Originally posted by vicdei
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"Thank God for the Atom Bomb"
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Wow what a thread. I'd forgotten what a total asshat Asim Aquil was.“He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”
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Originally posted by TopHatter View PostWow what a thread. I'd forgotten what a total asshat Asim Aquil was.In the realm of spirit, seek clarity; in the material world, seek utility.
Leibniz
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I never much cared for this sort of discussion. It's sort of like asking how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. It's all pure conjecture for most of us. I know my father, who started out his naval career in Shanghai in 1937, had USS Wasp torpedoed out from underneath him at Guadalcanal, survived the Battle Off Samar during the Leyte campaign, as well as the Kamikazes at both Iwo Jima and Okinawa, was pretty convinced that it was the right decision for the times, but I doubt he was ever all that sanguine about the reality of nuclear weapons.
I don't know how many here have any practical experience with nuclear weapons, but I personally had a belly full of it. My first 11 or 12 years in the navy, they were an every day concern for those of us assigned to USN combatants. See, everybody knows about ICBMs in our Trident boats, but most people have no clue about all of the so called "tactical nukes" that those of us in carriers, cruisers, destroyers and frigates carried. We had B61 air dropped bombs, B57 depth bombs, and Terrier BTN aboard the carrier in which I served, nuclear ASROC (which is also has a B57 as its warhead) and Terrier BTN in the cruiser, and nuclear ASROC in one of the frigates I rode. The fact that we could carry and deploy them was not classified, but their actual presence on board was something we could "neither confirm nor deny." OK, I'm confirming their presence during that era, and that was the main reason New Zealand politely asked us not to pay port calls down there.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, all of those things went away almost immediately, and I for one was very happy to wave "Bye bye" to them as they were craned off the ship (the cruiser in this case). It was like the entire crew heaved a collective sigh of relief. No more surprise inspections and their potential for immediate career death if not worse. More to the point however was the immediate elimination of a potential source of escalation in a major theater war. See, at every war game ever played at the US Naval War College during the Cold War, not one every failed to go nuclear. The temptation to use them was just to great for either side.
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Captain,
Couldn't agree with you more. Now some folks will perk up and say...AR, you were an Infantry officer....what the hell do you know about nukes?
Well those of us who served in USAREUR sometimes got tagged as an additional duty called ADM Platoon Leader. It was simple....a rifle platoon linked up with a special engineer squad equipped with ADMs. ( http://http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...tion_munitions ). And then you would get target folder, 2 man control and all the other fun stuff of folks who played with nukes. It also explains why as a 2nd Lieutenant I had a TS clearance.
There are still some major autobahn bridges in Germany and some mountain passes that I got to know very well from 1981 to 1984. Glad that ended.
In my mind ADMs were right up there with Davy Crocket's (the rocket launcher not the AAFES snack bar sandwich) as the Dumbest Things Infantrymen Played With...“Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
Mark Twain
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Originally posted by Albany Rifles View PostCaptain,
Couldn't agree with you more. Now some folks will perk up and say...AR, you were an Infantry officer....what the hell do you know about nukes?
Well those of us who served in USAREUR sometimes got tagged as an additional duty called ADM Platoon Leader. It was simple....a rifle platoon linked up with a special engineer squad equipped with ADMs. ( http://http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...tion_munitions ). And then you would get target folder, 2 man control and all the other fun stuff of folks who played with nukes. It also explains why as a 2nd Lieutenant I had a TS clearance.
There are still some major autobahn bridges in Germany and some mountain passes that I got to know very well from 1981 to 1984. Glad that ended.
In my mind ADMs were right up there with Davy Crocket's (the rocket launcher not the AAFES snack bar sandwich) as the Dumbest Things Infantrymen Played With...
Actually this scene, despite it being a comedy, and the producers not receiving any assistance from the DoD for obvious reasons nonetheless came VERY close to describing the actual process. Whoever their technical adviser was had been a player at some point.
BTW, anyone notice that they are so engrossed in the EAM that no one is actually flying the airplane? My favorite part of the scene.
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