my life, if I remember right.

As for the Lethbridge International Airshow, they're holding it on the second weekend of August. I sent them a message about a month back, and they're quite interested in inviting the two of you (and anyone else who's willing) over.

Matt Wiser

As soon as we get the formal invite, we're going. And we'll have plenty of patches, some 366th and 419th T-Shirts, caps, etc. And a DVD player showing wartime and current gun-camera footage. Nothing like seeing a Beagle flown by "weekend warriors" embarassing some hotshot F-16 driver from the other side of the ramp.....Actually, there'll be four Beagles: Lisa's (flown by her pilot-she's a WSO-the only one currently a Wing CO), her wingie's, mine, and Major Kelly Ann Ray's.

Hey Mann: The crew from Dogfights will be at Mountain Home next week. Seems they want some F-4 stories, and they'll get quite a few. And they weren't just interested in air-to-air, either. They want some air-to-ground as well. Kara Sackhoff is one of those who'll be interviewed, along with Lisa and me. There's a half-dozen of us with stories for the show.

What was that sicko Khovshtov doing during PRAIRE FIRE and LONG RIFLE? Was he busy purging the Army of "The defeatist mood", or was he still trying to "pacify" Texas? That slime-licker probably did more to fuel the insurgents than any other ComBloc officer.

Panzerfaust 150

Sorry, classes got busy..

No, we really didn't have that much in the way of incidents with civilians before or after the incident I mentioned. Yeah, there was a lot of escaped EPWs who got hung, or worse. I remember hearing a story, don't know if it's true...about a serial killer who found victims amongst escaped EPWs and downed Combloc pilots. I don't remember a name, but sadly, he kept right on killing once the war ended, and the Texas Rangers finally caught up with him about 3-4 years ago. It all came out at his trial.

As for what Khvostov was doing? Hard to say, as I said, he was nabbed not long after the Brownsville surrender, I can't say where, but you can safely assume it wasn't Brownsville. We had a real hell of a time reconstructing his movements post-Houston when we grabbed his offices and a good chunk of his staff. I really didn't get involved with him till after the war, so I honestly could not say where he was at all, as any attempts to ask him anything usually ended up in a rant about "making the whole world sing" again by that point, I think he went steadily mad the closer he got to his trial.

trekchu

Well, we did once liberate some sort of labour camp ( not the usual ones, bad as they were.... ) where they had been doing... god knows what with them. Anyway, we had the guards under lock and key, with some grunts guarding them until our MPs arrived. The townspeople knocked our guards on the head and hosed the EPWs. Never found out what they did at that camp...

RalofTyr

So when I heard the Soviets were coming, I high tailed it out of Peoria and to my mountain cabin. My cabin has a nice few of Peoria and the river valley. Luckily for me, the front like is about 10 miles the river Yuma. With a good telescope I can check out the front lines. Not much action. I'll hear and see some explosions, the flashes especially at night. I've yet to see a dead body. All I see, even with my telescope, is a burning vehicle, usually one of theirs. Then I see red cross trucks; ours, heading towards the mountains. Their's, heading towards Peoria.

I went to Norraton, in the mountains to get supplies once. A soldier told me a Cuban unit occupied Peoria and they are the worst soldiers he's seen. He said drunk National Guardsmen would fight better. Every time they clash, we win. The only reason they don't advance is because they were ordered to hold the line.

Another trip to Norraton, I saw why. They had all these new tanks, M1 Abrams they called them. They said they got better armor than the only Pattons.

So, a few days later, I was back in my cabin when I see all these tanks lined up on our side. They didn't look like the old Pattons, but like the new Abrams. I guess they were getting into position.

So at around before dawn. I can't tell what time it was because there's no electricity for my clock. I was awoken by massive amounts of explosions. I could see the a section of the Yuma River was being attacked. I could even hear jets dropping bombs on the Cubans. So, I to put the coffee on the fire and get my telescope. As I was just about to remove the lens, the whole sky let up brighter than any dawn. I hit the deck. A few moments later, a blast of wind hit my cabin. The cabin shock and the windows were blown out. I got up to look after the light went away. I couldn't see anything down on the River, except smoke, dust and a massive mushroom cloud forming.

I couldn't hear the explosions anymore. My hears were ringing. About an hour after, there was still a lot of dust and a lot of fires. So much it was filling the area was smoke and soon, I wouldn't be able to see from my telescope. I did see tanks coming out of the dust about 6 miles away. There were Soviet Tanks. I grabbed most of what I could, my camping gear, food, my rifle etc. and get in my truck and headed to Norraton as fast as I could.

I was stopped by the military on the main highway to Norraton. Both lines, left and right, had tanks and trucks heading towards the valley floor. I was only allowed to travel to Norraton an hour later after the convoy passed and I was joined by many trucks with wounded heading towards Norraton.

Well, I got to Norraton, which is all fine. My truck is almost out of gas and there's no gas here. It's all being used by the military. So, I guess that's the end of the line for me. I guess worst case, I can go live in the mountains and be an Indian. Afterall, I'm half and I still look the part. I suppose the Soviets won't have much to fear from a 61 year old Indian.

Matt Wiser

How many times did someone try to kill that slime-licker? His own superior wanted him dead, the NASA refugees in Alabama, when they found out, felt the same way (word has it that some of the astronauts offered to put up a reward for Khovstov's capture-dead or alive, but preferably dead), and the guerillas in Texas were only too happy to take shots at him-too bad they missed... At least the...creature defended himself right into the noose at his trial. Talk about a jammed O-Club watching that one.

Panzerfaust, did you ever run into the Rag-Tag Circus? The guys and gals in the 83rd ID who had more captured ComBloc vehicles and gear than our own stuff? They were what, 250% of authorized vehicle strength, and all of the excess was, shall we say, "acquired" on the battlefield. They even did a few Trojan Horse tricks on occasion. (Having a few GIs who were of Russian descent and spoke fluent Russian helped..) Another division that's been retained in the postwar Army's force structure: they are based along the Arizona-Sonora border.

The FAA is pleased so far with the F-4: the new inspector is much more understanding, and some of the restrictions the previous one imposed got loosened. About the only one I still have a problem with is no radar use in urban areas. It's not the big jets I'm worried about: it's the private pilots in their Cessnas or Beechcrafts that the radar could come in handy in tracking.

Matt Wiser

Hey Mann: remember Steve Ritchie, the only AF ace in Southeast Asia? He came back on active duty within a month of the invasion, and he added to his score. He had 5 in SEA, and added 17 more during the first two years of the war. Then the AF decided he'd be doing better teaching new guys and gals. Btw, he was Kara Sackhoff's combat flight instructor. Retired a Maj. Gen. and in charge of Nellis AFB and the huge range complex. I told the Dogfights people about you: expect a phone call from 'em shortly. They are doing at least three episodes about air combat during the war.
But one more episode will be about the air-to-ground stuff (A-7s, A-10s, A-6s, F-111s, etc.)

While Bob Ballard's waiting out Hurricane Season, he was on CNN today: he went into detail on the Forrestal wreck, and on two others: one was an escort, the cruiser Wainwright, the other was the attacking sub. The sub was an Oscar-I, hull number unknown. The reactor compartment is intact, but the torpedo room isn't; she took a torpedo right aft of the sonar dome, and apparently set off some of the weapons inside the torpedo room. Ballard thinks one of the 688-class subs escorting the carrier group got the kill, as the Mark-46 that ASW aircraft, helos, and shipboard torpedo tubes couldn't have done the damage, but a Mark-48 from a sub certainly could.

[lordroel]

From page 56

Matt Wiser

Sorry, guys, for the delay, but the Governor of Utah wants a Victory Day flyby, and it's either us in 419, or the 388th in their Vipers doing it. Been in one too many meetings, and the CSPs at Mountain Home, on Lisa's orders, let me have some range time with the M-16 and the MP-5. Man, that felt good!

OK, time for the next installment of Keegan, and this one's BORDER FURY. The Russians, according to Keegan's sources, felt like the Germans on the Oder in April, 1945. They knew the final offensive was coming, but didn't know when. And they also knew there wasn't much to stop it. Two Politburo members, on an inspection trip to Cuba and South Texas, knew it was over when the Theater Commander told them that his forces had already prepared plans for "operations south of the Rio Grande." All the ComBloc could do was wait for the axe to fall, and it did on 24 May 1989.

In the West, Sixth Army pushed the ROK Expeditionary Corps and the Taiwanese down U.S. 67 to Presidio, and they met up with 14th ACR from X Corps, by 1 June. Resistance had been light to moderate, and it turned out that Presidio was the only border town to fall without a fight. And the Big Bend Country was similarly taken without much fighting by the ROKs. (to this day, the ROK flag flies alongside Old Glory at Big Bend National Park HQ, and many relatives of ROK servicemen killed in West Texas visit the nearby ROK Cemetery) Sixth Army also sent II Corps down to Eagle Pass and Del Rio, with the 4th ID leading the way. And III Corps went down the I-35 to Laredo. It was very different, guys. The closer to the border, the more determined the resistance was. But General Fred Franks, in command of III Corps, told his commanders "Be on the Rio Grande by July 4th, period. I don't care where on the river, but be on the border, and let those ComBloc bastards know it." It was both 1st Cav and 3rd ACR that got to the river: on 2 July. 1st Cav got to the river east of Laredo, while 3rd ACR was west of the city. 23rd ID and 5th MarDiv both got into the fight for the city, which lasted until 10 July, and when it was over, Laredo was a heap of rubble, and Nueveo Laredo across the river was worse off. And both 1st Cav and 3rd ACR sent raids across the river to harass the Soviet/Cuban/Mexican rear.

Fifth Army under Schwartzkopf jumped off first down I-37, to link up with Powell's Third Army, which pushed XVIII Airborne Corps up the Interstate. VII and XVIII Airborne Corps linked up by 1 June, and then reoriented for the push south. Third Army had II MEF on the Gulf Coast, with XVIII Airborne Corps pushing down U.S. 77, with XV Corps following up. Fifth Army had VII Corps on U.S. 281, with V Corps on their right, following various state highways south, with the river as the ultimate objective. While all ComBloc forces fought fiercely, the Mexicans were the most determined, but the Soviets and Cubans were not resigned to defeat either. Even though their commanders knew it was only a matter of time, they made the decision that the U.S. and Allied forces would have to pay for their victory. And pay we did. It was 5 July before V Corps' 1st AD and 2nd ACR got to the river near Zapata and at Falcon Dam, which was taken by a company from 1/75 Rangers before the Mexicans could blow it. The rest of the Corps soon followed, and by 7 July, V Corps had taken Rio Grande City and was soon established on the river. VII Corps got to McAllen and Edinburg, but Third Army soon found out that with Brownsville the only way out, the ComBloc made things very costly. It took a month to get from Raymondville on U.S. 77 down to artillery range of Brownsville.
And both sides prepared for a siege, with Harlingen not falling until 2 August, and then things settled down for the Siege of Brownsville, which would be the last act in the lower 48.

TheMann

BORDER FURY turned out to be the nastiest fight of the war for my squadron. We lost ten planes between May 24 and August 2, with five KIA, one MIA and one POW. That POW died during the Siege of Brownsville - shot dead by a KGB scum and buried in a mass grave. That grave got dug up after the war, and I personally delivered his remains home to his wife and son in Akron, Ohio. That was one of the hardest things I ever had to do in my entire life.

I became my squadron's CO during Prairie Fire, and I became my TFW's CO just into Border Fury when the previous boss' F-16 didn't come home after a flight into the Viper's Nest at Laredo. Talk about fast promotion, though I was only CO of the Wing for a year or so. My new unit, the 474th TFW, were assigned to destroying ComBloc air defenses in the area during the fight over Laredo. I had Wild Weasel F-4s to do that, but the Weasel guys didn't like me much at first, figuring that a guy flying Hornets wouldn't know the capabilities of a Phantom. But then somebody pointed out to the Wild Weasel guys that I started in the USMC and was ceritifed with 1,700 hours and over 600 sorties in the F-4. I at one point offered to fly one of the F-4s with them if it would shut 'em up, but one of my superiors put a stop to that idea.

Part of my TFW, briefly, was my brother's F-14 squadron. My brother on time joked about how I could order him to stay on the ground so that he wouldn't run the risk of getting killed, but that I wouldn't do it because he was worried I'd be embarassed by is fellow pilots. I told him he didn't have to worry about that because "If we've gotten this far and death hasn't found us, I think we'll make it to the end." I was right, we're both still here.

I think for me, the most emotional moment of the war was after it. My family all met up for a big reunion after the war was over at my uncle's place in northwestern Wyoming, near Yellowstone Park. WE all were in one place again, and we all toasted those of my family and friends who didn't come home, and those of us who were there who had scars. My sister, who has the massive scar on her head from the fire on Tarawa. My cousin Sara and best friend Alex, who both are in wheelchairs from aircraft crashes. My uncle Alan, who died on USS Rathbrune. (After overseeing Operation Survivor - the massive salvage job to get a cruiser going from the remains of five Baltimore-class cruisers at Terminal Island in Los Angeles. I'm sure somebody was glad that the hulls of St. Paul and Toledo were still there - that's also how Chicago, Albany and Columbus stayed going too, I'm sure.) Looking at how many carried emotional or physical scars, it was amazing. It makes you wonder if the price was all worth it, at least before you snap pout of it and realize what you went out to defend in the first place.

Matt Wiser

Those were you guys over Laredo? Mann, if you heard the call signs of Corvette, Firebird, T-Bird, Mustang, Camaro, or any other car, that was us in 335. We had cars for those call signs. And I need to send you guys a case of whatever you drink. Having those Weasels around was a godsend. Especially as we got closer to the border. Once 5th MarDiv got to Laredo, and took the international airport (the old Laredo AFB) we went down right behind 'em. Once again, it was take off, orbit until FAC wants you, then ID the target, pickle off ordnance, then head back, do the hot refuel and rearm, then go back up. 7-8 times a day. At least as things went on, we were finally flying strikes into Mexico proper, as far south as Monterey, and even Saltillo a few times. (those were pre-planned strikes, not the usual CAS or BAI)

Now you know what it's like to get a squadron when you least expect it. Or want it, for that matter. Becoming XO was something I half expected, because the guy who was XO took a lot of chances that he shouldn't have taken. Got himself and his WSO killed in the process. When the CO went down south of Dallas, there were two chutes, and we hoped the CO and his WSO both made it. The Resistance got the WSO back, but the Night Stalkers were the ones who flew her back to D/FW. But when the CO didn't come back (his body was found after V Corps pushed south of Dallas), as XO, I had to take over the squadron right then. We never looked back, but hoped my being CO was "acting" until the real CO came back. He never did, and General Tanner confirmed me as CO (and confirmed me as a Major also-when he sent that pipsqueak up to Michigan for the duration and six months).

One thing that was a rude surprise in BORDER FURY was seeing Mexicans flying MiG-21s and MiG-23s. I never killed any personally, but several in the squadron did. Those guys should never have been in a fast jet, period. Still, a kill's a kill. Kara Sackhoff told me that she killed two Mexican MiG-23s, but never reported the kills-they were too easy and she actually felt sorry for the guys in the cockpit. A very few were good. But the rest were like clay pigeons. Hitting the Monterey airport a few times cured the Mexicans of the bad habit of sending those guys north of the river....

sloreck

Mann:
Make me think of when our family finally got together after the war. Was not until after we took Guam back, as I had found out about my wife/kids & stayed on active duty with my MEF on the Tarawa. Happy & sad combo, we met in New Orleans where my folks and brothers lived. Both brothers made it through, one was lawyer was in JAG through the war and was involved with prosecutions of Quislings during & after war before he was demobbed. My other brother was a private pilot with aerobatic rating, glider time etc. He ended up in the army flying black painted piper cubs, cessnas, you name it to drop agents behind the lines as he knew Louisiana & Mississippi like the back of his hand. He ended up with a purple heart & a below knee prsthesis about a year before the war ended. My Mom's side of the family lived in NYC - enough said.

One of my cousins was army reserve, he was born & raised for 15 years in Mexico City. He was a transportation guy before the war started, but given he spoke fluent unaccented Mexican Spanish, and with a tan and a hair dye job (he's blonde) could BE Mexican, you can imagine what line of work he went in to. Lets just say he ended the careers of more than one Spanish speaking COMBLOC higher up, very close and personal. Hois older sister went to wrok for the Psyops folks doing radio broadcasts to the Spanish speaking COMBLOC troops. She was "the voice of your sister" on radio Libertad, asking the Mexicans why they were dying for the Russians, when their families needed them at home.

Anyway we had a great celebrations, lots of Dixie beer, oysters, crawfish etc. My Dad & other WW2 & Korea vets opeed up like they had not before, and we all agreed we'd keep praying our kids would not need to do this

TheMann

Matt Wiser said: Those were you guys over Laredo? Mann, if you heard the call signs of Corvette, Firebird, T-Bird, Mustang, Camaro, or any other car, that was us in 335. We had cars for those call signs.

Yeah, I heard those a few times. My call sign was Superbird, after the car driven by my boyhood heroes in NASCAR in the early 70s. (Post-war, my dad found one in a landfill near Oklahoma City and rebuilt it. He loves it. That was you boys in the 335? Now I know who those loons in the Phantoms were. If you ever saw the Hornet with number 55-0072 on the side, that was my mount at the time. She was well and truly ragged by the time the war was over, but she did what she was built to do.

Matt Wiser said: And I need to send you guys a case of whatever you drink. Having those Weasels around was a godsend. Especially as we got closer to the border.

It wasn't me in the Weasels - I offered to go, but the higher-ups figured I was needed more in the Hornets I by that time could fly blindfolded. My job in those missions was to keep the ComBloc fighters off 'em. The Russians and Cubans didn't make that easy.

Matt Wiser said: Once 5th MarDiv got to Laredo, and took the international airport (the old Laredo AFB) we went down right behind 'em. Once again, it was take off, orbit until FAC wants you, then ID the target, pickle off ordnance, then head back, do the hot refuel and rearm, then go back up. 7-8 times a day. At least as things went on, we were finally flying strikes into Mexico proper, as far south as Monterey, and even Saltillo a few times. (those were pre-planned strikes, not the usual CAS or BAI)

Yeah, I knew a few of those days. By then, of course, all the factories had everything running off the line like crazy, and if you wanted it, you got it, within reason. We got our pick of parts and munitions, which was great for morale and mission effectiveness, though my guys got a little carried away at times. The Weasel Guys were real bad at that - they always wanted to use HARMs, and good as they were there were times when a Sidearm or Shrike anti-radar missile would do the trick.

I know about the long-ranged strikes. I got down as far as Torreon, where the Reds had built a plant to make chemical munitions that wasn't yet operational - and thanks to us, never got there. Two KC-135s stuck it out big time for us, and allowed eight F-111s, with eight of us in escort, to go all the way from San Antonio to Torreon. The F-111s made it there easily, but we were real dry by the time we got to the tankers. Got a Cuban MiG-23 in the process. (Those things suck ass - and the Cubans were good pilots.)

Matt Wiser said: Now you know what it's like to get a squadron when you least expect it. Or want it, for that matter. Becoming XO was something I half expected, because the guy who was XO took a lot of chances that he shouldn't have taken. Got himself and his WSO killed in the process. When the CO went down south of Dallas, there were two chutes, and we hoped the CO and his WSO both made it. The Resistance got the WSO back, but the Night Stalkers were the ones who flew her back to D/FW. But when the CO didn't come back (his body was found after V Corps pushed south of Dallas), as XO, I had to take over the squadron right then. We never looked back, but hoped my being CO was "acting" until the real CO came back. He never did, and General Tanner confirmed me as CO (and confirmed me as a Major also-when he sent that pipsqueak up to Michigan for the duration and six months).

So you know what I'm talking about. I was a Major commanding a TFW - I doubt that has happened since, but it was what it was and I had to suck it up and keep going. Boy, it was a challenge, though. I never liked paperwork much, and I'd much rather be the guy doing the jobs rather than the one giving out the orders. Having a squadron of 20-25 aircraft and maybe 400 people is much different from commanding 178 aircraft (F/A-18A, F-4E, F-111F, A-7D and F-16A types at that point, gained a transport squadron of C-33A transports before the war was over) and nearly 3000 people, which the TFW was when I had to take it over.

Matt Wiser said: One thing that was a rude surprise in BORDER FURY was seeing Mexicans flying MiG-21s and MiG-23s. I never killed any personally, but several in the squadron did. Those guys should never have been in a fast jet, period. Still, a kill's a kill. Kara Sackhoff told me that she killed two Mexican MiG-23s, but never reported the kills-they were too easy and she actually felt sorry for the guys in the cockpit. A very few were good. But the rest were like clay pigeons. Hitting the Monterey airport a few times cured the Mexicans of the bad habit of sending those guys north of the river....

Yeah, I had thought that the Africans were bad, some of the Mexicans were, as you say, hopeless in a MiG. It doesn't help that the MiG-23 is a crappy dogfighter, and in the hands of those Mexican pilots it wasn't much more than a sure way to die, honestly. I never shot down any of them, but I know people who did. A couple of them agree with Kara, too.

Matt Wiser

Yeah, we did some crazy things, and General Tanner's Chief of Staff came by once and just shook his head. It wasn't the stuff we were doing that made him wonder, but the fact that most of us were coming back alive did make him question our sanity. Remember that Israeli who flew with us for a while? He taught us some low-level stuff that the Israelis had used in '73, and we used that on numerous occasions. And Kara wasn't the only one who came back with her G-Meter tripped: near the end, everybody, and I mean everybody, had that happen at least once. Myself included.

Once Laredo fell, there were some in III Corps who thought we'd keep going south; with 5th Force Recon having taken one of the International Bridges (the other two were blown by the Cubans or Mexicans), everybody thought the next stop was Monterey. And there wasn't that much in between the Rio Grande and Monterey to stop us, but III Corps never got the go-ahead to push south. 3rd ACR did loop around Nuevo Laredo and sit on the highway to block the ComBloc's line of retreat and supply, but once Laredo was secure, they pulled back-but blew up everything of use they laid their hands on. I talked with an ALO who was with V Corps, and they thought they were headed south of the river as well. X Corps in El Paso also wanted to go south past Juraez (which was shelled and bombed into burned-out rubble), but they, too were told to hold on their current positions. Everybody had their maps, the intel was up-to-date, and there was a desire to make the Mexicans pay for hosting the ComBloc invasion force. But we never went south of the border. Has anyone figured out why? Or have those documents not yet been declassified? (i.e. National Security Council and JCS meetings, for example, or Presidential meetings with the JCS) It sure would've made the siege easier, as the supplies and reinforcements headed to Brownsville would've gone to face III and V Corps. But at least a lot of what was sent never arrived, thanks to AF, Navy, and Marine air.

Having Captains or Majors in squadron or Wing command was a new thing, wasn't it? The last time the AF had commanders so junior was WW II. There were some good ones, and some who richly deserved being relieved. Sending those latter guys back to the Air Training Command at least meant their flying skills wouldn't be wasted. It beat sending them up to Maine or Labrador to run some air-defense radar or a SAC recovery field.

Yeah, we all thought the Africans were bad (Libyans, Angolans, etc.), but the Mexicans were the worst of the ComBloc in the air. The Russians just pulled a bunch of early-model MiG-21s and -23s from storage, gave 'em to the Mexicans, and that was that. I'll bet they had more losses to accidents than to us in the air. Having a bunch of their MiGs taken out at Monterey Airport didn't help things any, either.

TheMann

Matt Wiser said: Yeah, we did some crazy things, and General Tanner's Chief of Staff came by once and just shook his head. It wasn't the stuff we were doing that made him wonder, but the fact that most of us were coming back alive did make him question our sanity. Remember that Israeli who flew with us for a while? He taught us some low-level stuff that the Israelis had used in '73, and we used that on numerous occasions. And Kara wasn't the only one who came back with her G-Meter tripped: near the end, everybody, and I mean everybody, had that happen at least once. Myself included.

Me too. I did that a couple times over the Gulf, usually after dicing with a Cuban MiG of some sort, MiG-21s usually. We tried to stay the hell away from the Fulcrums they had, but that wasn't always possible. I also remember that South African black guy in his Mirage F1AZ, which ran out of airframe life before the war was over. No matter - the South Africans fighting with us at that point were given factory-fresh F-16Cs and kept on going. One of them got a bugout with a Cuban three-star on his way out of Brownsville. The President awarded that guy a Distinguished Flying Medal, not the first given to a foreign flyer working on US soil. One South African singlehandedly fought off a sneak attack by ComBloc MiG-29s on one of our AWACS, and destroyed all of them, only to have his plane give up the ghost before he got back over land. That guy got the Medal of Honor, which was well deserved.

Matt Wiser said: Once Laredo fell, there were some in III Corps who thought we'd keep going south; with 5th Force Recon having taken one of the International Bridges (the other two were blown by the Cubans or Mexicans), everybody thought the next stop was Monterey. And there wasn't that much in between the Rio Grande and Monterey to stop us, but III Corps never got the go-ahead to push south. 3rd ACR did loop around Nuevo Laredo and sit on the highway to block the ComBloc's line of retreat and supply, but once Laredo was secure, they pulled back-but blew up everything of use they laid their hands on. I talked with an ALO who was with V Corps, and they thought they were headed south of the river as well. X Corps in El Paso also wanted to go south past Juraez (which was shelled and bombed into burned-out rubble), but they, too were told to hold on their current positions. Everybody had their maps, the intel was up-to-date, and there was a desire to make the Mexicans pay for hosting the ComBloc invasion force. But we never went south of the border. Has anyone figured out why? Or have those documents not yet been declassified? (i.e. National Security Council and JCS meetings, for example, or Presidential meetings with the JCS) It sure would've made the siege easier, as the supplies and reinforcements headed to Brownsville would've gone to face III and V Corps. But at least a lot of what was sent never arrived, thanks to AF, Navy, and Marine air.

I happen to agree with most of those guys. We could do nicely to own the Nuevo Leon Plateau that Monterrey sits on as a nice defensive position to watch the bastards in Mexico City squirm. (Having Monterrey's steel mills woulda been nice, too.) Maybe one day. I mean, we fucked up the Cubans, the Mexicans are next. They like to talk about us being aggressors, and the war in the 1980s being a response to our attacking them in 19th Century so often. Yeah, and now that you dared to attack Uncle Sam, Mexico City should remember that the next time dares spit in our faces what we did to Cuba.

Matt Wiser said: Having Captains or Majors in squadron or Wing command was a new thing, wasn't it? The last time the AF had commanders so junior was WW II. There were some good ones, and some who richly deserved being relieved. Sending those latter guys back to the Air Training Command at least meant their flying skills wouldn't be wasted. It beat sending them up to Maine or Labrador to run some air-defense radar or a SAC recovery field.

Yeah, I wasn't ready to take over the 474th TFW, but when you gotta do it, you do it. I became a Colonel just after the war, then gave the TFW command to a one-star who could believe that I was a Major when I took over the Wing, because he was one, too.

Matt Wiser said: Yeah, we all thought the Africans were bad (Libyans, Angolans, etc.), but the Mexicans were the worst of the ComBloc in the air. The Russians just pulled a bunch of early-model MiG-21s and -23s from storage, gave 'em to the Mexicans, and that was that. I'll bet they had more losses to accidents than to us in the air. Having a bunch of their MiGs taken out at Monterey Airport didn't help things any, either.

I had a hard time believing how bad many of them were, honestly. The Mexicans were even more hopeless than the Angolans and Libyans. I can't believe that some of them would ever be trusted with a fast jet, and I've heard osme stories about how they plucked the best of their transport pilots, told 'em how to work the weapons systems and sent 'em out in the MiGs. It's hard to believe, but seeing how bad some of the ComBloc pilots are, I do believe it. :eek:

And the hilarious part is that the South Africans that fought with us knew their business very well. There were others too - Australian, Kiwi, South Korean (ballsy guys, the ROK troops), Brazilian (late in the war, when the neutral government in Brasilia gave up being neutral and sent people to help us) and the NATO guys that left Europe instead of surrendering. The ComBloc guys, aside from the East German and Cubans, were usually not very good - yet most of our guys were surprisingly good. I guess that's what you get when you choose pilots based on politics rather than skills.

One of the groups that came with the British when the RAF bugged out was a group of Kenyans. They and a bunch of British crews rescued the few Vulcan and Victor bombers the Brits still had. We had no need for tankers (lots of KC-135s, KC-10s, KC-737 and KC-767s) but we always had a need for combat power, so 44, 57 and 617 Squadrons of the RAF became bomber units again. Kenyans flying British-built Heavy Bombers over the United States and Mexico was probably not anticipated by the ComBloc, was it?

Panzerfaust 150

What I remember was that we were tired...we were pretty content to just massacre the bastards inside the perimeter...and let them come out and surrender when they'd had enough. We really didn't feel like bothering to go in and get them out of Brownsville. Yeah, the routes South were nominally open, but the fact was, between air strikes and arty, usually directed by SF teams that were operating along the routes...not very much got in or out.

Honestly, by the time Ivan gave up on 5 October, it really was over..the average motor rifleman in the perimeter was down to about 1 magazine per and there was half a day's medical supplies left. Rumors were they were eating book glue, rats...and sometimes...each other. I don't know about that last one for sure, but the rumors seemed pretty credible.

By the time they threw it in guys...we spent more time screening for black category POWs and processing them for trips north than interrogating them. We knew the entire Ivan ORBAT +/- 10% in the pocket. They couldn't go to the latrine without us knowing about it.

Matt Wiser

Well, you can say that when Baja becomes a state, that settles a small portion of our claims, but I do agree, there's a large bill that's outstanding, and one of these days, we need to collect it. When it was obvious that pushing south of the border wasn't in the cards, guess who went down and blasted the oil and gas fields? SAC visited those targets for a month, and made sure the Mexicans would have to start over from scratch. And they made sure the Mexicans realized it was nearly over, when B-1s went to Mexico City and blasted one of their largest oil and gas storage farms. The fires burned for a week, they say. The statehood bill for Baja is now before Congress, CNN said this morning. It should pass before Victory Day. One thing DOD did mention is that the hazardous-duty designation will remain after statehood. (Lobbying by the resorts and other folks, perhaps? All that hazardous-duty pay means all that more for the people stationed there to spend) And La Paz AB will be renamed LeMay AFB, the AF announced.

At least all I had to do was run the squadron. I can't think of running a wing back then. I'm just glad my wing command came in peacetime. I've never had to write a letter to NOK since I've had the 419th TFW. One crash, but both punched out, thank heaven. The pilot had a broken leg, but the WSO walked away from the ejection.

Kara's not the only one who didn't report Mexican kills. There's a Marine who nailed two MiG-23s over Monterey who would've made ace, but he didn't claim either MiG. He was in VMFA-232, btw. The guy did make ace before the end, though: he got a Cuban MiG-23 and An-26 transport a week before the surrender.

Didn't one of the Battleships, along with the Des Moines, go down to Veracruz a couple weeks before the end? ISTR some book on the naval war saying they threw 600+ 16-inch and about 400 8-inch shells into the oil refinery and the port area. When they sailed away, there wasn't much left of either target area.

TheMann

Matt Wiser said: Well, you can say that when Baja becomes a state, that settles a small portion of our claims, but I do agree, there's a large bill that's outstanding, and one of these days, we need to collect it. When it was obvious that pushing south of the border wasn't in the cards, guess who went down and blasted the oil and gas fields? SAC visited those targets for a month, and made sure the Mexicans would have to start over from scratch. And they made sure the Mexicans realized it was nearly over, when B-1s went to Mexico City and blasted one of their largest oil and gas storage farms. The fires burned for a week, they say. The statehood bill for Baja is now before Congress, CNN said this morning. It should pass before Victory Day. One thing DOD did mention is that the hazardous-duty designation will remain after statehood. (Lobbying by the resorts and other folks, perhaps? All that hazardous-duty pay means all that more for the people stationed there to spend) And La Paz AB will be renamed LeMay AFB, the AF announced.

So, our 51st state is on the way. Well deserved, and let's do it. They Baja guys supposedly love us. LeMay AFB - good choice. Old Iron Ass fought two wars and wanted to fight WWIII, and built the SAC. Curtis sadly hasn't lived to see the base named after him. He lived long enough to have a ship of the Navy named after him, though.

As for B-1s and Mexico City, yeah they did the work there, and my brother was in on that one, his Tomcats flew out and landed on USS Lexington, which couldn't accomodate the Tomcats in its hangar (Essex-class carriers are too small for it), but they could fly and land on it, and they did. They covered the B-1s going in and out of Mexico City. Bro says he's never seen flames like he did when the B-1s hit the natural gas facilities north of Mexico City. He felt the plane shake when the natural gas tanks blew up, and he was 20,000 feet up. :eek:

Matt Wiser said: At least all I had to do was run the squadron. I can't think of running a wing back then. I'm just glad my wing command came in peacetime. I've never had to write a letter to NOK since I've had the 419th TFW. One crash, but both punched out, thank heaven. The pilot had a broken leg, but the WSO walked away from the ejection.

I lost a pilot in a F-16 when I was back to squadron command, he slammed into an appalachian mountain in dense fog after a navigation glitch. One other F-16 crashed, but it had a engine turbine disintegrate. Pilot ejected safely and walked away. These were post-war of course. I hate writing letters to family members of a lost man, it was one of the things I hated most as a commanding officer. The funerals are worse, though. The worst is still that POW who was killed by a KGB scumbag during Brownsville. I'd kill that fucker myself if I could, but he got killed in Cuba apparently.

Matt Wiser said: Kara's not the only one who didn't report Mexican kills. There's a Marine who nailed two MiG-23s over Monterey who would've made ace, but he didn't claim either MiG. He was in VMFA-232, btw. The guy did make ace before the end, though: he got a Cuban MiG-23 and An-26 transport a week before the surrender.

Yeah, I wouldn't claim kills against people that incompetent, either. The Mexicans were clueless. But I must say this, I don't blame some of the citizenry there. Most of the Mexicans wouldn't dare fight Uncle Sam, before or after the war, and I kinda feel sorry for the people forced to bear the brunt of ComBloc aggression - you just know they didn't ask for it. I think that's why we didn't use many nukes, you don't kill innocents if you can help it, and our doctrine is always to expend things rather than people. Things can be replaced. People can't.

Matt Wiser said: Didn't one of the Battleships, along with the Des Moines, go down to Veracruz a couple weeks before the end? ISTR some book on the naval war saying they threw 600+ 16-inch and about 400 8-inch shells into the oil refinery and the port area. When they sailed away, there wasn't much left of either target area.

Yep, that was Massachusetts. The Iowas (only New Jersey and Wisconsin were still active, Iowa was in a dockard being rebuilt at that point and Missouri was still on the bottom of the ocean at that point) were busy and Alabama was in a dry dock getting its left-side screws repaired, so Massachusetts got the call. She emptied her 900-round magazine between Veracruz and the offshore oil fields during that raid, and she apparently shot a Mexican Corvette with one of her 16" guns. (Bet the debris form that was about the size of quarters. )

I got a call last week from one of the two guys who saved my ass over Arkansas during the war, the RAF is looking to invite the best pilots who survived the war to a big reunion of the fliers in London, and the RAF is hosting. They've offered us up the Concorde to come over on, and they want me to be at RIAT to be an attraction. I'm gonna see if the AF will allow me to fly over in my Raptor. I'm due some R&R, and I know that Lockheed wants to sell Raptors to the RAF.

TheMann

Well, I am a very happy camper today. Stupidly happy.

Great point #1) I'm clear to take the F-22 over to RIAT. The AF is even providing me tankers to do it. Thanks a million, guys, hopefully I can I convince the RAF to replace its souped-up Tornado interceptors with these. I'll give 'em a show at RIAT, boy.

Great Point #2) The AF has proposed me for flag rank. If it goes through, and my commanding officer thinks it will, I'll get a star on my shoulder. I'll be Brigadier General Adrian Faulker, and probably I'll move from my squadron command back to commanding a wing. I'm hoping its the 474th again, I'd love to see most of those boys again.

Great Point #3) The Navy is looking to name a bunch of new destroyers, and apparently one is gonna be named USS Faulkner, after me and my two siblings. The other two are Navy and I was Marines, so I suppose it's more them than me. Not that I care, of course. I'm happy to see it, and I'll be happy when I get to see the ship named after me and my siblings.

Matt Wiser

Hey, Congrats on the promotion. And the trip across the pond. I've had airshow duty, but never overseas. Though the upcoming one in Canada will be interesting. Pyro, the official request came through today, and it's been approved. We'll be bringing four Beagles: two from the 366th, and two from the 419th.

We don't need to invade just yet. Stirring up some more rebel activity can always help, though. There's how many rebel groups south of the border? And how many different insurgencies? Those folks can always use some more arms and ammo, and some intel. If the Mexicans overreact to Baja becoming a state, though...that's a causus belli right there.

LeMay AFB is going to be sharing the runway with the civilian airport, though. Just like Charleston and Myrtle Beach in SC. I bet Iron Ass is looking down and smiling. Probably his only disappointment is that it's not a SAC base. TAC will be in charge. It'll be a composite wing for the time being: four squadrons. One with F-15Cs, one with Beagles, another with F-16Cs, and finally, one with A-10s. That's more than enough, IMHO.

Now that Cuba's no longer Fidel-land, guess who's come out with a book? I was on Amazon today and noticed that one Col. Ernesto Bella, Cuban Army (ret) has a book out soon. Now that his death sentence in absentia is now history, he can come out and say a lot of things that will make the remaining lefties in Mexico City or Caracas howl. Not that we listen much to them, anyway.

sloreck

Mann-congrats on the promotion, you know that all the Jarheads will be saying that the USAF will finally get some snap in its step with a lapsed Marine wearing stars. Enjoy your time in England, the Brits know how to treat guests. I was over there for a bout 3 weeks before I retired as a guest lecturer at the RAMC (Royal Army Medical College) to a group of RA, RN, RAF docs talking about medical care/surgical care and amphibious operations

Never made flag myself but that was my choice, would have had to go the administrative/hospital CO route and give up surgery and spending most of my time with the Marines.

Panzerfaust 150

Congrats Mann,
Enjoy the star..I suspect you'll have a pair soon. Yeah, I'd heard about the book from a friend who's still involved in his case. I do hope he gets to tell his story. It's been busy as heck here with midterms, and then end of semester papers and finals coming up. Ah, the academic calendar.

As for other matters, I got invited to another symposium..in the Russian Republic of all places! It's on POW/MIA matters, the Russians are gearing up an effort to get permission to come here and search crash sites, mass graves and the like and they invited a bunch of former intel professionals and graves reg folks from our side to help them figure stuff out. I've been dealing online with a jovial fellow from their military historical office at Volgada. Nice fellow, but young and has a few silly ideas about what real war's like. I keep telling him "Yuri, don't be so eager for a transfer to the Soviet frontier. I've fought these people..it's not fun."

Matt, what's your take on what Keegan says about the end in Brownsville? I'd say he mostly got it right. I will say the surviving Combloc were the saddest sight I'd seen. Their officers had their hands full keeping them organized long enough to manage a proper surrender, and keep them from running off and getting into god knows what....and uh-oh...I just got a call from a buddy at the DoD press office...some bright boy at the Cleveland Plain Dealer just filed a FOIA request for the AAR and ATOs for all SAC missions into the Soviet Union...and guess what...it's likely to be approved. Mann, you may not like hearing what we used in some of those raids..I don't think anyone will.

Matt Wiser

F22s in the RAF? Unlikely, as the BBC just reported that they are about to by 150+ EF2000s to replace the Tornado....

Panzerfaust 150

I know, we did our share of that too. And I know our own Division Graves Reg detachment was busy at that point taking care of more that sort of thing than our own as we were tidying up behind V and VII Corps most of the time. As for me going, well, DoS is involved, seems I have to get some diplo credentials...and that takes time. Also, I don't know why my specific name came up. I guess my post-war work in Reno and Bakersfield. I suspect I'm known in certain communities and they wanted me over there to pick my brain as to where their own army or ours might have buried folks. And considering that none of the Combloc armies had any means of personal ID tags...just internal passports which don't always hold up well after being buried for 20 years..it's going to be hell to pay making IDs..DNA might help..but with an estimated half million missing ComBloc service personnel? 2/3rds of them Soviet? I really don't know what we can realistically do.

Matt Wiser

OK, I've finished the Keegan chapter on the Siege of Brownsville, and his Russian sources acknowledge that there was a major breakdown in "military law and order" as the siege went on. Some units were more cohesive than others (8th Guards Army and 28th Army were singled out as those who kept their cohesion and fighting spirit up to the end), while others were more apt to break down. One cause of the breakdown was the supply situation (naturally), but another reason was the attrition among officers: some units had lost over 50% of their officers, and discipline was breaking down as a result. And in a few divisions (mainly those raised from Central Asia or the Caucusus), outright mutiny resulted. One reason for the early loss of Harlingen was that the 340th MRD, from the Central Asian MD, simply mutinied, shot their senior officers, and raised a white flag over their positions. 6th MarDiv took advantage of that to push into the city, and unhinged the defense. The Soviet 1st Army, with two Cuban divisions under command, had to break contact, but the Russians paid a price: as they moved south, the USAF and Navy air was all over them. 50% casualties....(it should be noted that this was a formation entirely raised in Central Asia as well, with divisions from three of the Central Asian Republics.)

By the end of August, the Soviet commanders realized that the end was only a matter of time, and those on the U.S. "Most Wanted" lists were anxious to get out. The Air evacuation to Cuba and Mexico City began on 2 September, and it took a while before we caught onto it. A number of Soviet generals noted that while the KGB was spouting continued resistance, and death for deserters, many KGB senior officers were very anxious to leave, especially with the loot they'd acquired during their tours of duty here. There were also a number of cases where fire-fights between Soviet Army and KGB units took place, mainly due to disputes over allocation of supplies. And as Third Army pushed closer to Brownsville, the panic in the ComBloc's higher echelon increased. Seeing a number of supply or evac aircraft shot down near the Brownsville area only made things worse....but they held on, until 21 September, when Port Isabel, the last real port on the Gulf of Mexico, was taken by the 2nd Marine Division. Things went downhill from there, as more and more units began to break down, and even drastic measures (including decimation) only went so far. It was obvious that surrender was the only way out, and on 30 September, Soviet and Cuban emissaries went to Powell's HQ at the South Padre Island Hilton (used by Ivan as a "recreation center") to ask for terms. Powell demanded Unconditional Surrender, and a mini-civil war took place as those who wanted to continue fighting clashed with those who wanted to surrender. But on 4 October, it was obvious that Powell's terms had to be accepted. Colonel-General Yuri Bezarin, commander of 8th Guards Army, was chosen to represent "The Socialist Forces in America" and with a number of other officers, signed the surrender after midnight on 5 October, with the cease-fire to take place at 1200 Central Time. XVIII Airborne Corps and II MEF rolled forward to the Rio Grande, and at 1230, raised the Stars and Stripes over the Federal Building in Brownsville. The War in the lower 48 was over. But skirmishing, air strikes, and artillery exchanges across the Rio Grande would last for another three weeks, until the General Armistice was signed. Of course, Fidel refused to recognize it until the following March.....But this cease-fire didn't apply to Alaska and Canada, and the war up north had another three weeks to go.

So some nosy reporter's trying to get the mission reports and BDA on the SAC missions into Siberia? I had better let Col. Cindy Moreau know. She flew quite a few strikes on the Siberia run, and a few of those she isn't proud of either the target or the munitions used. But the strikes had to be flown and those "special" targets taken out. One of 'em involves a dam, she did tell me. (that one wasn't her DFC, she did say-the Ulan-Ude Aircraft Plant was her DFC mission)

Wasn't the Ukraine, along with some of the 'Stans here a while back, basically doing the same thing? Looking for unmarked graves, MIA searches, that sort of thing. I know some individual relatives have been here looking for their loved ones.

[lordroel]

From page 57

TheMann

This is me posting from an Officer's Quarters at RAF Fairford. Nice place, this is. The flight over went fine, though I had to wait for a tanker near Iceland. The SAC guys messed up and thought it was a slower-cruising plane, and I was supercruising to make up time since I got away late. Two other F-22s from my squadron came across, too. The AF boys also got word to the Brits that I am in line to get a star on my shoulder. I can see how good the treatment is.

Trekchu - sorry mate, the RAF decided they need at least a few dedicated interceptors. Britain's Ministry of Defense has announced they are ordering 44 F-22s for two interceptor squadrons.

I got told that I am gonna get my star, and I'm going to take command of the 354th TFW, which has a squadron of F-22A, two squadrons of F-16C, one squadron of F-111F and two A-10Cs, based in North Carolina. I'm gonna be so happy when I get the wing, thought I must admit its going back to what I did twenty years ago, and I'm not the best paperwork person. But then again, even the most gung-ho officers end up spending a fair bit of time commanding desks. It is what it is, but to me, being a general has been my goal for fifteen years, and now I'm there. I'm on cloud nine right now, and I haven't needed the Raptor to get there. [​IMG]

I'll bet Iron Ass would like to have BUFFs flying from his base, but I doubt he cares, honestly. I wouldn't. If I ever have a base named after me, I don't care if they are flying helicopters from it. It's an AF base named after a guy who deserves far more than that. The Navy ought to name a ship after him, and a good one

Matt Wiser

Hope you're having a good time over there. Lisa and I are headed up to that Canadian show next weekend. Four F-15Es-two from Mountain Home, two from Hill. At least the Brits are making Lockheed very happy: 44 Raptors for the initial order...any options for more if the Eurofighter runs into trouble?

I talked to Col. Cindy Moreau tonight: she thanked me for the heads-up on the reporter. SAC has been calling or otherwise informing those who flew the Siberian Express missions that the BDA and other info on the strikes may be declassified, but until the FOIA case is resolved, those missions that are still classified, well, don't talk about them. One of those strikes is that Moscow one, flown after the Raven Rock business. Remember that the target and the ordnance used are still classified, even after all this time. Panzerfaust, is this snoop digging for the Moscow area mission?

Never flew in Brownsville, but that was a target-rich environment. Guys I went to the Air War College, served with at TAC HQ or in the 347th TFW at Moody (after "flying a desk" at TAC HQ), or at Mountain Home, say that you always came back with empty bomb racks and expended ammo. Always. We were going down into Mexico-twice a day. At least it wasn't the old 7-8 strikes a day at D/FW, San Antonio, or Laredo. And when Brownsville did fall, we had a day to celebrate, then went up to Fairchild. The ground crews took a week for the drive, but we didn't fly until the day they got there. Not only were both Fairchild AFB and Spokane IAP packed, but fall was definitely in the air up in Washington State. Actually putting on layer upon layer of cold-weather gear-first time in the whole war we'd done that as a squadron. (of course, I'd done some on the E&E...picking up ComBloc gear out of a supply truck the guerillas had ambushed) But like I said earlier, we'd barely gotten our theater orientation, and flown a few easy missions before Ivan threw in the towel in the Northern Theater. Lotta celebratin' that day, into the night, and the next morning.

Matt Wiser

How's the RIAT going, Mann? I gather the Fairford O-Club is as lively as it was prewar? Lisa's DO for Maintenance used to be stationed there before the war, and he says things could get lively, especially on Friday and Saturday nights. Mountain Home's base commander is another old-timer (he's a one-star) and frequented Fairford when he flew B-52s from the late '70s up until the balloon went up. He would kill to get in the cockpit of one of the new Juliet models-glass cockpits, new engines, etc, and have some stick time.

I got a letter from a World War III veterans' association in the Russian Republic today; seems they're interested in finding out on some Soviet Air Force MIAs who went down in Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah. They have chapters in Russia and most of the former Soviet Republics (Ukraine, Beylorussia, the Baltic States, and the Caucausus region, along with some of the 'Stans", and it seems they want to start by finding crash sites. I imagine some of the books that deal with the air war have found their way over there, and my name's mentioned in a few of 'em. Don't be surprised if other vets get such letters asking for info on battles, grave locations, or wrecked vehicles (lots of times, nobody bothered to check a burned-out tank or BMP to see if there were remains inside).

Kara Sackhoff showed me some things she's been keeping all these years. One of them was a mission proposal that she never presented because she thought I'd reject it out of hand. It was for a squadron strike on Benito Juraez IAP in Mexico City. She proposed a detour: hitting the tankers west of the Big Bend National Park (but still across the border, going in at medium level through gaps in the air-defense radar coverage, then going in low (350-550 ft AGL) once within range of the target, and a single pass to drop, with egress also at low level, going to medium once clear of Mexico City, and meeting up with the tankers. Her proposal had eight birds for MiGCAP, eight with Rockeye CBUs for flak suppression, and eight with a dozen Mark-82 500-pounders or M-117 750-pounders. Kara's right: I would've rejected it. It was too thin on fuel for the return trip, and the tankers would've had to go further south. Even if I had gone along, General Tanner would've rejected it. Even though we were his "Kids", even he had his limits on what we could do operationally.

DD951

Hmm, this brings back some old memories. I had just gotten an invitation to the keel-laying ceremony for the new cruiser Puget Sound, the one that was sent out to all the veterans of the Battle of Seattle , and thought it'd be a good opportunity to arrange a crew reunion, and came across this in the process.

Anyways, I'd better start at the beginning. When things hit the fan in '85, I was just about to start my senior year at the University of Washington, and as an NROTC cadet, got called to active duty. All of us NROTC juniors and seniors got commissioned as ensigns, while the sophomores became petty officers, and the whole lot of us were sent to Bremerton to help man the ships being recommissioned from mothballs. I was one of a half-dozen newly minted ensigns sent to the Turner Joy, and I spent the entire war aboard her.

It was pretty hectic trying to get her back into service with everything that was going on, and having to struggle with her worn engines, but we finally got the ship working and completed her shakedown cruise about a week before the Soviets tried that little amphibious stunt. We hadn't really had the time to properly drill the crew, but we did have some incredible chiefs and Captain Richardson was truly inspired- they're the ones who made the pounding we gave the Soviets that day possible. I didn't get to see the fireworks- I was stationed in CIC and was too busy with the displays to look outside.

Afterwards, when we went back to Bremerton for new gun barrels, we got some upgrades- somehow the people at the yard figured out how to cram a Sea Sparrow launcher on the fantail and some Harpoon launchers amidships, plus some more modern sonar and electronics gear. It was a strange jury-rigged lash-up, but surprisingly, it worked, more or less. The next year or so was spent up in the San Juans, supporting operations around Vancouver and the BC/WA border, bombarding Soviet positions, playing tag with fast gun, torpedo, and missile boats, interdicting supply runs and Spetznaz infiltrators (the Soviets often used commandeered fishing boats and small craft for those purposes- had to destroy a couple very nice vintage Chris-Craft cabin cruisers being used to infiltrate Spetznaz teams, a bit of a shame, really), and even picked off a couple Soviet subs (a Whiskey and a Foxtrot). Besides the subs, ended up taking out a couple dozen assorted surface craft, a half-dozen helicopters, and a really dumb Fishbed driver.

Once the Soviets had been driven back, we spent most of the war on escort duty, mostly the Australia convoys, but did make a couple Alaska runs, and we were damn lucky to survive those. We were also part of the screen for the Petropavlosk raid and the Battle of Kamchatka, mostly because losses among more modern units was so bad. In those operations, we added a couple more subs (a November and a second Foxtrot), a Bear-F, a Grisha, and a stray AGI to our tally. As things came to an end, we were assigned to shore bombardment for the recapture of Guam, and nearly shot out the gun barrels a second time blasting away at the North Koreans.

After the liberation of Guam, we were sent to Manila for a port call then represent the US at the surrender of the Vietnamese garrison that had occupied the Spratlys, and ended up having to rescue a passenger ferry repatriating western civilian detainees from a couple Vietnamese PT boats manned by some sort of fanatic die-hards, which we took out. Turns out that one of those PT boats had mixed it up with the Turner Joy and the Maddox back in 1964, something that amused the crew to no end. Finally, we returned home and decommissioned early in 1991.

By that time, I was a senior lieutenant and the combat systems officer, and in line to be promoted to being the the XO in a couple months, but I elected to be released from active duty and get on with my life, although I maintained a reserve commission. The Turner Joy, after the missiles had been removed, was turned into a memorial next to the ferry dock in Bremerton.

TheMann

RIAT is a blast, so far. Fairford's O-Club is crazy, and boy the Brits are bloody good hosts. The beer is excellent (British beer, when cold, usually is), there are reat stories from just about everybody in the club (90% of them are WWIII veterans) and I get to check out some of the stuff that other countries brought. The Brits have a updated Avro Vulcan with new RR engines, a new attack chopper and of course the EF-2000 Eurofighter (which looks promising, I must say, though it ain't a stealth fighter like the Raptor is), which I got into a mock dogfight with on the way in. They are good, boy.

As for the show itself, the facility is great, it's well organized and the crowd is MASSIVE. There are more then 600 aircraft here, and the US contingent is pretty big. A B-52J from Barksfield is here, as is the Blue Angels. The RAF's aerobatic team was on yesterday, and they are really, really good. I did a show for the crowd yesterday, which was great fun. This was the first time some of the ex-USSR eastern bloc guys came to play, and they were quite eager to let bygones be bygones. One offered to do a mock dogfight for the crowd. He's got a Sukhoi Su-30, an updated Flanker. I don't think we'll have time, but I told him that the last time I had seen a Flanker, it was trying to kill me and a pair of RAF Tornados had shot it down.

That B-52J is really neat inside, all glass cockpit, and it has serious modifications to the engines, too - longer nacelles for extra stages, and apparently it gives it something like 25% extra thrust, and it has big new wing edges too. Apparently, the thing flies just as fast, but is able to carry up 135,000lbs of ordinance. :eek:

The F-111H is even neater - it's a carrier-designed bomber, which apparently is gonna be deployed a long-arm for the fleet. I pointed out to its commanding officer that the F-111B was a debacle that worked badly, and his repsonse was that its meant as a strike fighter. They have Tomcats for interceptions, they say. The newest A-6F is neat, too. It seems like the navy boys are improving what they've already got rather than go stealth like the AF has, though I imagine that'll change. Though the F-111 guys were asking me whether I figured an F-22 could get thrown off a carrier alright, if that's any food for thought.

To DD951 - one of the boys from Turner Joy, huh? You guys were the heroes in Seattle, you guys and the guys on USS Chicago. Didn't the Turner Joy get a Presidential Unit Commendation for that? That also reminds me of one of the wildest stunts we had to pull when I was back in Florida in the F-4s.

The Soviet Convoys were getting their asses kicked trying to Havana (Lexington, Oriskany and the battleships had much to do with that, as well as us), so somebody finally had the idea to sail 'em well off the coast, out of range. One got through one day, and we got a intercept call on a convoy, but we got out there and we couldn't see any friendlies, which scared us half to death. We still blasted that convoy - somebody put a Mk-84 into an ammo ship, big kaboom - but we had no idea who had sent us the call. I didn't find out until later that it was USS Triton (SSN-586) which had called in the strike. The Russians didn't have any SSNs in the area, so Triton went out hunting, and found a convoy. She dropped a Krivak, but couldn't handle the convoy herself. So they called us in. I had figured that Triton had been scrapped by then, but apparently she hadn't.

TheMann

Matt Wiser said: I got a letter from a World War III veterans' association in the Russian Republic today; seems they're interested in finding out on some Soviet Air Force MIAs who went down in Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah. They have chapters in Russia and most of the former Soviet Republics (Ukraine, Beylorussia, the Baltic States, and the Caucausus region, along with some of the 'Stans", and it seems they want to start by finding crash sites. I imagine some of the books that deal with the air war have found their way over there, and my name's mentioned in a few of 'em. Don't be surprised if other vets get such letters asking for info on battles, grave locations, or wrecked vehicles (lots of times, nobody bothered to check a burned-out tank or BMP to see if there were remains inside).

I've gotten a couple letters, too. One is from a 24 year old Ukrainian girl, Sascha Yelchenko, whose father was a Soviet Air Force officer, a Flanker driver, who wondered if I had any idea what happened to her father. He left for war before she was born, and never came home. She was real polite about it, too. I did look into it, but the records are a mess, and all she could give me was the squadron. The last records one of the AF's researchers found was a letter that posted his squadron to Dyess AFB in Abilene, and that was in August '87. I'd like to write this young woman back to tell her more, but right now, I can't. If anybody can find a few records on that front, I'd really appreciate it.

Matt Wiser said: Kara Sackhoff showed me some things she's been keeping all these years. One of them was a mission proposal that she never presented because she thought I'd reject it out of hand. It was for a squadron strike on Benito Juraez IAP in Mexico City. She proposed a detour: hitting the tankers west of the Big Bend National Park (but still across the border, going in at medium level through gaps in the air-defense radar coverage, then going in low (350-550 ft AGL) once within range of the target, and a single pass to drop, with egress also at low level, going to medium once clear of Mexico City, and meeting up with the tankers. Her proposal had eight birds for MiGCAP, eight with Rockeye CBUs for flak suppression, and eight with a dozen Mark-82 500-pounders or M-117 750-pounders. Kara's right: I would've rejected it. It was too thin on fuel for the return trip, and the tankers would've had to go further south. Even if I had gone along, General Tanner would've rejected it. Even though we were his "Kids", even he had his limits on what we could do operationally.

Yeah, I'd have vetoed that one, too, because I wouldn't want to risk the tankers and the fuel limits. If it was an F-111 unit I'd consider it, though. I'd have loved to make a Mexico City delivery, but the Bones did enough damage there, and I figure that our services were needed closer to home. I'm not gonna take risks like that. I rejected a few runs on Havana by my F-111 crews when I was commanding the 474th, because I figured they'd get shot down - Havana surely would have MiGs coming out the ass, and I needed the Varks closer to home.

Panzerfaust 150

TheMann said: I've gotten a couple letters, too. One is from a 24 year old Ukrainian girl, Sascha Yelchenko, whose father was a Soviet Air Force officer, a Flanker driver, who wondered if I had any idea what happened to her father. He left for war before she was born, and never came home. She was real polite about it, too. I did look into it, but the records are a mess, and all she could give me was the squadron. The last records one of the AF's researchers found was a letter that posted his squadron to Dyess AFB in Abilene, and that was in August '87. I'd like to write this young woman back to tell her more, but right now, I can't. If anybody can find a few records on that front, I'd really appreciate it.

Mann, send me this guy's info..We have the captured records here...and I'm going to that symposium next month, so I think I can ask the Russians if they know anything. Does she know the markings of her father's a/c? Somebody at AFHC can go through the pictoral records and see if anything matches? There are quite a few unidentified combloc a/c bodies that are in the cemeteries...I know the National Cemetery Admin took tissue samples from all the bodies they could...and DNA's ID'd more than a few. I can get her contact info for them too.

TheMann

Panzerfaust 150 said: Mann, send me this guy's info..We have the captured records here...and I'm going to that symposium next month, so I think I can ask the Russians if they know anything. Does she know the markings of her father's a/c? Somebody at AFHC can go through the pictoral records and see if anything matches? There are quite a few unidentified combloc a/c bodies that are in the cemeteries...I know the National Cemetery Admin took tissue samples from all the bodies they could...and DNA's ID'd more than a few. I can get her contact info for them too.

I'll send ya the info. She doesn't know the father's a/c markings, I thought about that. She does know the squadron - 374th Guards Air Defense Squadron, originally based near Lviv in Western Ukraine - and that he was a Flanker driver. The name is Major Viktor Yelchenko, but I didn't find anything on him.

Panzerfaust 150

Crap all,
Remember that reporter? I just got word from the folks at AFHC...SAC's not objecting to the FOIA request so long as they can redact certain things. Seems the new commander over there took the opinion of "time to do the dirty laundry". So, come next Monday, a five part series on "SAC and the Third World War" in the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

TheMann said: I'll send ya the info. She doesn't know the father's a/c markings, I thought about that. She does know the squadron - 374th Guards Air Defense Squadron, originally based near Lviv in Western Ukraine - and that he was a Flanker driver. The name is Major Viktor Yelchenko, but I didn't find anything on him.

Ok, I can find that out...and considering I'm on that symposium team going to Russia next month, AFHC will probably expedite my request..Seems DoS wants to have some MIAs ready to hand over before we go.

TheMann

Panzerfaust 150 said: Crap all,
Remember that reporter? I just got word from the folks at AFHC...SAC's not objecting to the FOIA request so long as they can redact certain things. Seems the new commander over there took the opinion of "time to do the dirty laundry". So, come next Monday, a five part series on "SAC and the Third World War" in the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

Well, I guess it all had to come out one day. I was never SAC, but it'll probably still look bad for all of us.

sloreck

DD951: Good to see another squid. I was the MAGTF surgeon on the Tarawa for both the Petropavlosk raid & taking Guam back. Thanks to you and the other tin can guys for helping keep us on the topside of the water. I know that after the carriers, the big amphibs like the Tarawa were the #1 target for Sov sub drivers and SNA jocks. Especially going to Petro, the North Pacific is damn cold & we had over 3,000 Marines plus us medical types with the MAGTF on board, not counting ships company. I was doing a hand & microsurgery fellowship when it hit the fan & recalled to active duty - stayed in after the war.

Matt Wiser

Guys, I think I know who was flying around Dyess when this lady's dad went down: the New Mexico ANG's 150th TFG had reequipped from A-7Ds (too many losses) to F-20s from the Taiwan assembly line (with AIM-7 capability, I might add). They flew a lot of MiGSWEEPs during PRAIRIE FIRE, and hardly did any air-to-ground work. I should know: they covered us quite a few times while we went out and did our mud moving. And the New Mexico guys often went hunting for MiGs when they weren't flying escort. They usually had the call sign TACO when in the air. Those guys were all over Eastern New Mexico and West Texas during PRAIRIE FIRE. I'd check the 150th's records to see if they're the shooters. The only others I can think of would be the 49th TFW and their F-15As (they flew out of Davis-Monthan after Holloman was evac'd in the invasion) and they also did a lot over New Mexico and West Texas.

Speaking of letters, I got another one from Russia today, postmarked Veliyki Luki (SE of St. Petersburg). A retired SAF Colonel was asking for info on an Il-20 shootdown over New Mexico in March of '87. There was only one during that time-and that was the one Lisa and I nailed BVR: no visual, radar only, and we never saw the missile impact or the fireball, just the blip going off the scope. His eldest son was the navigator on the aircraft. He holds no grudges, saying that "you were doing your duty to your homeland, just as my son did for ours", but wants to know if the crash was really not survivable: We'll send him copies of the RF-4C pics of the crash site to show him where his son died. The crash site's pretty inaccessable terrain wise. Btw, Panzerfaust, how far is that town from the Russia-USSR Border? I imagine that border's as wild as ours with Mexico: you can't have a week go by without some shooting from the other side, and the Army tosses a bunch of 155-mm in response. And the Mexicans and their leftie friends ask why the U.S. supports what, half a dozen different rebel groups?

First time I've felt comfortable relaying scuttlebutt, but when I was at the Air War College, some of the students who were in SAC mentioned "Bigeye." I didn't know what they were talking about, until I was at HQ TAC. The Bigeye was a binary chemical bomb, and a lot of those meant to be sent to USAFE in Germany wound up going to SAC bases during the war. That bomb disperses VX nerve agent, so if we were dropping this stuff....that explains the secrecy behind a lot of those missions. Though Col. Moreau isn't proud of one that's still classified: it involved a dam. And she hinted that it wasn't just the hydro plant they targeted.

DD951

TheMann said: To DD951 - one of the boys from Turner Joy, huh? You guys were the heroes in Seattle, you guys and the guys on USS Chicago. Didn't the Turner Joy get a Presidential Unit Commendation for that? That also reminds me of one of the wildest stunts we had to pull when I was back in Florida in the F-4s.

The Soviet Convoys were getting their asses kicked trying to Havana (Lexington, Oriskany and the battleships had much to do with that, as well as us), so somebody finally had the idea to sail 'em well off the coast, out of range. One got through one day, and we got a intercept call on a convoy, but we got out there and we couldn't see any friendlies, which scared us half to death. We still blasted that convoy - somebody put a Mk-84 into an ammo ship, big kaboom - but we had no idea who had sent us the call. I didn't find out until later that it was USS Triton (SSN-586) which had called in the strike. The Russians didn't have any SSNs in the area, so Triton went out hunting, and found a convoy. She dropped a Krivak, but couldn't handle the convoy herself. So they called us in. I had figured that Triton had been scrapped by then, but apparently she hadn't.

Yeah, we got a PUC for Seattle. Any sailor wearing a Turner Joy ball-cap or patch couldn't buy their own drinks in any bar in town for a couple years after that, although there were a few incidents where sailors from other ships would try wearing them to get free booze, and guys from the crew, would, ah, object strongly, but the SP & Seattle Police often turned a blind eye if no one got hurt, and there wasn't any property damage.

Surprised that they were even able to get the Triton back in service- she'd been decommissioned in 1969 because she was too big, un-manuverable, and noisy to be useful as an attack or special projects boat, let alone survive contact with Soviet ASW forces

DD951

sloreck said: DD951: Good to see another squid. I was the MAGTF surgeon on the Tarawa for both the Petropavlosk raid & taking Guam back. Thanks to you and the other tin can guys for helping keep us on the topside of the water. I know that after the carriers, the big amphibs like the Tarawa were the #1 target for Sov sub drivers and SNA jocks. Especially going to Petro, the North Pacific is damn cold & we had over 3,000 Marines plus us medical types with the MAGTF on board, not counting ships company. I was doing a hand & microsurgery fellowship when it hit the fan & recalled to active duty - stayed in after the war.

You're welcome-we were just doing our job. Petropavlosk got pretty exciting- ended up playing with a November with a damn good skipper, who had just taken out the Hayler. Suprised we won that one, with our near-obsolete sonar equipment, supplemented by a helo's dipping sonar used as an extemporized towed array, and only some Mk. 32 tubes firing Mk. 46s and some old hedgehog launchers someone found in a warehouse for ASW weapons, but good thing we did, because otherwise, it would have had a straight shot at the 'phibs. Fortunately, the Soviets didnt think we were worth any ASMs, because our AAW & EW capability sucked.

Matt Wiser

Hey 951, did you hear while you were in CIC during that Seattle amphib business the call signs SHOWTIME and MUSTANG? If you did, those were the last eight F-105Ds in service anywhere. They were my current outfit, the 419th TFW at Hill AFB in Utah. They were in Seattle (McChord AFB to be exact) to transition to F-4Es that came via the Mitsubushi production line in Japan. Their transition was...slightly delayed. If you want some gun-camera that the Thuds shot during their runs, let me know at Hill (I'm Wing CO of 419-we're AFRES, btw) and I can get you a DVD with all their Seattle film on it. If you're still in the reserves, get a hold of us thru channels and I can send ya the DVD. A shame about shooting up those commandeered yachts....but the Thuds strafed some as well with 20-mm that day, so I guess we can't complain too much. A couple of those Thud drivers still live near SLC, and one has a ranch just across the Idaho-UT state line, so if you want to share stories, let the Wing Historian know. I know the guy pretty well: he's a grad student at Utah State when he's not in the Wing Office.

Panzerfaust 150

Veliyki Luki (SE of St. Petersburg), that's about 70-80 klicks west of the border...the border, as it stands now, runs from Archangelesk in the North, down to Tula (it's a no man's land right now) to Volgagrad in the South. The Ukraine holds everything it had traditionally as part of the Ukrainian SSR, though they've had some border shoving matches with the Poles. Belorussia joined the Republic, oh, about three years ago.

Oh. yeah, I heard those rumors too...along with other darker rumors...things I can't mention at all. Wait, I just got an email...it's all the way from SECDEF level...I can talk about it now...as long as I don't mention tactics...which I don't know as much...but Bigeye was used...along with incendiaries on the closed cities, the ones involved in secret projects...and we used cruise missiles..with biological weapons...crop smut. Some bright boy figured out part of the cause of the war was the Soviet Crop failure in 1983...so we loaded up about 30-40 ALCMs with various forms of fungal blight..and fired them into various parts of the Soviet breadbasket...Whole thing was a crash program in cooperation with USDA of all folks...called NIMBLE CAP. That's going to be in the first issue on Monday.

Don't know about the Kazakhs. I'll ask though. As for the border, it's very wild and wooly..but fluid...patrols penetrate on both sides as much as 25-50km in either direction. Artillery duels and occasional airstikes are common. The peace we heard about a month or two back, sadly, was Soviet wishful thinking. The Republic isn't in the mood to make peace with folks who ruined their country, but on the other hand, they can't push the issue...as both sides have nuclear arsenals.

I don't know what else this snoop found out, but I found out his reason in the first place..seems his brother was an EWO on one of the BUFFs in these raids..and he didn't come back. I think he wants answers.

[lordroel]

From page 58

Matt Wiser

Too bad about the man's brother. It's only natural he'd want to find out what happened to him and the rest of the crew. Ivan no doubt found out very fast what kind of munitions we were using on some of those missions, and anyone shot down and captured could expect a very painful and short lifespan, sad to say.

All you have to look at is either Juraez, Neuevo Laredo, Matamoros, or Nogales to see the difference. Some idiot south of the border shoots a rocket or fires off some mortar rounds at the Army or Border Patrol, and they get some 155-mm or MLRS rounds in return. All the Texas border cities have been pretty much rebuilt, but no thanks to those south of the border, all that happens when they fire is that the rubble bounces. Not to mention sometimes a "punitive raid" gets launched: 10th ACR is a frequent visitor south of the border in the Laredo area....One day, we need to settle scores with Mexico City once and for all.

This reporter going to reveal targets? Like, say, that Moscow area mission flown after Raven Rock...

TheMann

DD951 said: Yeah, we got a PUC for Seattle. Any sailor wearing a Turner Joy ball-cap or patch couldn't buy their own drinks in any bar in town for a couple years after that, although there were a few incidents where sailors from other ships would try wearing them to get free booze, and guys from the crew, would, ah, object strongly, but the SP & Seattle Police often turned a blind eye if no one got hurt, and there wasn't any property damage.

I'm not surprised. You, Chicago and the boys from the 419th TFW were heroes that day, and somebody trying to fake being part of that doesn't deserve any respect, as far as I am concerned.

DD951 said: Surprised that they were even able to get the Triton back in service- she'd been decommissioned in 1969 because she was too big, un-manuverable, and noisy to be useful as an attack or special projects boat, let alone survive contact with Soviet ASW forces.

Triton, like a whole bunch of other obsolete stuff we had in the reserve fleets, was put into the service simply as coast defenders. Triton was a mess when the war started, but GD Electric Boat in Connecticut fixed that, complete with new reactors and screws, missile tubes for sub-launched Harpoons and the hull coating from the Ohios. She wasn't the most maneuverable thing, but she could handle her own. Most of the good Soviet SSNs stayed out in the open ocean anyways - looking for the better boats and watching out for carriers, I suspect - and it allowed Triton to handle its business.

Matt Wiser

419 got a PUC for Seattle also: there's a few old-timers (a couple of pilots and some NCOs) with the PUC on their fruit salad who are still in the unit. They also painted the PUC ribbon on the Thud that's one of the gate guards here at Hill, and the one in the Hill Aerospace Museum. The gate guard is one bird that shredded a Krivak with 20-mm (seems some of the API and HEI rounds wound up setting off a missile in the forward SS-N-14 launcher, there were a couple of sympathetic detonations, and then the forward SA-N-4 magazine went up. Blew the whole bow off, and left what was left a shattered wreck. Too bad the driver who did that was killed later on when he was driving F-4s.

Anyone here bet that after Brownsville, we'd just keep on going south? There was a squadron pool (Kara started it) that had you put $10 down on for a date to cross the Rio Grande. Just about everybody in the squadron put money on it. Then we got the word that we were going up to Fairchild. At least we got our money back, but man, everybody was doubly-pissed: first, nobody had a chance at winning, and second, there was a feeling the Mexicans were getting off easy. I still think they did. One of these days....I bet 10 Oct. (Ironically, the day the ground crews and support people left by ground convoy for Fairchild)

Let me guess: the Russian Republic controls Northern Fleet's missile subs, while the rump USSR has the ICBMs. And the Far East Republic has both ICBMs and the Pacific Fleet's missile boats, correct?

DD951

Matt Wiser said: Hey 951, did you hear while you were in CIC during that Seattle amphib business the call signs SHOWTIME and MUSTANG? If you did, those were the last eight F-105Ds in service anywhere. They were my current outfit, the 419th TFW at Hill AFB in Utah. They were in Seattle (McChord AFB to be exact) to transition to F-4Es that came via the Mitsubushi production line in Japan. Their transition was...slightly delayed. If you want some gun-camera that the Thuds shot during their runs, let me know at Hill (I'm Wing CO of 419-we're AFRES, btw) and I can get you a DVD with all their Seattle film on it. If you're still in the reserves, get a hold of us thru channels and I can send ya the DVD. A shame about shooting up those commandeered yachts....but the Thuds strafed some as well with 20-mm that day, so I guess we can't complain too much. A couple of those Thud drivers still live near SLC, and one has a ranch just across the Idaho-UT state line, so if you want to share stories, let the Wing Historian know. I know the guy pretty well: he's a grad student at Utah State when he's not in the Wing Office.

Can't recall hearing those call-signs, but again, there was a lot of radio chatter that day, and I wasn't a comms guy (I was the ASW coordinator at the time.) BTW, our callsign was BALLROOM, if anyone from the 419th remembers it.

We didn't have to shoot up all the yachts & lesser boats we came across- some of them had the sense to surrender (after the zampolit and/or the CO 'fell overboard'), and a few others were beached & abandonded. Somebody made quite a bit from auctioning them off after the war along with all sorts of other booty. (Think one of the EW techs was in on it, as even though he went to work for Microsoft after the war, that salary can't be enough to afford the surplus Asheville-class PGM he has as a yacht.)

I'd be interested in the DVD of the gun-camera footage, and I'm still in the reserves (a captain now), so I'll be in contact in a bit. Some of the other guys from the Turner Joy would probably be interested in it too, especially as not too many people had their battle stations topside.

DD951

TheMann said: ↑Triton, like a whole bunch of other obsolete stuff we had in the reserve fleets, was put into the service simply as coast defenders. Triton was a mess when the war started, but GD Electric Boat in Connecticut fixed that, complete with new reactors and screws, missile tubes for sub-launched Harpoons and the hull coating from the Ohios. She wasn't the most maneuverable thing, but she could handle her own. Most of the good Soviet SSNs stayed out in the open ocean anyways - looking for the better boats and watching out for carriers, I suspect - and it allowed Triton to handle its business.

Those yard guys were the unsung heros of the naval war, working as hard as they did to bring all those relics back to life, let alone getting shot-up ships back in the fight. Wonder how much EB-Green was used holding stuff togethe? The crates of it we, ah, acquired from the supply warehouses was a real lifesaver for us, as it really helped us in adding some more modern systems so we'd at least have a chance against the more modern Soviet stuff.

Matt Wiser

I'll be on the lookout for your request: there's quite a lot from the Seattle mess. If you want to see a Krivak have its bow blown off in a big explosion, or a bunch of yachts and fishing boats strafed to splinters, and a whole lot more, you'll love the DVD. The occasional MiG or Sukhoi falling from the sky, Navy A-6s and F-4s from the Reserves, Washington ARNG AH-1s flitting around with rockets and TOWs, a P-3 shooting Harpoons (there were several) and the Thuds all make appearances. There's a few frightening moments, including several near midairs, SAMs going by so close you could read the Cyrllic stencling on the missile, low-altitude strafing runs and thinking the pilot's too low to pull up (but he does) as well. BALLROM's a call sign that a couple ex-419 guys do remember; I'll let 'em know who it was.

sloreck

I really wonder whats going to happen when the weteye/bigeye info comes out along with the corn rust? Let's see, it had been US policy to consider all WMD the same (nukes=chem=bio) long before the war, and we made it clear that if one was used on us we would consider responding with whatever we felt like (not same for same necessarily). This was no secret it was publicized far & wide.

In their sneak attack the Sovs used nukes, so exactly why should we be embarassed we used some WMD against them - and against primarily military targets like the secret cities etc. As far as dams go, just a modern take on what the Brits did to the Germans in WW2, and those are legitimate military targets.

My wife and sons died in a camp while I was a doc with the Marines, and my mom was visiting her family in NYC the day the war started. If some smart ass reported starts with crocodile tears over this trying to win a Pulitzer, I'll be happy to put my Hippocratic oath in my pocket and have a few painful moments with him.

Matt Wiser

Like Colonel Moreau said, "We did what we had to do" on those missions. Use nukes on us, and we reserve the right to use whatever on you. Ivan and the ComBloc forgot that. After hitting the dam, there were follow-on raids on the rail yards where those supply trains were backed up. That strongly suggests the flood gates of the dam were blown and there was an uncontrolled release of water downstream....But I'll say this for Ivan: he was nothing but persistent in getting those rail links back up. Who knows how many Gulag inmates got worked to death repairing the railroad?
The one big mission that's still classified is that Moscow area one...I wonder if that'll be one that's released? Rumor at the Air War College when I was there was that nukes were the ordnance carried and were dropped-but no one would say the target. Only that it wasn't Moscow, but that anyone in Moscow would have been able to see the fireballs clearly-they were far enough away that you could see the flash and not be blinded, but close enough to hear and see. At least, that was the rumor back in 1990-91. Any guess as to the target?

Hey Mann: I got an advance copy of Major Kelly Ann Ray's book-the special edition that's a tie in to the Showtime movie. If you want, I'll have her send you a copy. One thing she lets on is that a lot of her fellow deputies in Pocatello didn't know she was a POW. Only when the movie deal and the reprint of the book came out did she tell the Sheriff and the others on the force. They just knew her as a deputy whose other job was a fighter pilot in the Air Force Reserve. They've been "very supportive" once they found out her wartime past. And I sent the reccommendation up the line for her to be promoted to Lt. Col., so hopefully the promotion board goes along. But you know how that goes....

Saw this story in the Denver Post online: seems some hikers in Central Colorado found skeletal remains at a site that Colo. State Sen. (and hopefully future Gov.) Erica Mason said in her book was the site of the ambush of the Wolverines by some Hinds. One of the remains was of a Soviet soldier (ID'd by his belt buckle and the AKS-74 near the body), one was female, and the other was male. Sen. Mason is contributing DNA to ID the female body, as that's likely to be her sister Toni. Assuming the other body is a Wolverine, both will be buried with full military honors. The local authorities, plus the Military's POW-MIA Center are on site and will be for a few days.

trekchu

Could you contact the families for me and tell them that my company would be willing to take up whatever costs may arise? Because for us ex-NG, these guerillias were one of the reasons why we kept fighting.

Matt Wiser

Since these two were guerillas killed in action, DOD handles the funeral arrangements. Panzerfaust may be interested for his upcoming symposium, as one of the remains found was Soviet. No ID though, just a belt buckle and an AKS-74 next to the body. The Denver Post's online edition ought to be following this story in the coming days, though.

trekchu

Still, if there is anything I can do to help, let me know.

TheMann

sloreck said: I really wonder whats going to happen when the weteye/bigeye info comes out along with the corn rust? Let's see, it had been US policy to consider all WMD the same (nukes=chem=bio) long before the war, and we made it clear that if one was used on us we would consider responding with whatever we felt like (not same for same necessarily). This was no secret it was publicized far & wide.

In their sneak attack the Sovs used nukes, so exactly why should we be embarassed we used some WMD against them - and against primarily military targets like the secret cities etc. As far as dams go, just a modern take on what the Brits did to the Germans in WW2, and those are legitimate military targets.

My wife and sons died in a camp while I was a doc with the Marines, and my mom was visiting her family in NYC the day the war started. If some smart ass reported starts with crocodile tears over this trying to win a Pulitzer, I'll be happy to put my Hippocratic oath in my pocket and have a few painful moments with him.

You won't hear me complain about what anything SAC coulda done over there. They started it, they killed many millions of our people, they rampaged across a third of our nation. I'm not gonna feel sorry for 'em. The only people I feel sorry for are those that starved from the corn rust - unlike us, they don't vote for their leaders, and their leaders never gave a fuck about them. And even that is only aimed at those who had nothing to do with the war effort, I should point out.

Matt: Please do. Major Ray was quite a person to speak to, I imagine this book will be something else. That woman is tougher than most of us will ever be, that much I'm sure of. I just had a thought on that, actually. Think a letter from an 26-kill ace with a star on his shoulder will help her chances? I'd be more than happy to write that letter, too.

I'm back, and I landed my Raptor at the 354th TFW's home base, Seymour Johnson AFB, near Goldsboro, NC. Cue the Cloud 9 feeling again. Every guy on the base was waiting for me there. Apparently the crews didn't like the wing commander, so says the squadron commanders. (All of them, too - I kinda get the feeling that six Colonels and Lt. Colonels aren't all gonna just think the same without having reason for it. I just watched their first exercises, and these boys know their business. I get the feeling this is gonna be a good command to have. :cool:

Have they identified the two Wolverines yet? I do imagine they'll get the honors they deserve.

JN1


OOC: I was four in 1984, so I would have been too young to do anything, but I've assumed I was in my early 20s for the purposes of this thread.


*


IC: Me and my mates in the East of Scotland Branch of the Home Service Force Association have been reading this thread with interest. As chairman of the branch they wanted me to set a few things straight. First of all we were very surprised to read accounts of a British ‘surrender’ and Soviet occupation; to think that the Soviet propaganda can still be believed after all this time, or that there are people out there who chose to spread it is incredible. Things did get very bad in the UK, but we fought hard enough and inflicted such losses on the Soviets and their allies that they chose to largely leave us alone; we were very much still in the fight when the war ended.
On behalf of my fellow veterans we would also like to thank the American servicemen and women stationed in Britain, far away from their homes, some of which came under enemy occupation, who fought so hard in defence of the United Kingdom. We could not have held the line without you.

If there is anybody else out there who served in the 7th (Fife) Battalion, The Black Watch (Home Service Force) who remembers ‘staging on’ in terrible weather, or who took part in Operation PYTHON down in the Scottish Borders when we and the regulars cleared out some Soviet paras, then feel free to get in touch.

*

Well introductions over it’s time for me to tell a little bit of my own war story. Much of it is dead boring as it involved performing sentry duty at various places that those higher up than me had designated a ‘Key Point’, or taking part in mobile patrols. However there was the odd bit of excitement, even in the Home Service Force (to those who don’t know about us we were a sort of resurrected Home Guard originally meant to just take ex-regulars).

In 1983 when Maggie brought back National Service in the wake of the collapse of NATO I was a student in my fourth and final year of a History degree. As a student I was automatically given a deferment, but we all still had to join one of the uni’s military units. As I was a poor sailor and was (and still am) a aircraft enthusiast I chose the University Air Squadron, so you can imagine how crestfallen I was when at my medical the RAF docs said my eyesight was not good enough to become the fighter pilot I had always dreamed of being.
Well that settled it, I knew non-pilots in the air force were second class citizens so I transferred to Tayforth University Officers Training Corps and never looked back. Our commitment to training involved two afternoons a week and one full day at the weekend when we all trooped along to the army range at Barry Buddon to fire our weapons and learn field craft and small unit tactics. I still remember with a great deal of fondness firing the SLR and GPMG. Of course the real fun came during the holidays when we went on fortnight long exercises alongside the regular army and the TA and got to fire heavy weapons like the 81mm mortar and Charlie G (Carl Gustav).

Sadly I only got to go on a couple of exercises with my mates in Tayforth UOTC, though I keep in touch with those who survived the war, as I graduated at the end of the academic year. While I was looking for a job I decided to volunteer for my local Territorial Army unit, rather than wait for my call-up. Once again my health was to give me a kick in the teeth; despite being able to demonstrate good health during my time with Tayforth the docs were not happy with some underlying medical condition they spotted (I didn’t know I had it) and declared me unfit for front-line military service. The certificate they gave me not only barred me from joining any of the armed forces, but it also would keep me out of the Civil Defence Corp and the Auxiliary Fire Service. How was I to do my bit?

My salvation came in mid 1984 as the world situation went to hell in a hand basket. I’m sure we all remember the stories about rioting in Poland and the Soviet invasion, and then the news of the worst harvest in the USSR in living memory.
Well in the UK the National Government formed to deal with this crisis (anyone else remember how odd it was to see Maggie and Neil Kinnock on the government benches of the Commons at the same time?) decided to seriously expand the Home Service Force. Like the old Home Guard it would be open to anyone now, male and female, rather than just ex-military personnel. I’d heard that the medical requirements for the HSF were lower than both the regulars and TA (they had been drawn up for retired soldiers after all) so I tried my luck and to my pleasant surprise I was accepted.

At that time the expansion of the organisation meant that the HSF was short on trained leadership, uniforms and equipment. So perhaps with my UOTC experience it was no surprise that I rapidly found myself a corporal in charge of a section of recruits. What was a surprise were the weapons we were issued with; rather than the L1A1 SLR that I was used to my section were issued with a mixture of what appeared to be Lee-Enfield No.4 rifles and Sterling sub-machine guns. On closer inspection the Lee-Enfields turned out to be the relatively rare L8A1 conversion from the 1960s, which at least meant that they were chambered for the standard 7.62x51mm rounds that the SLRs that the core of the battalion were issued with used, rather than the obsolete .303 round.
In the short time before the outbreak of war the old sweats in the battalion were able to turn us newbies into something resembling soldiers fit for the tasks we were to be assigned; guarding stuff is not all that onerous after all; and we would continue to learn.
Some of the older lads, such as our platoon commander, an ex-Senior NCO in the 1st Battalion, The Black Watch, are no longer with us. But those of us who are still alive owe a great debt to these men; they kept us going through some pretty dark days.

I’ll never forget 14th September (or was it the 15th, my memory is not what it was). Our air raid sirens went off pretty much as soon as RAF Fylingdales picked up the Soviet ICBMs heading for America; we didn’t yet know that we had been spared the horror of nuclear attack; those of us with shelters took to them and waited for the bombs to arrive.

Well that’s enough for now; the arthritis in my hands brought on by having to stand guard at food depots in the last winter of the war is giving me some grief. I’ll try and write some more of my experiences in a day or two and maybe mention my old pal from my UOTC days who dropped into Vancouver with the 5th Airborne Brigade.

***

Matt Wiser

Mann: I've already asked her to send you a copy. She'll have it FedExed to you today. And by all means, try that letter to the promotion board. I've called in a couple of favors (I'm saving others for later), so I hope she'll get that bump up to light colonel.

No ID yet: the DNA test results should be in this week. Sen. Mason's contributed a sample, so ID'ing the female remains should be easy. No word on what they found on the other set. The Soviet remains I imagine will be handed over to the Russian Republic or buried in the ComBloc cemetery nearby-even though it's nearly full, the Denver Post said.

Try contacting that partisan museum Panzerfaust worked with: no doubt they're helping DOD with this. I've called Sheriff Lori Sheppard, and though it's out of her jurisdiction, she did offer help to the recovery team. For fellow guerillas, it's the least she could do. Some of your guys might be invited to the funeral.
Last edited: Oct 5, 2009

Panzerfaust 150

Location:Washington DC...We HAD a football team, now it's a
Well, the first article's out, I read the online edition, and it was more of a love letter to SAC than I realized. He published a series of memos that showed there was a LOT of misgivings as to NIMBLE CAP both inside SAC and at the NCA levels. Nukes were one thing...bugs as one NSC member put it, was quite another it seemed. But, our reporter, comes to the conclusion that it indirectly shortened the war by as much as 18-20 months. However, the promises that the bug was short-lived wasn't to be. Postwar estimates by the Strategic Bombing Survey was that as much as 15-20% of arable land in the Ukraine and Southern Russia is unsuitable for agriculture. Europe and China have very strict import controls on Russian and Ukrainian wheat, but until now, nobody knew why this was.

How do I feel about it? My wife's family and my grandfather all died in NYC. I agree with the we did what we had to do. I guess I'm not surprised we responded. I am just shocked we for the most part, didn't go nuclear, but those Moscow missions are still classified as Matt mentioned.

VX contamination isn't as widespread, but some cities, such as Chelyabinsk-95 and Kartaly-6 aren't safe to enter though. SAC did what it had to do, there's no question. I won't wring my hands over it. But I still think we should be cognizant of it.

Matt, I still have some contacts over at Partisan Rock, give me a call and I'll get somebody over there to see what they can do, knowing them, somebody on staff is probably already in on it..Probably Dr. Ramirez, he was a BIG Wolverine nut, so the idea that they found Toni's remains...that's something he'd want to be part of.

Mann, tell your Ukrainian lady friend that I may have a lead on her dad..nothing concrete...but there may be a group photo of the 374th not long after they arrived at Abeline. Usual bunch of pilots grouped around a squadron a/c. It's dated May 1987, and there's a lot of guys..maybe one stands out. No idea as to where her father went down. The PVO had the monopoly on Flankers, and they didn't release but 1 regiment of them, and that Regiment got parceled out(What I've learned about SU-27s in the past few days could fill a book). There were 9 confirmed Flanker kills in ALL of 1987 in North America. 5 of them in Texas, with another 4-5 probables in North Am, 3 of those being in Texas. AF Technical Intel had a hard on for Flanker wrecks, I know because we had a standing order to call Corps immediately if we had either a 29 or 27 come down in our division's AOR. It only happened twice, and they were both 29s. Sorry couldn't be of more help.

TheMann

Matt: Thanks. I'll write up that letter for her, even though she might get moved from your Wing as a result. Sorry in advance if I cause that. And hopefully I'll get that book soon, I can only imagine some of the stories.

Anyways, I had an AF Three-star here today to welcome me to my new command and me being under his command. He's another one of the boys from the war, he was a Colonel under General Hayman. We got talking a lot about it, and how much things have changed. He commented that we came out of that war much better than them, and it was much because of guys like Hayman. I couldn't argue with that. Apparently, the 354th is on deck on case we get another foreign adventure, and as a result he asked for a General who was still able to fly. I told him I'm cleared for the F-22, F-16 and F/A-18 Hornet, and if we need to go I'll go.

My brother called yesterday, too. I told him he doesn't outrank me anymore, and I have more firepower under me than he does. His rebuttal was that he's about to make a port stop in Tokyo, after coming back from Hong Kong. Both places are excellent Liberty ports, he says. "I shoulda stayed a jarhead" was one of his quotes. I told him the next time he calls me that I'm gonna have one of my F-111s bomb his carrier next time he's on the east coast. All in jokes, of course. Sometimes I envied him. But being a general commanding a base, I don't any more.

I got some seriously great pilots here, especially one Captain Melissa Ayerman - a Southern Girl who flies her F-16 like she stole it, beats the pants off her fellow pilots and could model as a centerfold on the side. If the Air Force goes to people like this, it's in good hands.

Matt Wiser

Hey Mann, hope you like Seymour-Johnson. I never had much of a chance to enjoy it: being on a Red Flag when the balloon went up, and after the war, it wasn't until 1990 that the 335th rejoined the 4th TFW there and I could reclaim from storage all my personal belongings. I was back for all of three months before my Air War College time. You guys will have a rivalry with the "Fourth but First" on the other side of the base, I assure you. Now I know why the Air Force added a third runway....I doubt I'll lose Major Ray: she's a Major in a Lt. Col.'s job, and I want her to have the rank that goes with being the wing ops officer. Not to mention that I don't have anyone else qualified at the moment for the slot. And I'm looking for a new pilot or WSO to join the 419th, because when the old ops officer got reassigned in his airline job, he had to leave the wing.

That story in the Cleveland Plain Dealer made the Salt Lake Tribune also-it must've been syndicated all over. Anyone notice that while Google Earth has pretty good images of Moscow, and the two known nuclear sites nearby (the SRF Headquarters and the Long-Range Aviation HQ), there's another site about 50 miles east of Moscow that "Sorry, we don't have coverage of that area." Nothing yet about a dam, though: but the week's still young.

Panzerfaust, you do mean all the Chinese states, don't you? Or Taiwan? Anyway, check your AFHC e-mail: I've sent you what Sheriff Sheppard sent me today. The Colorado State ME, DOD's POW-MIA Center, and reps from Fort Carson are all there. Whups, just saw something on CNN: a representative from Partisan Rock is also there, and he's this PhD you mentioned. The reporter just asked him if the female remains are Toni's, and he said that's the working assumption, pending DNA results. The male remains found about a quarter-mile away are believed to be Robert's. But tracking down living relatives is a problem: his parents were executed early on, and did he ever tell Sen. Mason if he had older siblings-in college perhaps? If there's no living NOK, I presume Sen. Mason will assume that role as one of the two living survivors. A Russian Republic representative is supposed to be there tomorrow to check out the remains believed to be Soviet. The whole area is getting the full crime-scene treatment, as is usual when human remains are found out in the open. EOD techs from Fort Carson are also there, "as a precaution."

DD951

Panzerfaust 150 said: Well, the first article's out, I read the online edition, and it was more of a love letter to SAC than I realized. He published a series of memos that showed there was a LOT of misgivings as to NIMBLE CAP both inside SAC and at the NCA levels. Nukes were one thing...bugs as one NSC member put it, was quite another it seemed. But, our reporter, comes to the conclusion that it indirectly shortened the war by as much as 18-20 months. However, the promises that the bug was short-lived wasn't to be. Postwar estimates by the Strategic Bombing Survey was that as much as 15-20% of arable land in the Ukraine and Southern Russia is unsuitable for agriculture. Europe and China have very strict import controls on Russian and Ukrainian wheat, but until now, nobody knew why this was.

How do I feel about it? My wife's family and my grandfather all died in NYC. I agree with the we did what we had to do. I guess I'm not surprised we responded. I am just shocked we for the most part, didn't go nuclear, but those Moscow missions are still classified as Matt mentioned.

VX contamination isn't as widespread, but some cities, such as Chelyabinsk-95 and Kartaly-6 aren't safe to enter though. SAC did what it had to do, there's no question. I won't wring my hands over it. But I still think we should be cognizant of it.
Been reading those articles online too- not surprised there was a lot of debate about the gas and bugs- those are both some really nasty crap, and bioweapons can easily get out of control, as the ongoing agricultural issues in the former USSR show. However, I too have a hard time feeling as sympathetic as I perhaps should- used to have an aunt, uncle, and a cousin in this little town a few miles NW of Dallas-Ft. Worth, a couple distant relatives and a number of good friends from high school in NYC, not to mention all the atrocities I saw in the BC campaign, especially when Spetznaz, KGB forces, and 'auxillaries' would carry out 'reprisal raids' against the civilian population in BC and the northern parts of WA.

TheMann

Matt Wiser said: Hey Mann, hope you like Seymour-Johnson. I never had much of a chance to enjoy it: being on a Red Flag when the balloon went up, and after the war, it wasn't until 1990 that the 335th rejoined the 4th TFW there and I could reclaim from storage all my personal belongings. I was back for all of three months before my Air War College time. You guys will have a rivalry with the "Fourth but First" on the other side of the base, I assure you. Now I know why the Air Force added a third runway....

Oh, I'm well aware of the rivalry. Believe me. I met with the 4th TFW's CO yesterday at the O-Club, and he commented on the "new guy my boys get to beat up on." I told him in no uncertain terms that my 335th can kick his butt, and his F-15Es are up against real fighter planes. We both laughed and shook on it. The place is gorgeous, I must say. I can see why people like being stationed here. Well, aside from the slugabouts of the 4th TFW, who are a bit of a downer......

Matt Wiser said: I doubt I'll lose Major Ray: she's a Major in a Lt. Col.'s job, and I want her to have the rank that goes with being the wing ops officer. Not to mention that I don't have anyone else qualified at the moment for the slot. And I'm looking for a new pilot or WSO to join the 419th, because when the old ops officer got reassigned in his airline job, he had to leave the wing.

Well, I know there are some good guys in the current crop at the Air Force Academy, because my son is one of them. I don't imagine you'll have a hard time finding a good pilot or WSO, Matt. Major Ray deserves the promotion, no doubt. The letter is on the way, FYI.

Matt Wiser said: That story in the Cleveland Plain Dealer made the Salt Lake Tribune also-it must've been syndicated all over.

The Charlotte Observer also had it, so I suspect you are correct on that front. It's a big story, no two ways about that.

Matt Wiser said: ↑Anyone notice that while Google Earth has pretty good images of Moscow, and the two known nuclear sites nearby (the SRF Headquarters and the Long-Range Aviation HQ), there's another site about 50 miles east of Moscow that "Sorry, we don't have coverage of that area." Nothing yet about a dam, though: but the week's still young.

Yeah, he'll get to the dam eventually, I suspect.

Matt Wiser said: Anyway, check your AFHC e-mail: I've sent you what Sheriff Sheppard sent me today. The Colorado State ME, DOD's POW-MIA Center, and reps from Fort Carson are all there. Whups, just saw something on CNN: a representative from Partisan Rock is also there, and he's this PhD you mentioned. The reporter just asked him if the female remains are Toni's, and he said that's the working assumption, pending DNA results. The male remains found about a quarter-mile away are believed to be Robert's. But tracking down living relatives is a problem: his parents were executed early on, and did he ever tell Sen. Mason if he had older siblings-in college perhaps? If there's no living NOK, I presume Sen. Mason will assume that role as one of the two living survivors. A Russian Republic representative is supposed to be there tomorrow to check out the remains believed to be Soviet. The whole area is getting the full crime-scene treatment, as is usual when human remains are found out in the open. EOD techs from Fort Carson are also there, "as a precaution."

Well, all I can say to this is that those brave souls deserve to be treated well, even after their death. And at least we're being good to the Soviet remains. Doubt they would have treated the Wolverines with the same courtesy if the shoe was on the other foot......

Matt Wiser

The current CO of the 4th TFW is an old friend of mine: he was in the 334th TFS when the balloon went up, and they had a different war-supporting Third Army in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee (Memphis was right on the river, and thus the front lines). They mainly flew out of Columbus AFB or Keesler AFB (Biloxi) in Mississippi. But did they go someplace like Jacksonville or Panama City for R&R? No, they preferred New Orleans. Probably the most defensible city in the whole U.S., with all the swamps, the I-10 and U.S. 90 bridges blown, and no real way to get there by land (or sea....). Things often got wild, especially on Friday and Saturday nights, he said. The locals were glad for the military's money, and learned to stay away from the French Quarter when there were lots of servicepeople around... Folks in New Orleans had this feeling of livig on the edge: with Ivan on the other side of the swamps, so...Anyway, he's also an ace: 12 kills in the war, and two more during the recent settling of scores with Cuba. So you've got an F-16 driver who could do a centerfold on the side? Join the club: I've got several F-15E gals who could do the same, and Lisa has some in the 366th as well.

If your son doesn't mind doing some of his active-duty time with a bunch of reservists, or wants to join the Reserves after his commitment, we'd be glad to have him. Be warned: the most junior pilot (a captain) has 3,000 hours in her logbook.

I gather those two cities are still closed due to what happened after we dropped the Bigeyes...those two were nuclear weapons R&D centers if I'm not mistaken. If they had a runaway reactor, or two, that would explain it. Well, Ivan used chemicals and bio a few times here (remember a vet of Denver commenting a while back about Ivan using bio-tipped Scuds?), so what goes around, comes around.

Ivan just left guerilla bodies where they found them (usually). Didn't Panzerfaust say earlier that the two brothers' bodies were just dumped into a mass grave? Or were they buried in an unmarked grave somewhere?

[lordroel]

From page 59

Panzerfaust 150

Matt Wiser said: That story in the Cleveland Plain Dealer made the Salt Lake Tribune also-it must've been syndicated all over. Anyone notice that while Google Earth has pretty good images of Moscow, and the two known nuclear sites nearby (the SRF Headquarters and the Long-Range Aviation HQ), there's another site about 50 miles east of Moscow that "Sorry, we don't have coverage of that area." Nothing yet about a dam, though: but the week's still young.

I know for a fact that SAC squelched any mention of the Moscow affairs. So, nothing about them, but the rest is coming out..Just saw today..it was about raids on industrial plants...the online edition has real time footage of a run on the Tbilisi a/c plant where they made SU-25s....

Matt Wiser said:Panzerfaust, you do mean all the Chinese states, don't you? Or Taiwan? Anyway, check your AFHC e-mail: I've sent you what Sheriff Sheppard sent me today. The Colorado State ME, DOD's POW-MIA Center, and reps from Fort Carson are all there. Whups, just saw something on CNN: a representative from Partisan Rock is also there, and he's this PhD you mentioned. The reporter just asked him if the female remains are Toni's, and he said that's the working assumption, pending DNA results. The male remains found about a quarter-mile away are believed to be Robert's. But tracking down living relatives is a problem: his parents were executed early on, and did he ever tell Sen. Mason if he had older siblings-in college perhaps? If there's no living NOK, I presume Sen. Mason will assume that role as one of the two living survivors. A Russian Republic representative is supposed to be there tomorrow to check out the remains believed to be Soviet. The whole area is getting the full crime-scene treatment, as is usual when human remains are found out in the open. EOD techs from Fort Carson are also there, "as a precaution."

Yeah, we liberal arts professionals just collectively refer to it as China in shorthand...whoops. NOK for Robert's remains are gonna be difficult. I don't remember him having any family left. As for others, well, I am glad Dr. Ramirez is there, he'll do a great job, and he and Senator Mason know each other well. I got word that the Russians are doing a remains handover during the conference, a recently discovered B-1 crew found 225km NNW of Smolensk. The Russian countryside swallows wrecks and bodies. I understand this one went down in a densely wooded area and it wasn't found till a bunch of kids found it playing in the woods. As for partisan remains...it depended on a lot of factors, but either the bodies were left out, or, if there was a disease risk, buried in a mass grave or burned. It really depended on local policy.

JN1

I was talking to a neighbour of mine who was a PO Chef on the frigate HMS Yarmouth during the war and he reminded me not to leave out any mention of the Royal Navy.
I'll include a bit on them in my next update, including a quick description of the Battle of the Baltic Exits, but I will mention a couple of things now. The Andrew managed to get HMS Ark Royal, the last of the Invincible class completed just in time for the outbreak, held on to HMS Hermes and had two new larger carriers, HMSs Glorious and Furious in the last stages of fitting out in '84. The navy also reactivated the old Rusty B (HMS Bulwark) and upgraded her to operate Sea Harriers as well as act as an LPH.

I didn't see too much of the navy during the war, at least not outside of naval bases anyway, but I do have a vivid memory of seeing the Rusty B limping into Rosyth Dockyard in March '87 after the Battle of the Exits, listing heavily to port and with huge rents in her starboard side. We had all heard the news of the battle and cheered her and her escorts.

Anybody here serve with the four RAF Lancer B.1 squadrons? We heard that they took part in some of SAC's nuke strikes against the Soviets, but the National Government claimed otherwise at the time and successive governments have maintained that stance.
Talking of SAC, how bad were things after the attacks by Cuban infiltrators? I'd always heard that most of the alert 'planes got off, but that the 'filtrators b*ggered up the follow-on force for quite a while.

OC: I'm sorry to tell the person that mentioned RAF Vulcan B.2s that the last operational Vulcans, a small number of K.2 tankers, were retired by March '83. After that the only RAF Vulcan flying was the one serving with the Vulcan Display Flight.
Last edited: Oct 6, 2009

JN1

Well it seems my intervention into this thread has caused quite a stir amongst the UK veteran community. I’ve been deluged with requests to include stories from the RAF and Royal Navy as well as my own army tales. I’ll do what I can, but I can’t promise to include everything. Moreover I’ll not make any pretence in writing a chronological account, I’ll post things as requests come in and as I remember them, so forgive me if I jump around between 1984 and 1989, and stray into pre and post-war stories.

*

One pre-war story I did want to tell was the weekend Tayforth got sent to RM Base Condor to do public order training with the marines. Boy did those Booties play it for real as rioters; a couple of our lads ended up in Ninewells Hospital by the end of the day, but it was great fun.
The best bit of that training was that we got to use it for real on the way back to Dundee. When we were nearly back at the uni we were stopped and surrounded by a bunch of so-called ‘peace campaigners’, most of whom were lefty types who had avoided military service by claiming to be ‘conscientious objectors’, though those I saw that day didn’t look like they believed in ‘peace’, or not using violence.
Before I say any more not all ‘conchies’ were like these oxygen thieves, a lot of them had deep seated moral objections to taking another human life. We respected these guys, many of whom served bravely as medics and stretcher bearers, earning a lot of medals. These blokes we called ‘honourable conchies’, I won’t say what we called the other lot in case children are reading this.
Anyway to return to the story to the surprise of the ‘peace campaigners’ we all leaped out of the back of our ancient Bedford 4-tonners armed with our newly issued ‘hickory stick’ wooden batons and public order training. You should have seen those idiots run after we took a few swings at them. As usual training and discipline won out over a disorganised rabble.
Tayside Police were, of course, a bit miffed about us taking action. They thought we should have called them and sat on our arses while we waited, but they didn’t make a big issued out of it. If memory serves a lot of those ‘protestors’ ended up in internment camps on the Isle of Man.

*

To get back to the war once we all realised that we were not about to become radioactive air pollution everybody in my company made their way to the TA Centre where we were based to collect our kit and deploy to guard the various ‘Key Points’ in our Area Of Operations. My platoon ended up guarding a railway junction at Inverkething and providing security for a train taking fuel to the Naval Dockyard at Rosyth.
A lot of bad things have been said about British Rail over the years, but they really pulled out the stops and delivered the goods during the war. I don’t know if our privatised, fragmented railway of today would do such a good job.
We saw our first air battle that day between some Phantom FG.1s from RAF Leuchars and Soviet Su-24 ‘Fencers’ sent to bomb Rosyth. The Crabs shot down four out of the six ‘Fencers’ and for once we cheered the air farce.

*

A navy man I corresponded with last night via email, who wishes to remain anonymous wants to remind everybody that while the RAF may have lobbed a few nuke tipped ALCMs at the Soviet Union (though the government still denies this), it was the navy that actually got to use part of Britain’s nuclear arsenal.
My informant served aboard HMS Revenge throughout the war and remembers events in mid 1985 when it looked like the Argies might have another go at the Falklands. Of course we were too busy defending ourselves from Soviet attack, plus keeping our small army contingent in Canada going (more of that later) to reinforce the islands. The Septics once again helped us out with satellite photos, which showed that the Argentinean Navy had assembled most of its fleet, including the carrier Veinticinco de Mayo and their entire amphibious fleetat Puerto Belgrano. Once marines were observed boarding the ‘phibs the government decided to use the only weapon it had available.
At 0912 hours GMT, 3rd August 1985 HMS Revenge fired one Polaris A3 missile armed with a pair of 550kT nuclear warheads. The Argentinean naval base at Puerto Belgrano was totally destroyed by the twin nuclear initiations, along with the majority of their fleet and all of their marines. Sadly the near-by city of Punta Alta was also badly hit, some estimates put civilian casualties as high as forty to fifty thousand. It was awful, but we did what we thought we had to and we’ve had no regrets.

Of course the attack f**ked our food deliveries from the rest of South America for six months until the Brazilians, Uruguayans and all that lot decided that actually they liked British gold and couldn’t give a s**t about Argentina. Chile was, of course, cock-a-hoop about their main rival losing her navy and nabbed a few bits of Argentineans territory in the Arctic and the Beagle Channel to which the Argentineans could do nothing about.
During the South American food blockade of the UK things began to look bad for us, but our friends in South Africa, Australia and New Zealand stepped up their food shipments and we Brits are all eternally grateful for their help in not only sending food, but also troops to help defend the ‘Old Country’. Many of their soldiers eventually ended up in Canada as part of the ANZAC division, or in the case of the South Africans in America itself.

*

A couple of mates who were in the RAF during the war wanted me to mention the Crab’s very own ‘super-fighter’, the BAe Tempest, which entered service in early 1988. It was very much the predecessor to today’s superlative Eurofighter Typhoon, but used a lot of technology developed for the Tornado; indeed the rear fuselage and fin were from the Tornado; and had the Blue Vixen radar developed for the Sea Harrier FRS.2. I don’t have any good pics of the ‘plane in service, but I do have a couple of the prototype, which I’ll post below.
They proved to be excellent all-rounders, having a good air to ground capability as well as an excellent air to air ability. When the Soviet attacks on the UK eased off in early ’89 we shipped a couple of squadrons of them and two of Tornado GR.1s off to Canada where they took part in the counter-offensive to liberate British Columbia and Alaska. By all accounts they did very well.

*

I know I promised an account of Operation PYTHON and the Battle of the Baltic Exits in this update, but space has precluded it. I’ll try and fit them in next time, along with any of my own experiences that I think are exciting enough.

*

BAe Tempest FGR.1 prototype.
[img src="http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c350/JNiemczyk1/Aircraft/EAP2.jpg" alt="[​IMG]"]
[img src="http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c350/JNiemczyk1/Aircraft/eap.jpg" alt="[​IMG]"]

***

JN1

thedarkmaster said: During the war i served with served with the RAF and spent a large part of it scared shitless, I don't mind saying it . I found God during that time and i prayed to stay alive.

I was on the ground waiting for them, I was a Rapier Missile gunner, and it was our job to protect the airfield aginst low flying threats and you can bet plenty of them turned up.

We had an alarm on over twenty incoming boggies and sttod too. The system was activated. We scaned the sky ( for those of you whom don't know Rapier was a visual system, no radar or infa red for us just the mk1 eyeball ) and spotted them low on the horizon........Migs, 23's or 27's you cant tell at that range.

We fireed two of the four ready missiles and then it becomes a blur of noise flame and pain. I found out later that we had brought two down with our four shots, but we had been caught in the blast of a Russian cruise missile that hit the base.
Good to hear from another British vet, even if you were a Rock Ape (guess somebody has to be .
I knew some guys from 27 Squadron, RAF Regiment, who were Rapier gunners at RAF Leuchars. Your unit must have had the older system because they had the Blindfire radar to help with engagements.
I still see one of those blokes when I go down the British Legion for a pint on a Wednesday.

They were hard days, though I had it easy compared to you, but yet I still think of them as some of the best days of my life.

*

EDIT:
Saw the post on the fate of the USN’s carrier fleet, so I thought I’d do the same for ours and did a bit of online research.
At the start of the war we had four carriers, one old Centaur class on its last legs that was supposed to be sold to India (somehow the sale got delayed) and three Invincible class ships (one on rushed sea trials). The two new large Furious class ships were fitting out, but did not enter service until mid-1985.
During the war we managed to complete one new Furious class and the two Ocean class escort carriers, despite the bombing and the steel shortages, plus we also reactivated one old Centaur.

This is basically what the fate of our carriers was as following:

Centaur class.
HMS Bulwark (R08), reactivated December 1984, upgraded to operate Sea Harrier; had ski-jump installed; retained LPH capability. Badly damaged March 1987 in battle with units of Soviet Baltic Fleet, made it back to Rosyth, but declared CTL.
HMS Hermes (R12), was to be sold to the Indian Navy, but retained by RN. Served as flagship of ASW task-group in the GIUK Gap. Was damaged by Soviet ‘Backfire’ bombers and was later sunk by a Soviet submarine while limping back to a British port.

Invincible class.
HMS Invincible (R05), sunk in March 1987 during the Battle of the Baltic Exits).
HMS Illustrious (R06), suffered light damage in September 1988 while on ASW patrol in GIUK gap, but repaired.
HMS Ark Royal (R07), moderately damaged in Soviet bombing raid while taking on ammunition at RNAD Crombie in February 1986. Repaired at Rosyth Dockyard.

Furious class.
HMS Furious (R09), took one missile hit during Battle of the Baltic Exits, repaired and returned to service.
HMS Glorious (R10), sunk by combination of missiles and torpedoes during Battle of the Baltic Exits.
HMS Implacable (R14), built as a replacement for Glorious. Was lightly damaged during Soviet air raid on Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast; delayed commissioning by two weeks.

Ocean class.
HMS Ocean (R15), austerity escort carrier built using hull of the Invincible class, but powered by diesel engines. Intended to act as convoy escort, or LPH.
HMS Glory (R16), sister of Ocean, both served on convoy duty and took part in amphibious role in the liberation of Iceland.

Matt Wiser

I saw that footage: pretty neat from the two Buffs that flew the mission. They went in the back way: via Israel to refuel, then over Turkey (the Turks looked the other way) and then into Soviet Georgia. This one had both make it out: they went out over the Caspian, then Iran, and out to Diego Garcia. Some of the other targets were the Baku oil fields, an oil refinery at Astrakhan, and even dumping mines (the Navy's Destructor series) into the Volga River.

CNN had a report from Colorado today: the remains believed to be Toni and Robert have been flown to the Armed Forces Pathology Lab at Dover AFB for examination and ID. Dr. Ramirez said that they found the local dentist, and he still has dental records for Robert and the original Wolverines. So there may be an ID on him after all. How the dentist hid the records from the Russians was not disclosed. You would think the Russians would've wanted the records themselves to ID any Wolverine bodies found. The Russian Republic rep should be arriving tomorrow to have a look at the presumed Soviet remains and determine if there's any way to ID them. An easy way should be finding the Spetsnatz unit's records and finding if anyone was reported KIA-BNR (assuming they weren't destroyed later on). There's also this: one of the Fort Carson EOD teams was checking the area, when they found another set of remains, and this one had all the appearances of being an aircrew member. Remains of a flight suit, an aircrew survival knife, and an aircrewman's flight helmet were found with the remains. Sen. Mason says in her book that Jed told her Robert fired an RPG at a Hind, and the impact blew out a door gunner, (if the RPG blast didn't kill him, the fall did) so this may be that fellow.

Well, the promotion board for Reserve Lt. Cols. is meeting now, Mann: cross your fingers and hope that letter does its work. This is Major Ray's first shot at being a light colonel, so if she misses this time, she's got another chance. Oh, and did your copy of the book arrive?

DD951

JN1, a couple of things. First of all, I'd be interested in hearing more about your friend in the 5th Airborne Brigade who dropped into Vancouver. My ship spent a lot of time doing shore bombardment during the BC campaign, much of it fire support missions for ground forces, and it's possible that we might have helped your friend's unit out at one point.

Second, I'm a little curious about the Furious-class carriers. For some reason, it's still pretty hard to find any solid, reliable info on them, so I'm curious if you could provide any details on them.

The Sandman

Heh, I think I might know at least one possibility for what got hit outside Moscow.

From some of the stuff I heard while I was in Russia, used to be that there was a closed city outside of Moscow. A very special one, in fact. It was where they trained KGB agents, military and GRU officers, diplomats in their foreign service, and anyone else who was likely to be going overseas in a situation where they might have to actually blend in a bit, or at least understand where the locals were coming from.

You know what the World Showcase in EPCOT looks like, down in Orlando? Remember going there as a kid once, and 'less I've missed something I don't think it's changed much... Well, anyway, picture something like that, except it's a city, sectioned out into slices like some sort of urban pizza. Each slice is done up to look like it came out of a different country. Urban areas towards the center, suburbs further out, and rural bits at the edge. Each of the NATO countries had at least some representation, plus a few other locations; Japan, the ROK, the PRC, India, Iran, Israel, and some generic ones for the Arab countries, Latin America, and so on.

This was also, incidentally, where the topmost bits of the Party kept some of their more exclusive stores. Helps with the "socialist solidarity" thing if your most ostentatious purchases aren't ever in stores that the average prole on the street might see, y'know. Along with other stuff they figured smacked too much of "decadent capitalism" to have in plain sight of the average citizen.

Kicker, though, was that this city? It wasn't all false fronts. There were people living there, and a lot of them weren't locals. People they'd taken from the countries in question, and sometimes the kids and even grandkids of the people they'd taken, all in some sort of twisted facsimile of the homes they couldn't go to anymore, kept that way for the edification of many and the amusement of some. And apparently they kept on stocking the city with new "recruits", right up until the place got a delivery of Instant Sunrise courtesy of SAC.

Of course, quite a few of said "recruits" were taken from the spots the Russkies grabbed during the Big One. And from the spots they thought they might be grabbing, though obviously not many of those once the war actually got going. And from their so-called "allies", just in case. Those people weren't included on the repatriation lists after the war, of course, because it's hard to repatriate a scattering of lightly radioactive ash spread between Moscow and the Urals.

Now, obviously, I couldn't verify that one firsthand; the place would have been gone before I went to Russia, and they kind of discouraged anyone from going out there and looking. But I did see a lot of financial figures, and a lot of personnel figures, and quite a few reports on both foreigners registered in the Soviet Union and on where some of the people the Soviets and their patsies were "disappearing" from occupied territory went, and all of those things seem to imply that there was something fairly expensive east of Moscow, that there were a lot of those disappeared whose paper trails ended somewhere in the Moscow military district, that there was a pretty hefty amount of food and other sundries getting shipped from Moscow to no apparent destination, that there was a "training facility" in the Moscow district that had a surprising number of different bits of the state apparatus involved in its management, and that all of these different oddities just... went away at roughly the same time that that SAC mission near Moscow is supposed to have happened.

At least one of the things coming back with me as a goodwill gesture from the Republic was a list of people who they knew were removed from the Occupied Regions to the Soviet Union instead of just being buried in shallow graves somewhere in Mexico, and the best information they had on what happened to them. And as I recall an awful lot of those people just went into the Moscow district and never came out. Given all the other stuff, I think it's kinda suggestive.

OOC: If you've ever read The Bourne Ultimatum, you've seen something kind of like what I'm describing here. Except think much more elaborate, a decent bit creepier, and with a North Korean approach to acquiring its population.

Matt Wiser

Interesting theory: however, from my Air War College notes, the (very limited) brief we students got was that there were two targets. Two planes went in, one a B-52, the other a B-1B. Both gave the "target struck" call, but only the Bone got out. There were a number of diversionary strikes flown-Col. Moreau, when she was a copilot, flew one-shooting conventional-warhead ALCMs at the Plesetsk Space Center, but the crews on the diversionary missions didn't have the "need to know" what the two penetrators were after. My guess-and this is strictly a guess-is that one of the two targets hit was a command bunker for elements of the Soviet leadership. Remember that this mission was direct retaliation for the Raven Rock attack, and since we dispersed our own leadership, it made sense for the Soviets to do the same-and we had the chance to catch a few inside one of those bunkers. I'll bet that there was a leadership bunker near this facility, and that both were taken out. Each getting one or two B-61 gravity bombs on the "high" setting (500 KT) would be sufficient, methinks.

JN1

DD951 said: JN1, a couple of things. First of all, I'd be interested in hearing more about your friend in the 5th Airborne Brigade who dropped into Vancouver. My ship spent a lot of time doing shore bombardment during the BC campaign, much of it fire support missions for ground forces, and it's possible that we might have helped your friend's unit out at one point.

Second, I'm a little curious about the Furious-class carriers. For some reason, it's still pretty hard to find any solid, reliable info on them, so I'm curious if you could provide any details on them.
My friend was in 15 Para (the TA battalion that recruited in Scotland), which was attached to 5th AB Bde for a while. The Brigade had been doing its rotation at the British Army Training Unit at Wainwright (which was for light infantry units) when the war started; btw the Wainwright facility had recently been expanded to take a full infantry brigade rather than just a battalion, just as BATUS had gone from an armoured battle group to a full division (we needed to replace the training areas lost in West Germany).

I'll need to talk to him, but I'm sure he did say his battalion group did receive quite a bit of NGS from the USN and what Canadian ships were left off the West Coast.

IIRC the Furious class were about the same size as your Midways, though designed for V/STOL aircraft rather than fixed wing. During the Battle of the Exits the navy put two Sea Harrier squadrons on them plus a squadron of RAF Harrier GR.3s equipped to drop LGBs.
I think my ex-navy friend may have a pic of one of them, so I'll try and post a copy.

EDIT: I see I'm going to have to do a lot of more work than I originally expected!

JN1

DD951:
My friend in 15 Para was part of the force assigned to drop on Vancouver International Airport, along with II Squadron, RAF Regiment and the Canadian Airborne Regiment, so it’s possible that he got NGS from your ship. The British force involved in the retaking of Vancouver was not particularly big as the core of the British Army in Canada was the 1st (UK) Armoured Division, which the commander of 1st Canadian Army felt was not really suitable for FIBUA, though they did take part in the sweep around the city to the north. Our main force in that battle was 16th (Airborne) Division, which apart from the air drop of 5th AB Bde, fought as leg infantry (much to their disgust).
Remind me what ship was it you were on and what was its call-sign and I’ll ask him.

Matt,
Since you seem to be the senior USAF vet here can I ask you whether you knew, or know anybody who served with USAFUK (the successor to USAFE)? When the Continentals went neutralist most of USAFE ended up in the UK; there was a lot of base building and expansion at the time. I never met any of the USAF lads and lassies based over here but I'd like to thank them.
I did meet a few blokes from 3rd Squadron, 11th ACR (the Blackhorse) who were quartered outside Stirling for a while. They were good guys and I hope they did okay when they shipped out for home in '86.
Last edited: Oct 7, 2009

TheMann

My book got in yesterday. I'm already 35 pages in. Whoever helped Major Ray write it is a genius, it's excellent. :cool: I hope she does get her promotion, it's well deserved.

JN1, do you know anything about the RAF Squadrons that jumped the pond when Britain was occupied? I know two RAF pilots I owe beers to, because their Tornado ADVs saved my bacon from a couple Flankers over Alabama mid-war. I would sure love to bring those gents over here for an airshow, and I got a great bar not far from here, that even has British beers on draft.

JN1

OOC: Afraid I'm amongst those writing from the point of view that the UK was not occupied. There's a couple of others besides me, IIRC.

IC: I do remember hearing that the eighteen Tornado F.2s got sent over to the States during the war; we felt we could better spare them than the RB.199 Mk.104 engined F.3 (the F.2 had the Mk.103 of the IDS). IIRC they were flown by instructor aircrew of 229 Operational Conversion Unit, so they would have been 65 Squadron during the war.

The F.3 was a much better aircraft than the F.2, it was much faster due to its more powerful engines, especially at low level where it was just about impossible to beat, could carry two more AIM-9s and had a later version of the Foxhunter radar compatible with both the Active Skyflash and the American AMRAAM.
The last Tornado F.3s are now being replaced with Typhoons, but the RAF is going to retain two squadrons of EF.3 SEAD aircraft.

trekchu

65 Squadron... I think I still owe these guys a couple of barrels of beer, because they dug my unit out of some deep do-do when we got jumped by a squadrons worth of Frogoots.

JN1

For this part of my little tale I’ve promised my ex-navy pal that I’ll include an account of the Battle of the Baltic Exits. I doubt that I’ll do it the proper justice it deserves, so if anybody wants to read a better account than my amateur one I would recommend ‘Battle for the Exits – The Royal Navy against the Soviet Baltic Fleet, 21st March 1987’ by Eric Grove.
I’m also going to include a personal account of Operation Python, which I took a small part in.

*

By March 1987 it was pretty clear to the Soviets that their campaign against the United Kingdom was not going too well. Despite round the clock bombing raids they had failed to destroy the RAF, or put a serious dent in the armaments industry and to cap it all RAF Lancer bombers from the Scampton and Waddington wings were regularly hitting back. The naval blockade was not doing too well either – the combined ASW forces of the USN, Royal Navy and Canadian Maritime Command were keeping the sea-lanes to the UK open.
The fighting in North America was taking up most of the Soviet’s resources and it looked like the previously neutral Western European nations might enter the war soon, so they decided that they had to do something to force Britain to the negotiatingtable and fast, before it became impossible.

Some crack-pot in the Kremlin decided that the best course of action was to send the Baltic Fleet out into the North Sea to clear the way for an amphibious landing on the British East Coast. You see they had managed to convince themselves that if Soviet troops (other than the Spetsnaz who had been active here since day one) actually set foot in Britain that there would be a spontaneous uprising by the Working Class and the Soviet Army would march on London at the head of a British mob (the French though the same thing at the end of the 18th Century, they were wrong too).

Good intelligence meant that the Royal Navy knew that the Soviets were coming well in advance and assembled a fleet that included five aircraft carriers (Bulwark, the three Invincible class, Furious and Glorious) and as many escorts as the navy could spare from the GIUK Gap and convoy escort duty. The RN also concentrated as many SSNs and SSKs that it could spare.
We were also helped by the fact that the West German Navy and later the Danish Navy kept tabs on the Soviet strike group and routinely broadcast their position. That got them into a few skirmishes and was one of the catalysts for the Europeans joining the war. The Danes and Norwegians also activated their defensive minefields, which forced the Soviets to sail in more restricted waters than they would have liked. The two Scandinavian navies also came out to play ‘tag’ with the Soviets when they allegedly infringed Danish, or Norwegian waters, and we’re pretty sure it was a Norwegian SSK that sunk the Yuri Andropov (the RN denies it was them).

Once in the Baltic Narrows it became a Turkey Shoot for our side, the Soviets were hit by air strikes by RAF Buccaneers, RN Sea Harriers and multiple sub attacks, their Yak-38 ‘Forgers’ proved to be totally useless in defence and were slaughtered by the Sea Harriers armed as escorts. We didn’t have it entirely our own way, of course, the Soviets supported their group with a regiment of Tu-22M ‘Backfires’ and numerous Su-24 ‘Fencers’ flying out of East Germany.
During this exchange the Soviets lost two Kiev class carriers, a Kirov class cruiser, and about twenty other ships, plus many more damaged to various degrees. The Royal Navy lost two carriers (Invincible and Glorious) sunk and two damaged (Bulwark and Furious) and ten escorts sunk, or crippled.
The surviving Soviet warships were forced to retreat, harried all the way into the Baltic by RN submarines. HMS Yarmouth (the Crazy Y) distinguished herself by boarding and taking as a prize a crippled Krivak class frigate, towing it into Rosyth two days later as part of the group escorting the badly damaged Rusty B.

Not a very long or detailed account of the Royal Navy’s biggest battle of World War Three I know, but I’m no naval historians and Grove’s account is excellent.

A little aside I meant to mention is that after the battle perhaps for the first time the Fleet Air Arm had something good to say about the RAF. You see the RAF Harrier GR.3s on the carriers went in behind the Sea Eagle armed Sea Harriers to attack Soviet ships with rockets, LGBs and cannon fire. Half of them never made it back, but the survivors then took back to the air armed with Sidewinders to help in the defence of the Task Force.

*

Before I plunge into a description of Operation PYTHON the mention of Soviet use of chemicals and biological warfare made me think of their use over here. The Home Service Force was usually at the bottom of the heap when it came to being issued with weapons and equipment; for example my platoon still had those old Lee-Enfield L8 rifles as late as 1987; but at least we were well provided with NBC gear, just like the regulars and Territorials. We were certainly glad of our S6 respirators and ‘Noddy suits’.
The Soviets used both chemical and High Explosive bombs when they attacked our airfields and ports. Those of us in the military or uniformed services did not suffer too badly, though it was bad enough, but the civilian casualties were horrendous.

I didn’t see the worst of the bombing, or civilian chemical casualties, but our battalion was amongst those drafted in to help with decontamination when the Soviets hit Rosyth Dockyard with a mixture of H.E and chemical bombs; the latter contained GB, or Soman, can’t remember which. The dockyard workers and their families had been provided with ‘Noddy suits’, but the rest of the population of the village of Rosyth and the town of Inverkething had not and were hit pretty bad. There were even some casualties in Dunfermline when the wind changed. Watching a twelve year old kid going through the last stages of nerve gas poisoning was something that has stayed with me.
We were using fire engines to decontaminate the dockyard and washed both the gas and chemicals we were using to clear it straight into the River Forth. After all these years the eco-system of the Firth of Forth still hasn’t recovered from all the crap we washed into it.

*

Anyway I promised something about Operation PYTHON and I will finally deliver.
August 1988 was a pretty memorable month for us in 7 Black Watch, not only did we get our final allocation of SLRs (my platoon had been issued with them in December ’87, though I made sure my lads and lassies held on to their L8s), but some of us were also given the chance to go up against Soviet paratroopers.

The airdrop of Spetsnaz and a newly formed VDV airborne division in Northern England was the last serious Soviet attempt to force Britain out of the war. Their air attacks were now suffering unacceptable attrition and the land campaigns in North America and China were beginning to fall-apart, the Soviets needed a victory and fast. For some reason they still laboured under the delusion that there were millions of Britons yearning for Soviet liberation, so if they could get some troops on the ground then the British government would collapse, or be forced to surrender (almost the same script as the year before!).
Since I took part in this campaign and was shanghaied into writing our battalion history (that History degree I hold has a lot to answer for) I’ve made a special study of Soviet plans. What we know now is that a battalion of Spetsnaz acting as pathfinders would have captured Newcastle Airport and secured it for the follow-on airborne division, which would have pushed out and formed a defensive perimeter while two more air portable divisions were flown in. The Soviets expected a great deal of local support in the Newcastle area and also expected to be operating tactical fighter aircraft from the airport within 48 hours.
The lynch-pin of the plan was the belief (similar to that of the Luftwaffe in 1940) that the RAF and the USAFUK had been largely destroyed. They had taken serious losses over the last four years, but both forces were still very much a going concern.

To cover the transport stream the Soviets launched a large-scale air attack across the UK, hoping to draw out the few remaining defending fighters. They got quite a shock at what came out to meet them. It got worse when the lumbering transports appeared on British radar screens and the fighter reserves were launched to go after them.
Dozens of RAF Tempests, Tornados, Phantoms, Hawks, Lightnings and even Hunters, and USAF F-15s and F-16s tore into the transport stream causing absolute havoc. The RAF aircrew later christened the air battle (massacre would be a better word) ‘The Great North Sea Grouse Shoot’; the fighters, unfortunately ran out of ordnance before they ran out of targets and about half the force made it through to drop their troops and cargo.
Unfortunately for the Spetsnaz and VDV the air battle had caused havoc in the transport crew’s navigation and the survivors were dropped all over Northumberland and up into the Scottish Borders. The record for poor navigation though must go to the IL-76 that dropped its stick in Aberdeenshire!

*

The CO of 7 Black Watch got a call direct from H.Q Scotland District to prepare a company for operations down in the Borders, much to his surprise. The GOC Scotland District, Lt. General Sir Duncan Campbell, had realised that he was going to need a lot of troops for cordon, and search and destroy operations and realised that he would need to draw on the HSF for the former, though 45 Commando and a couple of battalions of the Parachute Regiment would be called in for the latter.
As one of the younger, fitter members of the battalion I was of course assigned to the provisional company that 7 Black Watch provided to Operation PYTHON and I soon found myself in charge of a section manning a Vehicle Check Point to the south of Jedburgh.

I’ll close there and tell some more of my part in this operation tomorrow.

JN1

65 Squadron... I think I still owe these guys a couple of barrels of beer, because they dug my unit out of some deep do-do when we got jumped by a squadrons worth of Frogoots.
Being instructors they were amongst the most experience fliers in the RAF. I've heard from contacts in the air force and MoD that sending them to America (a token of solidarity as much as anything else) was highly controversial at the time. There were those who said that we should have been looking to our own defence 'before helping out the Yanks'.

I'm glad to hear that they did well though and I believe they were re-equipped with the superior F.3A in mid '88 and eventually ended up flying with the other RAF squadrons up in BC.

Matt Wiser

Never did run into the USAFUK guys: I was just a junior pilot in the squadron-and had been in the squadron only two months when the balloon went up, which is the only way you'd drop a Red Flag. I do know we kept two of the F-16 Wings (50th and 86th) over there. But when it looked like the invasion was coming (there was more warning than the history books say-but it was only a week's additional warning time), the Army left their equipment behind and flew home and picked up the former war reserve gear. And being the only AF squadron in an otherwise Marine Air Group-man that was strange for a while. (we flew with MAG-11 for the whole war) We felt like the lone AAF squadron at Guadalcanal-AF blue in a sea of Marine camo. But when it was over four years later, the Colonel running MAG-11 called us blue-suiters over and said the USMC Commandant had designated us "Honorary Marines", even though we were Air Force, we'd flown and fought alongside Marines, and helped out Marines on the ground, that we'd earned the honor. 335th TFS vets do show up at reunions of MAG-11 squadrons: There were two F-4 squadrons, one A-4 squadron, one A-6 squadron, and us. MAG-11 called us "Blue-suited Marines" as a result.

11th ACR went back to V Corps when they got home: they did fine. Two PUCs for the unit, and three troopers getting the Medal of Honor should tell you how they did. 11th ACR tries to brag that they were the first to the Rio Grande during BORDER FURY, but it was 3rd ACR in III Corps: they beat the Blackhorse to the river by an hour. And 3rd ACR has the 11th beat in another respect: they had the first girls in the Cav-in combat.

There was an impressive ceremony at Peterson AFB near Colorado Springs this morning, as the two coffins with what are believed to be Toni's and Robert's remains were flown to Dover AFB for testing and ID. Honor guard from Fort Carson, Green Berets from the 5th SFG as the pallbearers, Sen. Mason and the other survivor in attendance, along with the Governor of Colorado, both U.S. Senators from Colorado, and other VIPs. CNN had the whole thing live. I'm at the Mountain Home O-Club now, on my laptop, and there wasn't a dry eye here. Dr. Ramirez said after the ceremony that the DNA tests on Toni should be done "anytime now." A strong hint that the tentative ID has already been made, and that the DNA is just confirmation.

JN1

We Brits were glad of those American units who stayed behind, they helped to save our bacon.
I thought that the 57th FIS (ex-Keflavik NAS) stayed at their new base at RAF Skaebrae in Orkney during the war? I'm sure I remember seeing F-15s as well as F-16s.

Some F-16s did provide us with CAS support during PYTHON.

Glad to hear the Blackhorse guys did okay. My battalion was on a couple of exercises with them pre-war and we were sad to see them go, though we understood it.
Last edited: Oct 7, 2009

Panzerfaust 150

Well,
Wednesday's edition of the article covered GREEN STEEL, which was a campaign instituted by SAC beginning in 1986, which attempted to take down the Soviet Union's power grid. It targeted the Hydro power plants..mostly...but there was an incident where a FB-111 put a AGM-130 into the the No 4 reactor at Chernobyl..intel had thought the reactor was cold, but they had just powered up after a test. Things got messy.

It covers Colonel Moreau's flight against that dam complex you mentioned Matt, and hair-raising doesn't begin to cover it.