How about the 25 knot speedboat that Mr. James Kallstrom "morphed" into a "helicopter"! Like, um, why did he do that?
s; For the same reason you 'morphed' the ship into a speedboat probably. The radar couldn't even pick up the 110 foot Adak cutter. How do you expect it to pick up a Cigar? Or is that cigarette? At least you didn't call it a surfaced sub like many. The claim is it was a destroyer fleeing the scene of the crime at flank (30-32 knots) on orders of LANTFLT or higher. That puts the start of the coverup at about 2-3 minutes following shootdown. Perhaps Osmodeus can give us a timeline to the hundredth of a second.
I think I have something on that. I'll look:
"That's how it happened. Someone screwed the pooch big-time at Raytheon and mispackaged a functional 400 Section with fully functional Mark 104 motor as inert. It got mated up to the rest of the missile, stuck in a blue can and shipped to us as a GMTR. It had all the rest of the GMTR hardware, and when it got the usual startup test signals it read back "yup, I'm an inert training weapon, it's safe, give me a full diagnostic including a launch signal..." Automated sequence, takes less than a second from start to finish.
"The CO was on the horn ASAP, of course, to tell LANTFLT what had happened and find out just what the hell we were meant to do. The first order was to get over there and look for survivors, scramble the helo, see if anyone lived through it. We're turning into the wind to get the helo off and hauling it onto the fantail when that gets countermanded and we're given a course out of there at flank speed. I didn't hear who issued that order but it had to be LANTFLT or higher, it was a couple of minutes after we turned to start rescue ops.
"Nobody liked that. But, what the hell could we do? The CO had his orders and he followed them and we were just passengers. We made flank for the best part of two hours, then slowed down and started just cutting circles at twelve knots."
Do you believe that sh*t? I do.
Loose lips sink ships. Better make that sink navy coverups. Thanks to Osmodeus I speak HTML now. Notice? Well, just in black and white so far, but we all have to start somewhere. He's a nice person really. I just don't understand his 'timeline.' I don't think he's a shill for Lee Kriendler, but if he is, Kriendler is really getting ripped off! LOL PS I'd print the whole sailors' story but I'm only authorized to print snippets at a time. Perhaps things will change in a few years. The tip of the iceberg is better'n nothin - but boring. I'm sorry.