Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!cbnews!military
From: ehr@uncecs.edu (Ernest H. Robl)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: The Novels of Thomas Clancy
Summary: unrealistic reliability
Message-ID: <8896@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 9 Aug 89 03:58:18 GMT
References: <8795@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Sender: military@cbnews.ATT.COM
Organization: UNC Educational Computing Service
Lines: 43
Approved: military@att.att.com



From: Ernest H. Robl 
While I have enjoyed the Clancy novels, particularly Red October,
I think he is much too optimistic about all military hardware 
working correctly at the critical time.

Although my own military service is now 20 years back, I don't
believe things have changed that much.  One of my jobs in 
Vietnam (1969-1970) was writing the daily combat summary for the
I Corps (the northernmost  quarter of South Vietnam).  Each day,
before dawn, I would go through the field reports and produce a
report, which, with much editing, was finally released in a much
sanitized form to the news media.  We were never allowed to use
any actual numbers for U.S. casualties -- they were usally 
described as "light" or "moderate" -- and anything REALLY heavy
had to be sent by teletype to Saigon for clearance at MACV.

One of the most surprising things to me -- which was really 
never reported -- was the number of aircraft and other pieces of
equipment that, in Army parlance, were DIPped.  DIP stood for
"destroyed in place," meaning that a piece of equipment that
would otherwise have been repairable or salvagable was destroyed
(usually with high explosives) to keep it from falling into enemy
hands.  With aircraft this was usually done to destroy the radios
and navigation equipment.

Some of these aircraft went down in unfriendly territory after
taking ground fire.  Others, however, simply encountered some type
of mechancical problem and made a forced landing.  If there was
no heavy-lift helicopter available to lift out a UH-1 that had
gone down, it was blown up rather than leave it unsecured over
night.

(Your tax dollars at work)

   -- Ernest

-- 
My opinions are my own and probably not IBM-compatible.--ehr
Ernest H. Robl  (ehr@ecsvax)  (919) 684-6269 w; (919) 286-3845 h
Systems Specialist (Tandem System Manager), Library Systems,
027 Perkins Library, Duke University, Durham, NC  27706  U.S.A.