Posted on 07/25/2014 6:33:20 PM PDT by tcrlaf
I don’t recall talking about my experiences in 1970, that is your year that you are trapped in.
I have a pretty good handle on it. The mid 80s, were the glastnost period. Brezhnev died in 82 if I recall..You would have gone on alert for that event. Change of leadership is a big deal in Russia. The new guy is usually a unknown quantity and they don't take any chances. But the concerns expressed by your leadership was only precautionary.
But Gorby took his place. You know....the guy with a map on his head. The smiling joker.
The cold war was so cold it was hard to find. Maybe you should do a little reading.
You are getting more testy as we go here.
You can pull the ejection handle at any time.
YUP....actually, you can take it all the way back to their invasion of Europe and the crusades.
And Mohammed.
Bored, you don’t seem very interested in Russia or the Cold War, except as an excuse to talk about you and your little sliver of it, and your very personal opinions based on you, it is more of medium for you, than it’s own topic.
I can talk about anything you want. I am a student of WWII if you want to go there.
I spoke only about my PERSONAL experience’s in 1970. I thought I was being informative by speaking about what I saw and felt.
But you took offense to that apparently.
I really would much rather have a exchange with someone who actually knew what they were talking about. Your posts are almost incoherent. If one did not know better they would assume you were in Germany doing intelligence work for 20 years.
I think that you just don’t like me. And that’s probably a good thing because I don’t have much use for you either.
LOL, I told you I was alerted in 1973, not 1982.
Brezhnev died and was replaced by Yuri Andropov, after he died, he was replaced by Konstantin Chernenko, when he died by 1985, Reagan had closed the frightening window that those of us in the MI community feared so much, and the soviets faced reality with a mistake called Gorbachev, who's clumsiness didn't find a way to deal with Reagan's surging West, but instead led to the end of the empire.
We are living in "interesting" times as the old Chinese would say.
Field Artillery and nuke clearance? You weren’t with the Pershing brigade, were you?
I was a communications person (SSB radio, then FM retransmission) from 83-85 with the Pershing missile brigade.
The US Army maintained three ‘firing units’ in West Germany, where Pershing missiles stood ready to fire at all times. Those ‘ready-to-go’ missiles were in case of a Soviet ‘BOOB’ (Bolt Out Of the Blue) nuke attack. In case of a possible invasion of Soviet forces, we’d likely have some fore-warning with observations of a buildup of forces, increasing global tensions, that sort of thing. If that was the case, the Pershings were designed to be able to move fast and not sit anywhere too long. If worse came to worse, and the Sovs had our backs against the wall, NATO would have likely popped the missiles and we’d run like Hell in a westerly direction.
(BTW...side note: The original Pershings [1 and 1A] were medium-range missiles that could probably hit the Polish border with Russia. The Sovs weren’t ‘too’ concerned with them. In 83, we fielded the Pershing 2. Improved accuracy, greater range...and could now hit well into western Russia from our German firing sites. THAT got the Soviets attention. It was about the time that the P2’s were deployed when large amounts of money started flowing into the ‘peace groups’ of Germany. Those who didn’t like American nukes [never officially admitted...but hey...everyone knew] in their backyard could now focus more of their time on protesting against us since they now had much more support money. You can bet that our intelligence people traced that money all the way back to 2 Dzerzhinsky Square...KGB headquarters.)
Based on this comment where you represented yourself as still being in country or associated with the military. But like I said, you jump about so much that the train of thought or point you are trying to make gets somewhat incoherent to me.
As for Reagan, lets go there as it applies to Russia.
Regan took office in jan 1981. Brezhnev died in 82 and the Russian economy, such as it was, was already broken. There were food shortages, nothing worked and Gobachev had his hands full. We knew this, so what we did was drive them nuts! But Russia was a basket case in the early 80s. When a country begins to destabilize, just as the US is doing now, it become unpredictable. I believe Reagan and his advisors saw it a opportunity and as a diversion to keep them occupied until everything fell apart internally. Maggie Thatcher also played a big role. Without her, the deception would not have worked. And it was a deception. Were they dangerous at that time? I would say yes, but we played right and the results speak for themselves. I would agree that it was a dicey couple of years, but it was not even close to what it was during the Stalin and Khrushchev era. Not even close. If you want to disagree fine, but you have made no cogent arguments to change my mind or position of this.
No, no Pershings, only field artillery.
It was the Field artillery aspect that impressed me about the clearance, to me 155 was so different than fancy missiles and such.
Pershings we get, but learning there were nukes for 155 freaks out people.
But that is how they feel. They want to feel that greatness that they think they once felt. But during those times they were hungry, cold and wondering where their next meal was coming from.
But they have been conditioned to forget it, and as we know, the human mind does not remember pain very well.
So yes, I think they would like to have some more territory and to regain the old Soviet sphere of influence.
The question on the Ukraine is if they are willing to go all the way, or will they stop, back out of eastern Ukraine and keep what they have occupied.
I think they will. I think recent uptick in activity in the East is but a prelude to making a concession. It makes it look like they are giving up more than they are. But they have what they wanted. They wanted to be able to shut the ports off to the west for security reasons, They wanted to be noticed and feared.
And they got that. Ansel sure is worried. But I did not fall for the deception.
So that, in a nutshell, is why we are at odds and have two different perceptions of the Russian Bear.
We have had nuke howitzers since 1953.
What is the relevance of that.
Are you denying that at some point after 1953 you were surprised to learn about nuclear weapons as small as a little 155 shell?
Why is all this about you and your 1970 youth and vanity and hostility?
The 155 did not get fielded until the 1960s...
Just some data you might be interested in since you were in the artillery.
You related to the photographer Ansel?
You seem a bit sensitive.
I was not hostile to you until you started launching w-88’s at me.
I always respond in kind and generally with a bigger weapon.
Got a question for you...not to say you were wrong or anything, because those years you speak of WERE indeed dangerous.
Have you ever heard of Able Archer ‘83? Many consider that to be the closest the world has come to nuclear war since the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Soviets were so freaked out at Reagan and what they THOUGHT he might do that they were sure something would happen. Andropov was Soviet Premier at the time, and...him being formerly the head of the KGB and all...he was focusing heavily on ANY signs that the West might attack (look up ‘Project RYAN’). This was nothing more than an exercise and it almost resulted in nuclear war.
An apocryphal story from around that time: (This incident happened at a Pershing storage site near the Pershing HQ. I heard about this a few days after it happened.) When the Pershing 2’s first got to the units, the soldiers were training on them to make sure they knew how all the pieces fit. The lieutenant in charge over this one platoon decided to stand a missile up...with NO warhead, just the missile body...to make sure the soldier’s work was done right. Within minutes of the missile being stood up, a frantic call was made to the storage facility from HQ to “get that @#$%^& missile down!”. What happened?
Understand...it was a cloudy, slightly rainy day. HOW they knew a missile was standing, I don’t know...but I heard later that the Soviets along the entire East German border went on high alert within minutes of that missile being erected.
It was widely made known afterwards that you do NOT stand a missile up for any reason without express permission from people WAY high up in the chain of command. I imagine that lieutenant had his butt in a sling for quite a while.
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