The FReeper Foxhole Studies Operation BOLO and the Birth of the Wolf Pack - November 3rd, 2003

www.afa.org ^ | 11/1998 | See Educational Sources

[w_over_w]

Morning Glory Snip & Sam~

Wow . . . this is an unexpected read. These are the guys I grew up around. I had the honor of being a last minute "forth" (through my Dad) and got to play golf at Andrews AFB CC with Gen. Olds. Pure class act! He was also a founding member of the "River Rats" Fighter Pilot Assoc.

[Darksheare]

That last image of the Phantom F-4E dropping bombs.
I have it as a poster.
U.S. Airforce photo taken by TSgt Frank Gargelnick.
Got the poster in my hand at the moment.

[SAMWolf]

Morning Darksheare.

[SAMWolf]

Morning w_over_w.

These are the guys I grew up around

Isn't it great to meet people who took part in things you read about?

[Darksheare]

Morning.
Bouncing about as usual.

[SAMWolf]

The Phantom was a really "cool" looking plane.

[Darksheare]

Yes, it was.
Though I prefer the A-12 'blackbird'.
There's one sitting on the deck of the Intrepid Air Sea & Space museum.
(I got to run my hand on the undersideof the portside wing before they roped it all off.. That plane's skin was amazingly thin, as well as 'springy' to the touch.)

[w_over_w]

Isn't it great to meet people who took part in things you read about?

Priceless . . .

[Valin]

If it was an armed aircraft and on the flightline it was in a priority-A area. and these are restricted areas, a civilian vehicle would have been stopped and detained real fast.

[Darksheare]

Yeah.
Flightlines are pretty secure.
I've seen stupid things as well, so I'm not sure whether or not to believe it.

The one most related to my personal knowledge was the 'lifting' of a Hemmet.
My unit had one for about two weeks before anyone noticed, and a further four days after that before we 'gave' it back.
(Somewhat like 'borrowing' some unit's guidon.)
About a year afterwards, we were asked if we wanted our Hemmet back.
(Our unit was artillery, we didn't use Hemmets.)

*Snort*
So I'm not sure exactly what to trust on this.
But I would suppose that a flightline is eyeballed pretty darn harshly.
Multi-million dollar planes aren't something one wants to mess with.

[Valin]

I've heard some tales and seen some things
At Clark some locals stole a firetruck and drove it right out the maingate with the redlights flashing and sirens wailing.

[U S Army EOD]

This happened in the early mid 60's. Things were kind of slack then. This is before we started having troubles in Europe with people like the Bader/Minehoff gang. Security was lax everywhere. Things tightened up a little bit after incidents like this and the US base bombings started.

I was told this story at the EOD school in 1966, heard it from another source somewhere else, and basically remember reading an article about it somewhere. For some reason it seems the article was in Reader's Digest of all places.

Two other stories, strange but true was the development of the Soviet TU4 which was there exact copy of the B29 right down to the design flaws in the aircraft they copied it from that was inturned in Russia. They could reproduce everything except the tires for the landing gear. They solved this problem by sending agents to the US to buy tires on the war surplus market here to equip their strategic bomber force. The other is how they got the copy of the Rolls Royice jet engine to redesign and put in the Mig 15. They accually won the design from some Rolls Royice executives in a billards game.

By the way, my old memory seems to think the base the missle left from was Ramstien.

[Valin]

I would not have wanted to be anywhere near this (if true) as EVERYONE'S probably got courtmartialed.

I've read that about the Soviet TU4/B29.

[U S Army EOD]

While some friends of mine were down at Redstone Arsenal for their annual ATT in EOD they became bored. They borrowed a maintenance truck, got overalls, and blank work orders. They took all that up to the main gate at RSA where the missles are, made up a work order, told the MP's that they had to paint the missles, but first they had to use "pink paint primer". Then they proceded to paint the missles at the maingate pink right out in front of everybody and left them that way.

When I was a Picatinny Arsenal, we had these guys walk right into the officers club while we were watching a football game on TV in TV repair uniforms, unplug the TV and leave with it. It never dawned on us at the time why anybody would want to repair a working TV. We never found out who did it.

[Darksheare]

That would be like one of my unit's knuckleheads driving the City of Newburgh's cop car around the corner with the lights flashing and leaving it sit.
Right after speaking to said cops about how much he and his buddy liked the car.

The phonecall to the armory office was rather interesting.
They asked us if we had two certain soldiers in our unit, and said name and rank of both.
When we answered in teh affirmative, they then asked us to tell them to return the car.
(Said knuckleheads stated, once they got back to the armory, "The car is just around the corner! What, are they blind?")

Sometimes, I'm glad I'm out of the service.
I don't think I'd take too many more adventures like the above and keep my humor intact.
(Wasn't my responsibility, but it reflected on me since the knuckleheads somewhat belonged to the same gun crew as I.)

After that incident, the statement that was said whenever anything odd or crazy needed to be done was, "Where's my criminals?"

[U S Army EOD]

When I commanded the 8th EOD in Korea, the maintenance warrents use to refer to my unit as "Captain Couth and his gang of cleptomainiac". I would out of decentcy try and return some of the things they stole.

One day they came in with big smiles on their faces because they had procured them a fuze setter for a 155mm nuke round. And the conversation went like this, "Do we have a fuze for a 155mm nuke round we can set? No sir. If we did, do we have a nuke round we could put the fuze in? No sir. If we did, do we have our very on 155mm cannon we could shoot it in? No sir. If we did have a 155mm do you think our truck could pull it okay? No sir, we would have to get a bigger truck. Well? Do you want us to take it back"?

[snippy_about_it]

1992 Bill Clinton elected US President

Forgot the BARF ALERT. ;) I guess I can let you off the hook though, his name is a barf alert.

[snippy_about_it]

Happy Monday

Thank you Mayor. I've been in a four hour Monday meeting.

*ugh*

But it's the thought that counts. ;)

[snippy_about_it]

Thanks for the link.

[snippy_about_it]

Good afternoon, wow, so was he a good golfer?