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Winter 2015/2016 January 21, 2016 USS BRISTOL DD 857 VETERANS ASSOCIATION ussbristoldd857.org Editor: [email protected] In This Issue Operation Ivy Bells………….…1 Luck……………………….……3 An Experience To Recall………4 Student Who Got 0%………….5 Japan’s Coup de tat……………5 Ben Stein’s Thoughts…………..8 As We Grow Older….………….9 Gulf of Tonkin………………….9 Humor…………………………14 Some Good Things To Know…. 15 Kilroy was Here………………16 A Man’s Age ………………….17 Old Friends……………………18 Rare and weird facts about World War II………………….19 Snippets………………………..20 Operation Ivy Bells believed that he could find the tiny Desert Storm………………….22 Soviet cable under the immense The Story of Vittles, the Boxer, Charlie Weaver forwarded this article from Together We Served expanse of the ocean. Bradley During Berlin Airlift………….22 remembered the signs that he saw Why Do Navy Planes Have during his childhood along the Tailhooks?…………………….23 Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. Mississippi River warning boaters The Last Wishes of Alexander not to anchor near cables. He the Great………………………23 rationalized that the Soviet’s would Jim Martin, WWII, The Regulus guided missile submarine, USS Halibut (SSN use similar signs and lead him right Paratrooper…………………..23 to his target. Bradley’s theory Deep Dive USS Chopper SS 587) which carried out Operation Ivy Bells. proved correct when the Halibut 342……………………………..24 located a series of such signs in the Company Memo………………28 Nearly 400 feet beneath the Northern part of the Sea of Okhotsk, Snipes Lament………………..29 after an arduous search. Seven Little Stories…………..30 frigid waters of the Sea of Okhotsk, deep inside Soviet The divers found the cable and Koren War Mural……………30 installed a 20-foot long listening Obit: MOH Awardee………..30 territorial waters, the divers stayed alive only by the device on the cable. designed to umbilical cords that pumped attach to the cable without piercing warm water into their dive suits. the casing, the device recorded all In an effort to alter the balance communications that occurred. If the of Cold War, these men scoured cable malfunctioned and the Soviets the ocean floor for a five-inch raised it for repair, the bug, by diameter cable carry secret design, would fall to the bottom of Soviet communications between the ocean. Each month Navy divers military bases. retrieved the recordings and Captain James Bradley installed a new set of tapes. conceived the mission and firmly !1 Winter 2015/2016 January 21, 2016 Upon their return to the United Naval Academy a few years ago 2016 Reunion States, intelligence agents from comparing the heroism of the "D- the NSA analyzed the recordings Day Generation" to the drugs-and- and tried to decipher any sex nihilism of the "Woodstock encrypted information. The Generation." And Steven Spielberg, Save te dats-- Soviets apparently were in promoting his film "Saving confident in the security of their Private Ryan," was careful to justify Septmber 26, 27, 28, communications lines, as a his portrayals of soldiers in action surprising amount of sensitive based on the supposedly unique 29. depart 30t,2016 information traveled through the nature of World War II. lines without encryption. The Americans continued their An irony is at work here. Lest we operations undetected until 1981, forget, the World War II generation Te 2016 reunion will be when one day, surveillance now being lionized also brought us satellites showed a number of the Vietnam War, a conflict which held on tose dats at te Soviet warships, including a today's most conspicuous voices by Courtyard Marriott in salvage ship, anchored over the and large opposed, and in which few undersea cable. Another of them served. The "best and Wilmingtn, NC. intelligence-capable submarine, brightest" of the Vietnam age group USS Parche (SSN-683), was once made headlines by castigating quickly sent to the site to retrieve their parents for bringing about the the pod. Unable to find the tap, war in which they would not fight, Arrangements are the Parche’s divers realized that which has become the war they the Soviets had discovered the refuse to remember. underway to finalize the operation. The submarine made it back to the United States Pundits back then invented a term reunion events. When tat safely, leaving American leaders for this animus: the "generation to determine how the Soviets gap." Long, plaintive articles and is all set, te BRAT wil had suddenly detected the tap. even books were written examining After a long probe, United States its manifestations. Campus leaders, sent out the registration counter-intelligence agents who claimed precocious wisdom determined an NSA employee, through the magical process of papers. In the meantme Robert Pelton, betrayed reading a few controversial books, Operation Ivy Bells to the urged fellow baby boomers not to mark your calendars. Soviets. He sold the secret of trust anyone over 30. Their elders Operation Ivy Bell for $35,000, who had survived the Depression which ended nearly a decade of and fought the largest war in history FYI –Your officers all met espionage. Pelton was later were looked down upon as shallow, convicted and sentenced to life materialistic and out of touch. in Wilmington in mid- in prison. The original tap that was discovered by the Soviets is Those of us who grew up, on the October (at their own now on exhibit at the KGB other side of the picket line from museum in Moscow.s of the so- that era's counter-culture can't help expense) to visit prospectve called 60s generation. Tom but feel a little leery of this sudden Brokaw has published two oral gush of appreciation for our elders sits and consider potntal histories of "The Greatest from the leading lights of the old Generation" that feature ordinary counter-culture. Then and now, the events. It was agreed tat people doing their duty and national conversation has proceeded suggest that such conduct was from the dubious assumption that the Courtyard will best historically unique. those who came of age during Vietnam are a unified generation in meet our needs. Chris Matthews of "Hardball" is the same sense as their parents were fond of writing columns praising and thus are capable of being the Navy service of his father spoken for through these fickle while castigating his own baby elites. Look forward t seeing you boomer generation for its alleged softness and lack of struggle. In truth, the "Vietnam generation" is in Septmber. William Bennett gave a startling a misnomer. Those who came of age condescending speech at the during that war are permanently !2 Winter 2015/2016 January 21, 2016 divided by different reactions to a percent of those who died were young men who faced the issues of whole range of counter-cultural volunteers. war and possible death, and then agendas and nothing divides them weighed those concerns against more deeply than the personal While some attention has been paid obligations to their country. Citizen- ramifications of the war itself. The recently to the plight of our soldiers who interrupted their sizable portion of the Vietnam age prisoners of war, most of whom personal and professional lives at group who declined to support the were pilots; there has been little their most formative stage, in the counter-cultural agenda, and recognition of how brutal the war timeless phrase of the Confederate especially the men and women who was for those who fought it on the Memorial in Arlington National opted to serve in the military during ground. Cemetery, "not for fame of reward, the Vietnam War, are quite different not for place or for rank, but in from their peers who for decades Dropped onto the enemy's terrain simple obedience to duty, as they have claimed to speak for them. In 12,000 miles away from home, understood it." Who suffered fact, they are much like the World America's citizen-soldiers loneliness, disease, and wounds with War II generation itself. For them, performed with a tenacity and an often-contagious elan. And who Woodstock was a side show, college quality that may never be truly deserve a far better place in history protestors were spoiled brats who understood. Those who believe the than that now offered them by the would have benefited from having war was fought incompletely on a so-called spokesmen of our so- to work a few jobs in order to pay tactical level should consider called generation. their tuition, and Vietnam Hanoi's recent admission that 1.4 represented not an intellectual million of its soldiers died on the Mr. Brokaw, Mr. Matthews, Mr. exercise in draft avoidance, or battlefield, compared to 58,000 total Bennett, Mr. Spielberg, meet my protest marches but a battlefield that U.S. dead. Marines. 1969 was an odd year to be was just as brutal as those their in Vietnam. Second only to 1968 in fathers faced in World War II and Those who believe that it was a terms of American casualties, it was Korea. "dirty little war" where the bombs the year made famous by did all the work might contemplate Hamburger Hill, as well as the gut- Few who served during Vietnam that is was the most costly war the wrenching Life cover story showing ever complained of a generation U.S. Marine Corps has ever fought: pictures of 242 Americans who had gap. The men who fought World five times as many dead as World been killed in one average week of War II were their heroes and role War I, three times as many dead as fighting. Back home, it was the year models.