Share Your Cold War Memories

[Fjordforder]

Here`s another story from the American side of the family:

To fully understand the shenanigans my grandfather used to get into, you should first understand that he`s been blind in his left eye since 1943. He and his best friend were having a rock fight (Great depression era fun) when he turned his head at the wrong time and got nailed. Anyways, he went to join the US Navy in 1949 or so and was accepted. He was in the navy, officially for about 5 minutes before it came to light he was blind in his left eye. "Nobody ever asked." he says. So after getting an honorable discharge he said "Screw you guys" and walked across the street to the USAF recruiting office and applied. So he joins the AF to spite the Navy guys across the road and is accepted. During the physical the doc tells him to cover an eye and read the sign, and when he`s told to cover the other eye he just dropped his arm and raised it, covering the same eye. Doc didn`t notice.

Welcome to the USAF! While gas training, his unit was put into the chamber and over the intercom he was told "When you smell something weird, get your mask on as fast as you can!" So after a few minutes his unit is either coughing and crying or already in their masks while he stood around wondering what was going on. The voice on the intercom yells "Private Moore! Get your damn mask on!" "But sir! I don`t smell anything!" And that was how he learned he had a sinus infection.

He was then sent to Tripoli to work Pararescue and it was there he learned that tools aren`t safe if left on the tarmac in the heat of the Libyan summer. He claims that hand tools would heat up so much as to get stuck to the pavement. Eventually he learned in 1952 that his girlfriend (my grandmother) was getting hit on by some other guys so he did everything he could to get home and marry her. And yes, that is the same guy I have a photo of in the "Shooting Pictures" thread.

 

[WAYNO]

Remember this? Sent as a NRA fundraiser gift.



WAYNO.

 

[Ura-Ki]

I can think of a few times we and the Russians were Darn close to ending it all in one massive party of destruction. Cuba was a pretty close call, the Missing bomb from the B52 crash in the Med, and a few others that are still "classified" I;m just glad it hasn't happend YET!!!

 

[dude23]

View attachment 316265

Fearless leader vill be pleased.

 

[dude23]

I remember Disney's "Duck And Cover" film in the classroom and the "Conelrad" (later Emergency Broadcast System) alerts. The Cuban Missile Crisis of '62. We were children and remember the fear and hatred of/for the Communists. This lasted all the way through High School (Corvallis High School, Class of '73, rah)! I still distrust the Communists/Socialists... including those running the government.

Still showed it in our 4th grade class in 1987.

 

[Brutus57]

All Governments use patriotism against citizens as a weapon of control.
Who funded the Bolshevik revolution and started this whole us against them BS in the first place.

You should read Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago books. A lot different than the US prison system. Just one example, Stalin's purge of the Red Army officer corps...and many other including killing scores of US airmen during the Cold War.

Brutus Out

 

[dude23]

On September 26th 1983 the Soviets were within a minute of launching a nuclear attack. The world almost ended that day. It wasn't the only time...

False Alarms in the Nuclear Age — NOVA | PBS

Probably why any time either side claims they're just performing standard drills and exercises no one believes the other side.

It's always 60 seconds til midnight in some bubblegums wet dream.

 

[dude23]

You should read Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago books. A lot different than the US prison system. Just one example, Stalin's purge of the Red Army officer corps...and many other including killing scores of US airmen during the Cold War.

Brutus Out

I know it's not popular opinion but it is possible you're both right.

Most people of a nation aren't their ruling class, and all nations engage in lies or obfuscation for propaganda to condition the people to distrust outsiders and hate sworn enemies of the state. This has changed slightly in recent decades with globalism, but the basic premise still holds true, only the party ideology has changed.

Most in enforcement positions will claim "just following orders", it was true with Nazis and Communists and it's true with Americans. Those who've been totally brainwashed into believing party rhetoric will go to the grave defending atrocities in the name of the party, leader or state as though it was divine provenance spoken from god's own lips.

Banding together to fight evil is a noble cause, but beware the hero who has unknowingly turned into the villain during his crusade. Or more accurately, the hero that was lied to in the name of propping up bankrupt nations and taught to fight for control of resources for corporate profit.

 

[clearconscience]

This always interested me, I would love to spend time visiting old military sites, missile silos, and such.
I was a child of the 80s so not any memories here, but my dad has photos from the room he was staying in in Korea during the cold war with the parades marching huge missiles down the roads.


Buried treasures

 

[Sgt Nambu]

This was my grandfathers, they lived on they're dairy farm about five miles south of Canby OR.

 

[HuckleberryFun]

You should read Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago books. A lot different than the US prison system. Just one example, Stalin's purge of the Red Army officer corps...and many other including killing scores of US airmen during the Cold War.

Brutus Out

I read all three 1000+ page volumes when I was in high school.
Since I had relatives that suffered and died under both Hitler and Stalin I considered it my duty to know about both.
I was one gloomy kid for a while. Dark stuff.

 

[Fjordforder]

bubblegumes ain`t bubblegum

 

[ZigZagZeke]

setting some where we werent suppose to be on a sonar stack and picking up a delta3 class boomer coming out of port being deloused by a Victor 3
Knowing very well how much trouble we would be in if they knew we were there. Several decades ago. Read Blind mans bluff.

Yes, read "Blind Man's Bluff". I was stationed at Subase Pearl in 1968-1971. I was in charge of the cal lab in the Advanced Underseas Weapons Shop. Our fast attacks regularly played chicken with the Russians hanging out in the transit lanes leading into and out of Pearl. We loaded war shot Mark 37's (anti-sub torpedoes) on our fast attacks that were sometimes not returned to us. I was once aboard the Grayback, a diesel fast attack that was used as a spy vessel (see "Blind Man's Bluff"). The official story of its mission reads like this:

"GRAYBACK's second life began just a few years later when the Navy determined that there was a need for a submarine personnel carrier. So back to Mare Island GRAYBACK went. Workers there lengthened her sail, added two auxiliary tanks (and 12 feet of length) to the forward end of her engine room, and converted her missile hangars into space for 60 troops and several SEAL Swimmer Delivery Vehicles, as well as a decompression chamber."



In reality, those pods on the foredeck were used to deliver listening devices which were laid next to underseas communications cables between USSR bases. In the picture above, Grayback is being scuttled at the end of its useful life, for obvious reasons.

 

[clearconscience]

Anyone remember this guy? I wish I was his friend!
Brought down for forgetting to pay his bill.

Man sentenced for arsenal found in Bellevue storage locker

 

[clearconscience]

Or this gem, which conspiracy theorist still refer to today (9/11)

Operation Northwoods - Wikipedia

 

[ZigZagZeke]

It was 1970 and I had just seen MASH (the movie) when I pulled a duty day on a Saturday at the AUW shop in Pearl. That day was the advancement party for our CO at the shop. He had been a WO-4, and was being advanced to Ensign. He was being rewarded for OUR excellent performance. We had regularly pulled 48 hour work days to advance his record of excellence as a CO. So naturally, all the officers around the base were invited to the party, but not us enlisted folks.

Being the E-5 in charge of the part of the shop where the FM radio was connected to the shop sound system, I was tasked with providing appropriate music for the party I could observe, but couldn't attend. I chose an easy listening station out of Honolulu and connected it to the PA system. It sounded a lot like the PA system in the movie. It wasn't long before the CO arrived in my cal lab and requested some livelier music. Something more modern. This was like rubbing salt in the wound.

Having absorbed the movie's example of how to deal passive aggressively with officers, I switched the station to the local FM acid rock station, KPOI, which was playing some fantastic Santana at the time. I then called up the DJ and requested Jimi Hendrix's version of the Star Spangled Banner. I then sat back and waited. When my request hit the airwaves and reverberated throughout the shop, the officers in attendance didn't know whether to salute or go blind. It was hysterical. I soon got a new request to find something more appropriate.

 

[Jim Colvill]

Great story 3Z.
I had a Mess Sgt who was a master of PA. On one occasion, while at Graf, the battalion S2 sent a message that we were to act as if we were under a NBC attack and follow SOP "to the letter". The tanks were on the ranges and we were back in the mess hall cooking up a 15 gallon pot of shrimp creole. When Sgt.Z got the message he bellowed out "All dat food you is cooking (he was a ragin'Cajun) is contaminated; throw it out but keep some for ourselves." So, for the next two hours we wore gas masks and played cribbage. When the tankers came in expecting hot chow they were aghast all we gave them was C rats. Next time S2 tried that game it was "everyone EXCEPT the Mess Section had to follow NBC protocol.

 

[Who The F R U]

Anyone remember this guy? I wish I was his friend!
Brought down for forgetting to pay his bill.

Man sentenced for arsenal found in Bellevue storage locker

Moral of the story is to pay your bill's....

 

[PiratePast40]

Had the opportunity to take a few weeks leave while in the Med in the mid 70's. A friend and I spent some time in Italy and then went to Germany. Went to the Dachau concentration camp and saw some pretty horrific things. Put a hard dose of reality on us. We were able to take the Army train from Frankfort to visit my cousin in East Berlin. Actually went to checkpoint charlie and it dawned on us that this stuff was real. The images from Life magazine were real life all of a sudden and we were there. A couple of Army guys told us we stuck out like a couple of sore thumbs and would be best served by sticking with them and not out in the general population.

As submariners, we were spared the personal horrors of war, and I have a tremendous amount of respect for those that did. Seeing what happened in WWII to Germany, and the situation at the time was very sobering. Trailing Ivan from Murmansk to the southern tip of Africa, and points in between wasn't a game any more.

At the time, we knew nothing about a family of spies in the submarine community. Now that it's public, wish the ba$tards would have been put up against a wall and faced a firing squad instead of being allowed to live in prison.

 

[PaulB47]

During the Cuban Missile Crisis I remember standing out in the school yard, looking up at the sky, wondering if I would see the missile coming down before it obliterated me and everything else.