Share Your Cold War Memories

[clearconscience]

I remember being pretty young and watching the missiles being fired during the gulf war.
I guess the details and reality of it wasn't getting through my young mind and I was scared to death that war was coming to my doorstep.

 

[PiratePast40]

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."

View attachment 316849

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.

Uhmm.... as far as listening devices and operations in the Sea of Okhotsk, the Halibut may be the boat you're thinking of. I've had a few brews with guys that crewed that boat.

 

[ZigZagZeke]

Uhmm.... as far as listening devices and operations in the Sea of Okhotsk, the Halibut may be the boat you're thinking of. I've had a few brews with guys that crewed that boat.

The Halibut may have performed a similar mission, but I KNOW for sure that the Grayback did. The pods that were installed next to the cables worked by picking up the stray EMF from inadequately shielded cables. And yes, it was tricky stuff getting the job done and not being detected.

 

[HB of CJ]

Just a kid during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Dad and I drove to the local Vons Supermarket. A mad house. Cars colliding in the parking lot. Inside entire aisles stripped bare. Fist fights. Dad and I quickly left.

Lots of bad false rumors. Make up your own. That bad. We packed the 1955 Chevy 2 door 265 and boggied to Grandfathers and Grandmothers mountain cabin. He was retired Navy. Low and behold ...

The huge complete underground bunker opened its doors. We grandkids did not know it existed. We stayed about 2 weeks. Dad did not get fired. Los Angeles was not the place to be. Little did we know then.

Memories and impressions from a 14 year old kid? Fear. Panic. Uncertainey

 

[raftman]

Even today if every Russian died I wouldn't shed a tear. Vile people and culture. I remember.

They are better people and more cultured than you simply because most of them wouldn't say the same thing about us.

Considering even most holocaust survivors don't think that way about Germans, you can spare that "I've seen things, I remember" BS.

 

[PiratePast40]

One of my uncles was killed in a plane crash off of Point Loma. They were taking off from North Island to conduct ASW ops. The crash would probably not have occurred had they not been on a war footing and risked bad weather during the missile crisis.

Dad was angry for many years that his brother and the rest of the crew weren't give the honors of those killed in combat.

 

[clearconscience]

There's a great book called the book of honor about CIA officer's killing in the line of duty that are nameless stars on the wall of honor in the CIA headquarters in Langley.

Some of those stories are amazing. A few from the cold war.

 

[PiratePast40]

Found out a few months ago that a co-workers dad was an engineer for the NR-1 submarine. I've seen the NR-1 several times. Once was in 1972 at Ballast Point when I was on the Sperry, and another in 2012 while at the Groton Naval base. They did a lot of R&R that led to improvements for the rest of the fleet.

 

[teflon6string]

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.

When Portland's air raid sirens were routinely tested in the 60's, I looked up and speculated too. The year I turned 40 I stood at ground zero in Nagasaki and had the same thought again.

 

[Bon Sauvage]

I remember kneeling in the halls of Marcus Whitman Elementary School with my classmates; my face buried in one arm while my other arm covered my neck. I remember my 2nd Grade teacher taking pity on us and then arguing with the principal over her decision to let us sit against the wall instead kneeling with our heads against it.

I remember the Friday Air Raid Sirens.

I remember making Submarine Deterrent Patrols in the Mediterranean onboard one of the old "41 For Freedom" subs.

I remember making remember making Westpacs, Eastpacs, and Norpacs on attack boats out of Pearl Harbor.

Crap, I couldn't tell you what I did last week but I remember those patrols pretty well.

 

[CoastRange57]

As a youngster in early grade school in Southern California, circa 1963-64, I clearly remember the weekly air raid drills and the constant hammering on the fact that there WAS going to be nuclear war, we just did not know when. It was so often and constant, I remember at 6 years old figuring that our world was going to end in a thermonuclear exchange one day while we were at school. I figured if I made 12 years old I would be lucky. Pretty sad state of affairs when a 6 year old thinks that way. I am now 59 and remember that like yesterday.

My father worked in the aerospace industry which was is turmoil at the time and he heard of this small electronics company called Tektronix, and moved the family north to rural Oregon where I have been ever since.

In more recent times, my nieces husband work SIGOPS in the Navy and was on boomers for 12 years. Even working encrypted signals, he figured they spent a lot of time cruising around off North Korea in recent years.

 

[CoastRange57]

I remember the Friday Air Raid Sirens.

 

[CoastRange57]

As long as we are having these mind cleansing talks, I did not really escape the Cold War thing after moving to the NW. My father was a private pilot and I flew a lot with him and learned to love it real fast. Working at Tektronix in the early days they formed a flying club so they could pool thier money and buy some planes and fly cheap. Howard Vollum, Swede Ralston, Norm Wingstad and others were around the club all the time.

This lead to me joining the Civil Air Patrol Cadet program at age 12 and staying with it until I was 19. One of the adventures you could participate in was an annual week long encampment at Fairchild Airforce Base. Fairchild was a SAC base and daily drills were pretty interesting to watch. The base sirens went off and all these long bed Ford crewcabs started hauling azz around the base headed for the flight line. I had gotten over my fear of nuclear armagedon and was more into the take it them commie bastards at that point. I had visions of Air Force pilot training at that time, so was pretty impressed, plus the uniforms and girls were pretty attracting at 16 - 17 years old.

40 years later in the early 2000's finds me as a partner in a consulting business travelling over the US and Canada. After work hours there was always some time to kill, and not wanting to sit in hotel bars and drink myself into a stupor, you looked for things to do. With a gig in Shreveport Louisiana, which to me is the azzhole of the US, but it is home to Barksdale Airforce base. Headed for this cafe for Cajun, you could sit on the patio and see the runway and flight line. There were lines of B 52's taking off that evening, enroute to go bomb Iraq, and would return over 27 hours and multiple refuelings later. I could sit there and drink beer and eat cajun and these guys were on a war mission.

Different era, different war, different bombs. I imagine the same sh*t will happen 10 years from now in a different era.

 

[CoastRange57]

Used to be the lines were pretty clear them against us, now days it's them and them and them against us, and us and them against us and us against us.

Can you imagine what would happen in this country right now if there was some kind of catastrophic event with loss of life ?? The divisions and shi* slinging that has been going on in recent years, and in particular this election year have made us a very weak nation.

At some point time in the near future, some country, regime,or group is going to shove their boot so far up our azz, and punch us so hard this country will not know how to react and will be severely bloodied before we figure out what to do.

 

[wired]

I was sitting in a cafe in Communist East Berlin in 1988 having some beer and pizza and watching the pretty girls go by. I was with some friends and we were wearing our class A uniforms. We sat there for a couple of hours and ran up a pretty high bill but we all had the equivalent of a years salary for an East German worker in our pockets. We got up to leave and left maybe 2 months worth of pay for the waitress. As we were walking out the manager came running up and threw the tip on the ground, spit on it and said " we don't need your money ".

I'm sure he's pushing a broom now.

 

[PaulB47]

Huh, I did some work in West Berlin in 1980 (installing a computer there) and decided to go to East Berlin through Checkpoint Charlie, just to look around. I remember the west being flashy and alive, and the east being drab and depressed. There were still bullet holes in the walls from the war. I didn't stay long, the place gave me the creeps.

In about 1985 I took a train from Hong Kong to Beijing with my wife's family. It was strange to be in restaurants where the "help" wanted to inform you they objected to the fact you were patronizing their place! But ordinary people were not so bad, although they were obviously paranoid to be seen talking to westerners. I remember one restaurant during lunch hour, a neighboring table had a bunch of workers getting drunk, table top completely covered with large empty bottles of Chinese beer. They were having a good old time. Also remember a bus ride in Beijing, standing room only, where the two "white" Americans (and our Hong Kong contingent) on board were about the shortest people on the bus, heh.

I'm glad the Russians and Chinese have dumped communism. Sure is a lot better over there now that they have adopted a mix of socialism, fascism and free market, just like us.

 

[cigars]

I grew up within range of Hanford around the time you did, maybe a few years later. They were still doing civil defense air raid drills into the mid 80's around there. Duck and cover in the 4th grade and watching short films from the Army Corp of Engineers about nuclear blasts and fallout.

That stuck with me until well into high school. I had nightmares about the big one dropping, sometimes it was the blast itself, other times it was the aftermath of desolation and wasteland.

Movies like Red Dawn, Madmax and Terminator helped to fuel the dystopian paranoia and nightmares. I remember having a ramshackle go back in junior high with some stuff for camping in the boy scouts and a couple cans of food.

Sometimes I think all this BS is just to keep people scared, compliant with political whims and to fall in line with the idea of fighting nameless faceless men on the other side of the world (same goes for other countries).

Red Dawn really nailed the sentiment at the time it came out. Seems odd that these days we seem to have more enemies from within.

 

[CoastRange57]

I'm sure he's pushing a broom now.

The Stasi probably stood him up and shot him for being so stupid.

 

[Ura-Ki]

I married a nice, pretty Ukrainian doctor after I retired, and we went to visit her family in the Odessa district of Ukraine. Her Father is a retired officer from the celebrated Black Sea Fleet, and the Stories we shared were memorable! One of his comments really struck me then, as now. They were so afraid of the U.S. because even with all the bluster from Moscow, they all knew they stood little chance against us in a prolonged fight! We visited many historical sites, including a few Sub bases, and the Grand Navy yard, and I can tell you, they were not as good as we all thought they were! Most people I met during our visits were very nice and modest folk, almost simple, with little idea of what's going on in the western world, and the "Ideas" they do have of us, are very P.C. Disney of the 1950's and 60's!!! I would venture that besides a very small % or Officers and other high ranking party members in the Russian Federation, Most do not relish or look forward to a conflict with the west, and most expressed to me that they never did!!! With OUR situation presently, Putin is in a hard position, he needs to contain things within, and be prepared for the political situation here, to run it's coarse, while being ready for any thing possible!

 

[oremike]

As a youngster in early grade school in Southern California, circa 1963-64, I clearly remember the weekly air raid drills and the constant hammering on the fact that there WAS going to be nuclear war, we just did not know when. It was so often and constant, I remember at 6 years old figuring that our world was going to end in a thermonuclear exchange one day while we were at school. I figured if I made 12 years old I would be lucky. Pretty sad state of affairs when a 6 year old thinks that way. I am now 59 and remember that like yesterday.

My father worked in the aerospace industry which was is turmoil at the time and he heard of this small electronics company called Tektronix, and moved the family north to rural Oregon where I have been ever since.

In more recent times, my nieces husband work SIGOPS in the Navy and was on boomers for 12 years. Even working encrypted signals, he figured they spent a lot of time cruising around off North Korea in recent years.

Parallel courses, my Dad worked for Convair in San Diego then Acustica in Los Angles, we lived in Hawthorne not very far from the airport. We went to the '64 Worlds Fair in my Dad's '59 Volvo. My folks fell in love with the PNW and so we moved to Beaverton in '65 because ,you guessed it, my dad went to work for Tektronics as a component evaluation engineer Blg 48 if I recall.