Welcome Home
Posted on 05/19/2005 11:10:52 PM PDT by snippy_about_it
Good morning EGC.
Morning alfa6.
Howdy ma'am
Good morning Mayor.
This seems such a shame.
LOL. Good afternoon feather.
The invasion came real close to failing, a mistake by the defenders at Melame turned the tide.
I wonder if the NZ's are including losses from the naval invasion too.
During the night of 20-21 May a British light naval force broke through the German aerial blockade and searched the waters north of Crete. Admiral Schuster thereupon decided to call back to Milos the first naval convoy, which was approaching Crete under escort of an Italian destroyer. At dawn on 21 May German planes sighted the British ships and subjected them to heavy air attacks. One destroyer was sunk and two cruisers damaged. At 0900 the waters north of Crete were cleared of enemy ships and the convoy was ordered to continue its voyage in the direction of Maleme. During the day German dive bombers based on Skarpanto and Italian planes flying from Rhodes scored several hits on British ships returning to Crete waters, thereby preventing them from intercepting the Axis convoy. The German troops on the island were anxiously awaiting the arrival of artillery, antitank guns, and supplies, but poor weather conditions so delayed the convoy that it could not reach the island before darkness.
When it finally came around Cape Spatha at 2300, the convoy was suddenly confronted by a British naval task force which was on the way to Suda Bay to land reinforcements and supplies. The British immobilized the Italian escort vessel and sank most of the motor sailers and freighters. Many German soldiers, most of them mountain troops, were drowned. The majority of the shipwrecked, however, were picked up by sea rescue planes. The second convoy, which had meanwhile reached Milos, was recalled to Piraeus to save it from a similar fate. No further seaborne landings were attempted until the fate of Crete had been decided.
Good afternoon PE.
OCTOBER 02, 2000 (COMPUTERWORLD) - HONOLULU -- On Oct. 27, Air Force helicopter pilot 2nd Lt. Richard Vandegeer - the last name on the Vietnam Memorial in Washington - will be buried in a solemn, private ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery, capping a decade-long recovery and identification operation by the Army Central Identification Laboratory, based here.
The identification by the lab, known as CILHI, took four years and the use of "the most cutting-edge technologies available" to sort Vandegeer's remains from those of the others killed in the crash that took his life, said John Byrd, a CILHI staff anthropologist. His work on the case included supervising archaeological digs on Koh Tang Island, Cambodia, where Vandegeer's helicopter crashed on May 15, 1975, in the last combat action of the Vietnam War.
In fact, from the Global Positioning System-based receivers and laser transits used to locate the aircraft to the radio e-mail systems accessed by search teams in remote areas, technology was a big part of the recovery operation. And it will remain so, as the lab continues to handle search-and-identification operations for soldiers of the Vietnam and Korean wars, and even those of World War II.
"Any veteran would appreciate knowing that our country would care enough to come looking and remove us from a mudhole and bring what was left back home," said Warner Britton, a retired Air Force pilot who flew helicopters similar to Vandegeer's in Vietnam. "But more important, the program gives some hope to families who lost these men."
Byrd said the seven water and land recovery operations on Koh Tang for remains from Vandegeer's helicopter started in 1991 and yielded a large number of "commingled" remains. Besides Vandegeer's remains, CILHI recovered what it believed to be remains from 10 Marine infantrymen and two Navy corpsmen from the 2nd Battalion, 9th Marine Regiment, on board Vandegeer's helicopter, known as Knife 31.
The number of personnel involved in the crash, as well as the large number of bone fragments, "presented a challenge to the science. . . . The more remains you have at a site, the difficulty goes up dramatically," Byrd said. Six Marines have also since been identified, and identifications of the two Navy corpsmen are pending.
Privacy statutes preclude Byrd from discussing individuals, but sources outside the U.S. Department of Defense confirmed the identification of Vandegeer and his burial date.
The lab tapped into the smarts of a forensic computer program developed at the University of Tennessee, called ForDisc, which automates the process of matching skeletal remains, Byrd said. ForDisc is based on an extensive skeletal database that comprises samples of racial and body types found throughout the population, Byrd said, and allows scientists from CILHI to quickly determine the probability of whether a femur of a certain length matches a tibia of a certain length, for example. Recent new methodology extends that capability to bone fragments as well.
This is a key piece of software, because the CILHI scientists work "blind" when they begin analysis of skeletal remains, with no prior knowledge of the physical characteristics or even the number of individuals involved in an incident, according to a command briefing. It's also more useful than DNA in cases where the number of individuals involved raises the possibility that the same base pair sequence will show up in more than one set of remains, Byrd said.
But ultimately, it is often dental records that affirmatively identify remains. "The anatomy of teeth, cavity patterns, restorations and extractions can lead to the identification of an individual," much like fingerprints can, said Army Lt. Col. Cal Shiroma, a CILHI forensic odontologist.
CILHI maintains an extensive dental database, called the Computer Assisted Post Mortem Identification system, which contains the dental records of all U.S. personnel missing in Asia. Shiroma can scan in as many as 30 X rays of a recovered tooth and use the database's search engine to generate candidates for a match. A computerized dental radiography system then fine-tunes that match, Shiroma said.
Vandegeer's remains were first identified in 1995, and the process was completed last November. Independent authorities then spent nearly one year confirming those results, sources said.
CILHI's computer and communications support is provided by Resource Consultants Inc. in Waipahu, Hawaii. The records of the missing servicemen from three wars, as well as data related to recovery operations such as maps, aerial photographs and scientists' field notes, currently occupy 30GB of storage space, on-site consultant Gary Stephens said.
A gradual thaw in U.S. relations with North Korea has resulted in an increase in recovery missions in that country, said Stephens, and the command has started a crash imaging project to scan into a database literally millions of pages from the records of the Korean War MIAs, a project that in its infancy has already consumed 39GB of storage space.
"I believe what we do here is meaningful to the American people, especially the families [of the men missing in action]," Byrd said.
Dan Verton also contributed to this story. Brewin, Computerworld's wireless and mobile reporter, landed in Danang, Vietnam, with the 2nd Battalion, 9th Marine Regiment, on July 4, 1965.
The Mayaguez Incident would not have occurred without the treasonous actions of John Kerry which dissolved domestic political will and negated our military victory.
The early English practice of townspeople tearing traitors apart limb from limb would not be cruel and unusual punishment considering the tens of thousands of innocents slaughtered as a direct consequence of his actions.
After a trial, of course, and only if this maggot crawls out into the sunshine again in 2008.
The Last Battle
John LeBoutillier
Wednesday, Aug. 8, 2001What do you think of White House staffers delaying presidential orders - without the president knowing it? And what if that decision resulted in the death of U.S. Marines?
What if the president then asked that staffer what happened - and the staffer lied or omitted the truth?
And what if Congress or the General Accounting Office was lied to by the White House? What if crucial documents were suddenly "missing" or not made available?
And what if, along with dead Marines, several other Marines were knowingly abandoned alive and were then captured by an enemy of the United States, held prisoner and then executed?
What if the Pentagon deliberately hid this fact from the Congress, the American people and the media?
And what if the White House deliberately hid the number of Marine casualties to make things look better?
What if the White House - facing a tough re-election battle one year later - wanted to create a great victory for the president so the truth was "changed" to make this victory look better than it really was?
All of this - disgraceful and even criminal behavior - is the truth of the now-famous Mayaguez Incident from May 1975. And it is all detailed in the summer's best nonfiction book, "The Last Battle: The Mayaguez Incident and the End of the Vietnam War," by Ralph Wetterhahn.
This past June 22, I attended the annual meeting of the National Alliance of Families of Missing in Action and POWs from World War II, Korean War, Cold War, Vietnam and the Gulf War.
As I walked into the hotel restaurant with several family members from the Vietnam War, I was introduced to two gentlemen - Mr. Wetterhahn and Philip Turner, the editor of the book. They had just told the story of the book to this convention. I began talking to Mr. Turner, and he soon sent me a copy of this fantastic book.
As a longtime POW advocate I am rarely shocked by anything - especially when it comes to government perfidy or Henry Kissinger's massive ego.
But even the new facts uncovered in this book have shocked - and saddened - me.
Mr. Wetterhahn had to fight against his own government to even get the records and files needed to write this book!
And while he was at it, the so-called mainstream media - i.e. Washington Post, New York Times, Time, Newsweek etc. - refused to pay him for his research on this historic last American combat incident in Indochina. But he and his wife went heavily into debt - all to expose the truth that our own White House denied.
And it is an ugly story. Kissinger, as usual, is right smack dab in the middle of the White House intrigue. Other familiar figures are also involved - Don Rumsfeld was White House chief of staff - Brent Scowcroft and Robert Macfarlane were Kissinger deputies.
President Ford, less than a year in the job, was lied to by Kissinger and treated badly by Defense Secretary Schlessinger - who later resigned ostensibly because of his lousy performance in this crisis.
The CIA provided outdated and sloppy intelligence. So what else is new?
And what of the three Marines abandoned on an island off Cambodia?
Ralph Wetterhahn has gone back and actually found the Cambodian soldiers who captured and guarded these three brave and heroic Marines.
What a book! What a story!
If there is only one book you read this summer, it should be "The Last Battle."
1946 Cher [Cherilyn Sarkisian LaPierre] El Centro CA, rocker/actress (I Got You Babe, Jack Lalane, Mask)
Summer of 66 I took the Dean's daughter to see Sonny & Cher at Indiana Beach. Sonny blew his lines to I Got You Babe. Cher was shapely as a coat tree. One word, Dustin, "Plastics."
Those were the days, I remember them well as if they were only yesterday.
Hi Ya Snippy.. : )
Any new cats at the homestead?
Hiya SAM.
Hope all's well with you these days. :-)
We had one newbie show up about 3 weeks ago; a black and white male. Named him Narvi.
He's a big boy and as sweet as can be.
That makes three new ones already this year. NOT a good sign! LOL!
Morning Phil Dragoo.
Thanks for the lead on the book "The Last Battle"
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