Able Archer

[Stuart Galbraith]

Happy Armageddon Day! 😊

 

[Harold Jones]

About 40 years ago, young private Jones would have just started processing out of Ft. Carson for his permanent change of station to Germany (FRG) and would have been horribly disappointed to have to go to WW3 as part of the 4th ID.

[Tim Sielbeck]

E-4 me would have been recalled after less than six months since ETS.  God only knows where I would have ended up.

[Ssnake]

Five years before me getting drafted...

[Rick]

Was an eyeball technician at the supporting medical clinic at the U.S.N. submarine base in Groton, CT. Don't recall anything out of the ordinary among the medical corpsman assigned to the boomer and attack subs at this time. Our main concern was looking for Mittendorf dots in the eye lens and the lens itself (the eye lens is very sensitive to ionizing radiation)  and fitting soft contact lenses to frequent periscope users. 

[Stuart Galbraith]

The truly horrible thing about this is not the danger we faced. I think we all felt on some level there was something up at the time, even if we couldnt quite put our finger on what 'IT' exactly was. But I can remember the time reasonably well. Great music, bad fashion, the imminent prospect of global thermonuclear war. And in the immediate aftermath of KAL007, I can still remember the chill that was going around after that.

No, the real scary thing is how much time has elapsed. Growing up as a kid, WW2 was 40 years away, which seemed a horribly long time. Now this is 40 years away, and it seems like yesterday. I was robbed dammit!

 

Anyway, leaving such maudlin thoughts behind, if you havent seen it, the NS Archive has a pretty good sourcebook.

https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/project/able-archer-83-sourcebook

The most interesting one for me was a President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board report dated February 1990 that investigated the lapse, and basically went, 'Oh shit, my bad'. And then repeated pretty much the same mistake 6 months later over Kuwait.

https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/21038-4-pfiab-report-2012-0238-mr

 

The real revelation was the discovery the Soviet 4th Air Army in Poland went on alert, at nearly the same time as the 16th in East Germany. There are rumours in several books that at least some of the Warsaw Pact units, presumably the ones with dual use aircraft, went on alert also, but im not aware that has been confirmed.

https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/aa83/2021-02-17/able-archer-war-scare-potentially-disastrous

 

Edited November 3, 2023 by Stuart Galbraith

[sunday]

9 hours ago, Harold Jones said:

About 40 years ago, young private Jones would have just started processing out of Ft. Carson for his permanent change of station to Germany (FRG) and would have been horribly disappointed to have to go to WW3 as part of the 4th ID.

With your mostly Hispanic crew? Then, it would not have been the first time soldiers fighting in Germany would be speaking Spanish!

[Harold Jones]

3 hours ago, sunday said:

With your mostly Hispanic crew? Then, it would not have been the first time soldiers fighting in Germany would be speaking Spanish!

Yes, Jones, Ortiz, Rodriguez, and Orosco.  This was our theme song.  

 

[Stuart Galbraith]

 

[sunday]

Yep, only one without a "z" in his surname, as the last one should be Orozco, from this place.

[Harold Jones]

SSGT Orosco was from Mexico, that's the way he spelled it.  Ortiz (Driver) was from El Salvador and Sgt. Rodriguez (gunner) was from Puerto Rico.  The arguments about who spoke purer Spanish were endless.

[sunday]

11 minutes ago, Harold Jones said:

SSGT Orosco was from Mexico, that's the way he spelled it.  Ortiz (Driver) was from El Salvador and Sgt. Rodriguez (gunner) was from Puerto Rico.  The arguments about who spoke purer Spanish were endless.

As none of them were from Salamanca in Spain, all they were wrong. 😋

Now I remind that first time I heard you pronouncing "La Junta", and I tried to recall some English spelling for that... 😄

[RETAC21]

1 hour ago, Harold Jones said:

SSGT Orosco was from Mexico, that's the way he spelled it.  Ortiz (Driver) was from El Salvador and Sgt. Rodriguez (gunner) was from Puerto Rico.  The arguments about who spoke purer Spanish were endless.

"los cinco hermanos Jones"

Those who know, know.

 

[Harold Jones]

My new walk out song 

 

 

[sunday]

Spanish Country!

[Stuart Galbraith]