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Posted on 11/14/2003 3:30:02 AM PST by snippy_about_it
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 are acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated.
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| Our Mission: The FReeper Foxhole is dedicated to Veterans of our Nation's military forces and to others who are affected in their relationships with Veterans. In the FReeper Foxhole, Veterans or their family members should feel free to address their specific circumstances or whatever issues concern them in an atmosphere of peace, understanding, brotherhood and support. The FReeper Foxhole hopes to share with it's readers an open forum where we can learn about and discuss military history, military news and other topics of concern or interest to our readers be they Veteran's, Current Duty or anyone interested in what we have to offer. If the Foxhole makes someone appreciate, even a little, what others have sacrificed for us, then it has accomplished one of it's missions. We hope the Foxhole in some small way helps us to remember and honor those who came before us.
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 A Brief History - Quartermasters While religious wars ravaged the European continent in the 1600s, some intrepid souls experimented with gliders. Much like the legendary Icarus, these usually met with an unkind fate. A little later, around the time of our American Revolution, some french inventors had better luck getting off the ground in hot air balloons. Ben Franklin marveled at this wonder of the age. Ever the visionary, he predicted that one day military troops would be launched into battle from the air. With the advent of balloons came the first practical parachutes. As early as 1802, one balloonist used a parachute to jump from a height of 8,000 feet. He was a bit shook up, but survived. In 1808, a Polish aeronaut likewise used a parachute to escape a burning balloon, and he too landed safely. The french made effective use of observation balloons against the Austrians during the Napoleonic wars, and the Union Army did likewise on this side of the Atlantic during the American Civil War. For the most part though, both balloons and parachutes in the 19th Century remained an oddity, more of a circus-like attraction than a realistic and dependable mode of transportation. Then came the airplane, and everything changed. The first successful parachute jump from an airplane purportedly occurred in St. Louis, MO, in 1912. Four years later a pilot was said to have jumped safely from a burning plane on the Russian front in World War I. Both parachutists and supplies were dropped at disaster scenes in the US during the 1920s and 1930s. In the mid-1930s, the Russians pioneered large-scale airborne and air-supply operations, while the Italian army used airdrop procedures in its campaign against the Ethiopians. The Germans used mass airborne troops to support the invasion of Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg and dropped upwards of 35,000 airborne troops on the isle of Crete. A School Is Born. After seeing what others had accomplished in the interwar years, the US War Department finally followed suit with the creation of an Airborne Infantry "Test Platoon" at Fort Benning, GA, in late June 1940. That group initially consisted of only 2 officers and 48 enlisted soldiers, all fit and highly enthusiastic volunteers drawn from the 29th Infantry. After some general instruction and a week’s training on privately owned 250-foot towers in Highstown, NJ, they returned to Fort Benning for the real thing. Accordingly, it was later written that: The first jump from a plane in flight was made by members of the Test Platoon from a Douglas B-18, over Lawson Field, August 16, 1940. A lottery was formed to see which one of the enlisted men would have the honor to follow Lt. [later Colonel William T.] Ryder out of the plane door. The drawing was won by Pvt. [later Staff Sergeant] Joseph King, who thereby became the first enlisted man to make an official jump as a Paratrooper in the United States Army. The Army’s paratrooper movement quickly gained momentum in the months leading up to Pearl Harbor. By July 1941 two new Parachute Battalions – the 501st and 502d – had come into being, and a small fleet of B-18s and C-39s became available for training. Another training site was also established in Alabama. So much progress had been made in such a relatively short time that the War Department saw fit to establish a unified airborne training command. Thus was born, at Fort Benning, on May 15, 1942, the first Parachute School.
World War II ‘Bundles from the Sky.’ In the beginning all paratroopers packed and maintained their own parachutes. But with the rapid expansion of airborne units (to include five new Airborne divisions during the course of the war) a new parachute packing and maintenance course of instruction opened at Fort Benning to train qualified specialists for this vital task. It is not known for certain when the first appreciable amounts of supplies got tossed from US aircraft to needy troops on the ground. But certainly by the summer of 1942 "supply by air" had become fairly commonplace in the Pacific Theater, especially in Burma and parts of western and central China. Two Quartermaster Truck Companies (the 3340th and 3841st, both made up almost entirely of African-American soldiers) took up early residence in northern India and, after the briefest of instruction, joined a growing caravan of cargo planes shuttling supplies "over the hump" to Allied troops in Burma. They dropped everything from blood plasma, clothes, medical supplies, fresh meats (and even eggs), to truck parts, ammunition, petroleum, and the first 75mm pack howitzers – usually with very few losses. Since so little doctrine existed, these early pioneers had to rely almost exclusively on hands-on experience – learning by doing through constant experimentation, improvisation, and a hefty use of field expedients – to get the job done. Eventually they learned through trial and error such things as which parachutes worked best, how to build containers from local materials, effective packing techniques, and how to properly "kick" cargo out the airplane door in a safe and effective manner. Lacking any book to go by, they proved wildly adept at writing their own as the war progressed. A similar story played out in the Mediterranean and European theaters of operation. In the winter of 1943, General Mark Clark’s Fifth Army Quartermasters attached "belly tanks" full of food and clothing to the bomb racks of A-36 bombers and successfully dropped them to stranded American units around Monte Cassino. In June 1944, in the week immediately following the Normandy Landings, more than 96 tons of supplies were airdropped to members of the 82d and 101st Airborne Divisions working to break out of the hedgerows just beyond the beaches. When General Anthony C. McAuliffe’s 101st Airborne Division found themselves cut off and surrounded by German Panzer units during the Battle of the Bulge two days before Christmas 1944, "flying Quartermasters" again came to the rescue. In all, 962 C-47s dropped more than 850 tons of ordnance, medical and food supplies, and other vital equipment to the besieged element – and did so with about 95 percent accuracy.
World War II thus demonstrated for all time the importance of a strong air force for safeguarding national interests. Time and again throughout the war, strategic bombing, tactical air support and wholesale use of paratrooper units proved to be key elements on the road to victory. As did the timely use of supply by air. Such a realization led to the postwar creation, in 1947, of the United States Air Force. A New Quartermaster Mission. With the now complete separation of Army and Air Force, the question emerged: which service branch should take over primary ownership of the still-evolving rigger mission? A mission that included parachute packing, maintenance and equipment repair, along with training, research and doctrine development. The issue was settled early in 1950 with a high-level Ad Hoc Committee, which heard testimony from such noted airborne pioneers as generals Matthew B. Ridgeway and James M. Gaven. They and the Committee as a whole ultimately recommended that this new mission be assigned to the Quartermaster Corps. In General Gavin’s view: If the Quartermaster goes into the business I think it should be with all the energy and enthusiasm and imagination it can summon, and with the money to do what is needed. Adding that, We have been living on a shoestring by depending upon the Air Force too long. Within months the Army General Staff approved plans for the establishment of an aerial delivery training department at the Quartermaster School at Fort Lee, VA. The new airborne program got off to a flying start with the opening of the first 12-week Parachute Packing, Maintenance, and Aerial Delivery Course at Fort Lee on May 21, 1951. The Quartermaster General, Major General Herman Feldman, gave a brief address at the opening ceremony. A few minutes later, 4 officers and 55 enlisted soldiers began training. All were required to be jump qualified and in excellent physical condition. Over the course of the next two years, as more and more students graduated from the rigger course, several new Quartermaster Aerial Supply, Parachute Maintenance, and Air Equipment Repair companies came into being. In the meantime, the outbreak of war and continuing operations on the Korean peninsula heightened the need for "logistics by parachute."
Aerial Resupply Coming of Age. The Korean War marked a clear turning point in the ongoing development of supply by air methods and procedures. The harsh weather and terrain, and poorly developed transportation network, made overland logistics in many key instances next to impossible, especially in the early days of the war when the situation was at its most fluid. The first Quartermaster aerial delivery unit to arrive on the scene was the 2348th Airborne Air Supply and Packaging Company (later redesignated the 8081st Quartermaster Company). Rushed to Japan the first week of September 1950, the 8081st quickly moved on to Kimpo Airfield in Korea where they set up shop – and commenced to make history.
In late October 1950, several members of the 8081st joined with the 187th Airborne Regimental Combat Team (RCT) in the first combat jump into the Sunchon area of North Korea, in an effort to cut off the retreating Communist forces. In the months following, the 8081st packed and supervised the dropping of unprecedented levels of supplies to US and United Nations troops fighting throughout the peninsula. By the time the armistice had been signed, this courageous and resourceful and hardworking unit had airdropped no less than 12,000 tons of supplies of every make and variety – including jeeps, trucks and large-scale howitzers. In perhaps the most notable instance of all, they successfully dropped a 40,000-pound M-2 treadway bridge to members of the 7th Infantry Division and 1st Marine Division who had gotten cut off near the Chosin Reservoir and were on the verge of annihilation. Captain William J. Dawson Jr., a former Commander of the 8081st, described in vivid detail just how perilous a run could be: On my last flight there were six planes in the flight and the drop was on the front line. To hit the DZ [drop zone], he recalled, we had to cross into enemy territory after the drop. The lead pilot did not give the signal to drop. Maybe the DZ wasn’t marked, because the other pilots followed his lead. We moved over enemy territory going 110 miles per hour at 800 feet. Enemy small arms cut up to thirty holes in each plane. In my plane, the Plexiglas windshield was shattered and both pilots were seriously cut in the face. The sergeant with me was wounded, and only the chute he wore saved his life. One other dropmaster was injured. In spite of the fire and their wounds, the pilots turned, made another sweep over the DZ, dropped their cargoes, went again over the enemy, and flew back to Japan. When we reached Ashiya Air Base, all the emergency crews and ambulances were waiting. I felt as though we had returned from a bombing mission.
In the Sky Over Vietnam. During the much longer war in Southeast Asia (in the 1960s and early 1970s) the widespread use of helicopters, for both troop and supply transport, largely supplanted the need for massive airdrops. Only in dire emergencies, during siege operations in particular when no other means of logistics support were readily available, did mass rigging come into play. Thus, relatively few Quartermaster aerial delivery units deployed to Vietnam. Among those that did, none exceeded the performance of the 109th Quartermaster Company. Arriving in September 1966 and headquartered at Cam Ranh Bay, the 109th with its supporting detachments soon had the capacity to rig over 250 short tons of supplies daily. In April 1967, during Operation Junction City,a joint operation conducted in Tay Ninh province along the Cambodian border, the 109th delivered 503 short tons, the largest 24-hour airdrop up to that time. Later that year they began experimenting with the Low Altitude Parachute Extraction System, or LAPES technique, that entailed palleted and parachuted cargo exiting the back of the plane as it flew in just feet above the runway.
In September 1967, during the Siege of Khe Sanh, the 109th used LAPES to airdrop some 567 short tons of construction material to the Marines as they undertook a fierce pounding from the estimated 20,000 North Vietnamese regulars who had them completely surrounded and in their cross-hairs. The 109th went on to deliver more than 8,000 tons of supplies of all classes during the 78-day emergency period. Their duties during that period were among the most dangerous in all of Vietnam. One of the 109th riggers, SPC 4 Charles L. Baney, died aboard a C-130 that crashed just outside Khe Sanh on October 15, 1967. Support for Contingency Operations.Aerial delivery of supplies has continued to play a key role in the logistical support of US and Allied military operations around the world over the past two decades. From Grenada to Afghanistan, riggers have seen to it that all personnel parachutes have been properly packed, equipment maintained and cargoes rigged – all ready to go on short notice, to meet the ever-growing needs of an instantly deployable, global force. During Operation Just Cause (December 1989) riggers supported the 82d Airborne Division in a brigade-size, night assault on Panama City. They followed up with a heavy drop that included M551 Sheridans, howitzers, HMMWVs (High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles), and assorted engineer equipment. Two years later, in the wake of the Persian Gulf War, the 5th Quartermaster Detachment moved from Germany to Turkey to engage in a massive and prolonged humanitarian aid campaign to airdrop life-sustaining food, shelter and medical supplies to Kurdish refugees trapped in the hills of northern Iraq. A french doctor reported on the emotional impact of seeing supplies fall from the sky during Operation Provide Comfort: . . . Suddenly, a series of large objects dropped from the plane’s tail section. The fearful Kurds were astounded when gigantic white parachutes blossomed and bundles of food floated to the earth. The hungry people mobbed the drop zone and each scrambled to capture one of the small brown plastic MRE packets. Despite the confusion on the ground, the lack of a distribution system, and poor understanding about proper use of MRE rations, the Kurds in the camp realized that someone was helping them. Quartermaster riggers came to the rescue of yet another oppressed and needy group of refugees in Bosnia-Herzegovina (a portion of the former Yugoslavia) during the mid-1990s Balkan War. Operation Provide Promise, as it turned out, lasted 2 1/2 years, from February 1993 to the end of 1995, and proved to be the largest sustained airdrop operation since World War II. Even as this brief history is being written, aerial delivery specialists in Afghanistan and elsewhere continue writing separate chapters in the Quartermaster Book of Achievements, as they add new voice to the meaning of Supporting Victory. AIR FORCE........COAST GUARD |
Field Services
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A Common Enemy. As long as soldiers are required to put feet on the ground . . . in the muck and mud, and whatever else Mother Nature throws their way, they must inevitably be concerned with the harmful effects of the elements, as well as the known enemy. For the sad truth is that throughout almost the whole of military history, poor hygiene, overall uncleanliness and the rampant nature of disease-bearing vermin have done more to foster death in war than have all the bullets, missiles, and other harmful weapons mankind has seen fit to devise.
It was the same for Caesar and Napoleon, as it was for Grant and Lee. Troops in camp and on the march suffered from gross inability to take frequent baths or to have their uniforms laundered. If they were lucky, so-called "camp followers" were permitted to accompany the army along the route of march to furnish what we today see as necessary combat service support (CSS). Usually they were not so fortunate. The standard approach before the 20th Century was for each soldier to take care of himself.
Without laundry and bath support during the Civil War, for instance, it was alleged that you could sometimes smell an army well in advance of its actual arrival. Moreover, as clothes went unwashed for weeks, even months on end, they simply rotted on the soldiers’ backs. Before which time countless others were reduced to scratching and slapping at what they commonly called "graybacks," or what generations since have termed "cooties." Lice infestation. Lacking proper field sanitation, troops quickly spread lice from one soldier to another.
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Advances in Two World Wars. In World War I it was estimated that as much as 90 percent of the doughboys on the Western Front suffered from body lice. For most of the war, fixed laundry and deloucing facilities remained several miles behind frontline trenches. As time progressed, the Quartermaster Corps set up large horse-drawn and steam-powered, semi-mobile "deloucing mills" at various ports of embarkation. (Any closer and they became likely targets for German artillery.) Their efforts were not without positive results. By the time of the Armistice, the overall incidence of "cooties" was reduced to a mere fraction of what it had been at the outset. The situation grew ripe for more improvements in the interwar period.
The Quartermaster Corps procured, tested and assisted in the development of semitrailer-mounted mobile laundry units on the eve of World War II. For the first time in modern warfare, equipment-laden mobile units and technically trained specialists could accompany combat units during an active campaign. They did so in every theater. Though plagued by shortages of repair parts, routine maintenance snafus, and unbelievably long lines of communications (especially in the far-flung Pacific Theater), these newly formed laundry, bath and fumigation units amassed an enviable record of support. They washed and returned to service millions of tons of clothing, afforded baths to soldiers on a scale that would not have been thought imaginable just a few short years before.
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The Last Half Century. During the Korean War, Quartermaster laundry and bath specialists joined with other service units, such as Reclamation and Maintenance Companies and Office Machine Repair Detachments, to set up highly effective Quartermaster Service Centers within a decent proximity of frontline troops. One such unit averaged 13,617 pounds of wash daily during a 19-week cycle, for a total of nearly two million pounds of laundry. At the same time, these Quartermasters afforded baths to nearly 1 1/2 million grubby (yet appreciative) GIs.
The service center/clothing exchange and bath concept used in Korea carried over into the war in South Vietnam in the decade that followed. Some 50 World War II vintage laundry units arrived in-country as part of the massive American buildup in 1965. The next year saw a steady infusion of the New Standard-A washing machines, dual-mounted on self-contained trailers. By 1968 more than 150 of the old and new machines together were operating at full capacity throughout the country – turning out nearly four millions pounds of clean laundry each month. Yet, the ever-growing demand for field service support so exceeded the ability to respond, that major reliance had to be placed on local labor and the Army/Air Force Exchange System (AAFES) to address the needs.
A mere decade ago saw the new M-81 laundry units replacing earlier models as America’s Army moved to confront Iraqi forces during the Persian Gulf War. Now another generation of new equipment – the Laundry Advanced System (LADS) – is being fielded to help meet the age-old need for cleanliness in an army increasingly geared up for whatever challenges the 21st Century might hold.
I really like that...above all else, it is our history and how we respect it that shapes our future.
Ft. Huachuca is a balmy 54oF. right now with 100% humidity. But it was cold yesterday, so now we have a dense fog warning until 1000 am MST
Areas of dense fog will continue to develop across western Cochise County...mainly west of Highway 80 through daybreak. Visibilities below a quarter mile are possible at times due to the dense fog. Motorists should exercise extreme caution and be prepared for quick reductions to visibility. Elsewhere...isolated light rain showers will drop a few hundredths of an inch of rain across far southeast Cochise County between 5:00 and 8:00 am.
Snippy, are you back up to speed this morning? I ordered a different, DSL home hookup yesterday in hopes of getting connection speeds that's faster than my five-year old dialup modem :)
A LAPES delivery is an impressive thing to watch.
Here's a rundown of Wednesday's weird weather day here in MN.
8am - Sunny with dark clouds in the north
10am - raining hard
12 noon - snowing EXTREMELY HARD (like a blizzard)
1pm - heavy clouds no precip.
2:30 - cloudless skies w/ Bright sun.
Today, it was sunny at 8am, and now its totally cloudy. (go figure) 
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