The Missile Launch That Wasn’t
People are talking about the video taken from a news helicopter that shows what many people think is a missile launch off the coast of California at around sundown yesterday.
At sundown yesterday the surface wind was out of the North at about 15 miles per hour. Do you see that contrail being pushed South [to the left of your screen]? No you don’t because the aircraft that is making the contrail is probably above 30,000 feet approaching the coast from the West. The contrail stretches back to the horizon indicating relatively calm air at its altitude.
Because the aircraft is flying towards the camera it looks like it’s raising.
The setting sun and the elevated camera add to the illusion of something launched from the sea, but a check of the radar logs will show a flight approaching the coast at that time.
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…I saw this story and pictures and was wondering if there is anybody around anymore who got up in the wee hours of the morning (out here on the west coast, at least) to watch space launches on TV. All the shots I’ve seen look exactly like scenes you can see out here in the non-Montana big sky country on any relatively clear day as jet contrails get captured and spread out by upper level winds and nothing like the contrails of launched rockets like those I watched as a kid. Color me uncurious, I guess…
With 3500 combat or combat support hours in aircraft where threat recognition was a matter of personal survival, you learn to judge contrails, especially those that involve missiles.
In some of the tape you can see the sun reflecting off the aircraft. That doesn’t happen in vertical flight unless the sun is at your back, which was not the case. It was a high altitude aircraft and the sun was reflecting off the bottom.
Gentlemen, gentlemen, here you go with those silly “fact” thingies again. Clearly it was the Chinese letting us know that they have submarines behind the grassy knoll ready to fire bullets that twist around in mid-air to hit from behind, duh! 😈
– Badtux the Conspiracy Penguin
I KNEW you would have the answer! But now…please explain the UFO that was sighted in our neck of the woods a few days ago…
(where’s “spooky” Mulder when you need him, eh?)
I see UFO’s every time the air is hazy around here, they show up as blobs of white moving unpredictably in midair. Of course, when the fog lifts I see that they’re just stacked airport landing lights of aircraft stacked waiting to land, and that the seeming UFO was just the weird way the haze in the air was selectively diffracting the directional light coming from the landing lights. But if I hadn’t lived off the end of a major airport’s runway for years and seen the phenomenon maybe 40 nights a year when the weather was just right, well…
– Badtux the Aircraft-watchin’ Penguin
Seeing things at 3:30 am on PCH is not exactly unusual, although they tend to be more of the naked people on motorcycles variety around the Monterey area when I lived there.
The problem encountered most often is point-of-view when dealing with distant objects in motion. The atmosphere is like a soft contact lens and conditions can make it magnify or reduce what you see, which is why astronomers are much happier with the validity of pictures from space-based telescopes than land-based, but there is a lens effect in space caused by gravity.
The availability of cheap lasers has also muddied the waters, as it were, because there are always people looking to create some excitement.
In fairness to the observer, the military does test a lost of strange stuff over coastal waters, and the trench off the coast of California has many examples of those that didn’t work according to specifications. The Navy is currently testing a drone that is designed to be carrier-based, and you mentioned a carrier off the coast of Santa Barbara earlier.
Some wingnuts absolutely went bonkers over this story, obviously waiting for Russia/China/Iran to attack so the Rapture can start….
The Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces kept me gainfully employed during most of my military career, and if they had launched a missile off the Pacific coast it would be detectable by the radioactive plume left in the water when their submarine was destroyed. To say that there has been a woeful lack of maintenance for the vessels in the former Soviet fleet is an understatement. They can manufacture some formidable weapons systems that can cause real problems in the hands of a competent military establishment, fortunately Russia doesn’t have said establishment at the present time.
China is interested in China. They can impress California by raising their prices on all of the junk they ship or not shipping rare earths, as they have done recently. China is becoming an even better player in the “capitalist” system every year.
Seems it was US Airways 808 to Hawai’i. You know…that foreign country that the Muslim in the White House is from. No wonder the conspiracy theorists are all over it. 😉
Have to say, though….it did look quite awesome and gave the heart pause as if to ask if this was “The Event.”
“The Event” is a good deal more likely to come from underneath you in California.
Oh, great. Quick knock on wood. We’re due for a good temblor though.
My money is on the Hayward fault.
I never tempt Fate by betting on things like that.
You know….you have a point there. Hey..Fates…”Nevermind! You didn’t hear a thing!”
I believe you need the Emily Litella voice to make it believable. 😉
When I was in the USA many years ago, I got to see a show (was a breakfast show) by Bill Cosby. He did a sketch about the word *Worse*! Was very funny, because you knew it was true (black humor?) 😉 You two reminded me of that sketch! 😆
Here, I gt it from somewhere many years ago (and some others from that show):
Sadly, that doesn’t really do it justice! Cosby had a presence and his delivery was brilliant! I Have the original LP from the show (they were on sale after the show! Better than a T-shirt, which I also got!) 😉 😆
I’ll have to have a look on YooYube or smething… 🙂
Hmmm… Reminds me of some quote’s from Cosby (he had a few sage things to say!) 😉
Here’s one for Obama:
“I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.”
—Bill Cosby
“The past is a ghost, the future a dream, and all we ever have is now.”
—Bill Cosby
“The main goal of the future is to stop violence. The world is addicted to it.”
—Bill Cosby
“Men and women belong to different species and communications between them is still in its infancy.”
—Bill Cosby
“Women don’t want to hear what you think. Women want to hear what they think – in a deeper voice.”
—Bill Cosby
“You know the only people who are always sure about the proper way to raise children? Those who’ve never had any.”
—Bill Cosby
Heh… Maybe not very relevant, but true and funny nonetheless, IMO! 😉 😛
Anyway… *I* Needed a laugh! For, is it not written:
“You can turn painful situations around through laughter. If you can find humor in anything, even poverty, you can survive it. ”
—Bill Cosby
Humor is being sorely tested on current conditions, but there is a rather pervasive superstition among military aircrews that you never mention “luck” before a mission. You don’t want to bring attention to the really lousy conditions you could face.
One of the lighter moments at a preflight mission was a new weather briefer who didn’t understand about the particular area involved in the flight, and stopped and turned to ask “Do you guys really intend to fly through this stuff?”
There was a good reason that there was a large sign on the doors to our alert hangar on Shemya telling people not to open the doors when the wind was above 50 mph – it happened frequently enough that you didn’t really think about it, and it really messed things up inside the hangar.
At least he didn’t say “Good luck!”
Heh! Yeah… You reminded me of some of the pre-mission briefings we had during my tour. Some genius decided that it would *help* us to know what the brainiacs (safe in their HQ) had calculated our chance of success for the mission! (Seriously!)
It would go something like: “Now, we estimate the chance of success for this mission is …” At which point, we all jumped up and stood at attention and yelled “100%! SIR!” while glaring at him (daring him to contradict us, we *were* armed. 😉 It was at a FHQ usually. Everyone at an FHQ was armed, even when they slept, assuming they could sleep!) Our Commander was present and stepped toward the briefing officer menacingly, and the guy wisely STFU! 😉 They stopped that practice strangely! 😆
Anyway, it became a kinda funny routine! At the end of the briefing, the Commander would step forward and say loudly “We estimate the chance of success of this mission as…” And we would all leap up and yell “100%! SIR!!” and he would nod and say “Correct! Dismissed.” We would all laugh and move out…
Idiots behind desks usually do not understand how important self-confidence and belief in our team is in the field! We are not stupid! You don’t get into SSR or SAS etc if you are even remotely stupid! We know the damned risks, better than the bean counters do! We also know that once we are out in the field, we can only rely on ourselves. We were told by our Commander when we first arrived in Cambodia during our first security briefing “Once you get a half klick from base on a mission, at least some of that mission briefing is already wrong!” Heh… We were were also told “Hope is NOT an approved course of action!” 😉
Yeah, most Military personnel are superstitious like that! For good reason too. 😉
It was always nerve wracking to have the desk pilots attend briefings, as they rarely understood exactly what it was we were doing, and even worse what conditions were good and what were bad as far as the mission success was involved.
When they wear stars you aren’t allowed to throw them out or tell them how stupid their question was, as my immediate boss would stress to me when he knew that there would be “visitors” at the briefing. [You do something once, and they never let you forget.]
If you don’t do it, you have no concept of the pre-mission psych people use to get ready to go into action. You have to be ready mentally, as well as physically, and different people have different routines.
I have to say Kryten, that was about the dumbest idea I have ever heard coming from anybody’s staff. It might be appropriate in private for the commander who will organize the mission, but it is not something for the mission briefing. If they don’t think it will work, why would they schedule the mission?
Well, you have to remember it was run by the UN! 😉 Everyone understood the risks, and we always knew on every mission, we may not get back. Nobody knows with 100% certainty how a mission will go. There are far too many variables in the field. We plan as best we can, with the information we have. Most of the time, it worked, though we might have to make adjustments in the field. Once, early on, we were sent on a Joint Forces mission (We usually worked in 6 or 8 man teams, alone) because the chance of success was low, but the target value was very high. The KR were not stupid, at least, not all of them. HQ didn’t understand just how paranoid this warlord was. They had roving three-man scout teams. What we didn’t know was that behind those teams, was a heavily armed squad. On this mission, we made contact with the scouts, and they were quickly taken out. Then all hell broke loose. The commander was badly wounded and died during dustoff (medevac), and the medic was killed, one of my team was killed, I and 2 others were wounded, and several of the other forces men were killed or wounded. We made it out, but we NEVER went on a JF mission again. Once again, it was some idiot’s bad tasking of an SF team. *shrug* Happens all the time.
After that debacle, I think HQ got nervous. It was just after that, and after I was cleared for active duty, that the came up with the idea. I think it was because I and others angrily demanded to know what idiot’s planned that mission, and I think we asked who was the genius that decided to send us on a low success mission without all the info! I guess they thought it would be helpful after that if we had their *guestimates*. *sigh*
Also, my team (and other similar teams that were there, including US & German) were usually sent when a mission has a low probability of success for *normal* forces. You know how it works. 😉 We all knew the odds and the risks. It’s what we trained for. We just didn’t need to be reminded of it before a mission! Basically, we trusted that if the Commander had OK’d the mission, we had a good chance of coming back. That was all we needed to know. 🙂 We were (primarily) intel collectors, advanced scouts, and LR (long range) specialists! Anything else, that’s what the grunts were for. 😉 We should have been tasked as adv. scouts for that mission that blew up in our faces. We would have spotted the heavy squad’s. Bad tasking. It’ll get you killed every time.
Yeah, like forgetting to tell us that there was now an anti-aircraft unit in place at a target before you go creeping over in an unarmed C-47 for a low-level run through the area to see who was around.
One of the line chiefs had crossbow bolts that he had pull out of a 47 after a run over a tribal area. Fortunately the 47 would survival a high-level of damage and get you home.
You accept the unexpected, but going in without all of the information available is guaranteed to bring out the worse. Finding out that something was known or suspected after a disaster leads to vacancies at headquarters – transfers if the person responsible is lucky.
Ah yeah. 🙂 The good ol’ Dakota! 😀 There were a few variants used in Cambodia. I got to be buddy to a Pilot, and he liked them. Said there were a lot of variants designed since WW2. I know we had a few variants here. Oh! He told me that the designation ‘Dakota’ wasn’t a name, but an acronym. “Douglas Aircraft Company Transport Aircraft” and should have been spelled “DACoTA”. The things you learn… 😉 It was probably the most successful aircraft ever built. Heck, people (companies, police, military) still buy civilian & military versions today. I remember when I traveled in one, the seats (about 26 from memory) were aligned along the fuselage on both sides, and the ribs and skin were exposed. It had 2 turbo-prop engines on the inner wing right next to the fuselage. It was pretty noisy. 😉 Had to be careful of the floor because it had 4 exposed rails for cargo pallets when it wasn’t ferrying troops. I was told that it could also carry a pellet with two extra fuel tanks. I’m pretty sure RAAF has an EC-47Q, but don’t know if it’s still in service. A lot of the older aircraft were decommissioned during Howard’s reign (So we could waste our money on new stuff from the USA that wasn’t as good, but would help prop up the US affluent Corp’s.) 😉 😛 The KR had over a dozen AC-47 gunships (Thank you USA!!) They did a lot of damage to troops on the ground. They also had a couple hundred M113 APC’s. My team took out a few of those. 🙂 The US had also supplied the KR with a lot of grenade and RPG launchers, which were used in the attack I mentioned above where several American soldiers were killed or wounded. Nice one. Actually, most of the weapon’s used against us were US supplied. And yes, I know that it seemed a good idea during the early 70’s because the N. Vietnamese were moving over the Cambodian borders. Oh, well… *shrug*
Oh, yes, the Republican concept of arming “insurgent” groups to combat enemies by proxies. It’s a good thing we didn’t do that in Afghanistan … oh, wait.
The official name was Skytrain, but if they weren’t called C-47s they were called goonie birds. In addition to the standard C-47 and the ACs, the US military had ECs and RCs flying from various SEA locations. The CIA also had a motley collection that they flew.
There are thousands still in civilian service in the US, and you can buy “new” ones, basically a total frame overhaul and new engines, with a wide variety of interior schemes. It’s only possible because they were so well-built and strong to begin with – a great design. You can get pressurized versions, which would have been nice for certain missions, but those mission generally included the ability to chill beer, so you make allowances.
Because they are “tail-draggers” you fly them down to land, instead of stalling like the tricycle landing gear on most modern aircraft, but vision on take-off is limited until you get up to flying speed. The big thing was – they almost always got you home.
Ahh! Well, you Yanks might call them ‘Skytrain’, but in the UK & here, they are DACoTA’s. 😉 But I did hear them called Skytrain’s in Cambodia… And there was another variant used for paratroopers… I think it had a similar name… sky(something)! 😆 Damned memory! 😉 One of the American Ranger’s in camp once told me that the gunships were called “Puff the magic dragon”! AC-47 is easier, or “Spooky”! 😀
They were the first all-aluminium aircraft I think? No wonder they were durable. 🙂 (PS Why did the USA decide to change the name from ‘aluminium’ to ‘aluminum’ (dropped the ‘i’) in 1925? Wierd! Most elements end in ‘ium’, it’s not a *law* of course, but it is a defacto standard! Just curious…) 😉
BTW, I’ve been researching a few things after reading posts in: Informed Comment, Think Progress, TomDispatch & Krugman’s blog @ NYT. I was surprised (and I know I really should not have been) to discover how many GOP and assorted nutters are on your important Senate committes. Such as United States Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Airland
When I saw that Lieberman was the majority chair…! (And WHY is he called a ‘Independent Democrat’? WTF does that mean?? Everyone knows he’s a GOP!) And he’s 2nd on the parent Senate Armed Services Committee, and McCain is ranking Minority member. No wonder your military is screwed!
When you look at the member’s list, I’m amazed you aren’t all cowering in sheer horror! A—mazing!
Reads like the “Who’s Who of Worlds Craziest Politicians”! (With a couple exceptions, possibly). 😆
The question on the Senate is easy, the states of the Senators involved either have large military bases or large weapons manufacturers making the military vital to the economy of the states. That’s why both Senators from Florida are on the committee. The ability of the people is irrelevant to the wishes of the states’ business interests.
LIEberman lost the Democratic primary and won as an independent in Connecticut. He joined the Democratic caucus because the Democrats control the Senate. If the Republicans win he will join the Republican caucus, if the people of Connecticut don’t come to their senses and dump him forever.
Puff was the common name while Spooky was official [like Goonie bird vs. Skytrain]. The AC-130s are Spooky or Spectre variants based on the weapons. We were aware of the use of Dakota by others, as well as the Navy/Marines calling them R4Ds instead of C-47s.
OK, aluminum was the originally published name because it was refined from the mineral alumina, but it was changed to aluminium by the mass of chemists, as that was the style at the time. The US uses aluminum because Alcoa, the largest producer of the metal in the US, is the Aluminum Company of America, and they have always marketed it as “aluminum”. I don’t know why platinum isn’t called platinium.
Ahhh… Well now that you have reminded me of the way the Senate works (or doesn’t), DUH! Yeah… I knew that. 😉 Mid age brain fade! 😀
And as for Alcoa… Curiously, most Aussies think it’s Australian. 🙂 They have a BIG presence here (We have a LOT of Bauxite). I worked in a small capacity on a project management team for the big Alcoa smelter plant here in Vic in the early 90’s. We had to plan every step in shutting down the entire plant so that comprehensive maintenance could be carried out, with a minimum of downtime. I had never imagined until then just how complex a task that is! You can’t just ‘flip a switch” (at least, you couldn’t then!) 😀 It was quite an exciting project actually. My role was as part of a team to ensure the computer systems were synchronized and they would manage the shutdown process properly and monitor everything, then (hopefully) start everything back up correctly after the maintenance cycle was completed. Amazingly… It all went to plan! (It was about a year from initial project inception, to shutdown/maintenance/startup.) The guy running the project (who was my PM mentor), was paid $2k/day! But when you are working on a plant that makes a couple million $ a day, even taking one day off the maintenance paid all our wages! 😆 And we shaved 4.6 days (from memory) of the previous maintenance cycle. So, Alcoa were happy! 🙂 The “Good ol’ days”, eh? 😉
The name of the Paratroop varient was driving me nuts… so I googled! 😉 Found a wiki (of course! What isn’t there a wiki for?) 😉 Was called the C-53 Skytrooper.
Douglas C-47 Skytrain
There are a LOT of varients! 😀
I had a look online about Aluminium. I knew it was abundant (though it’s never been found in it’s free form), but I didn’t realise it was more abundant than iron in the Earth’s crust (8.2% vs 5.6% (iron) are the official estimate according to the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, 91st Edn). Scientists are baffled as to why an element so common isn’t found naturally in any organic organism. All the other common elements are present to some degree. Curious! 😀
I found a simpler table of elements in the Earth’s crust (for anyone interested). 😉
List of Periodic Table Elements Sorted by Abundance in Earth’s crust
The % amount varies in this table slightly from the official CRC figures. 🙂
Most abundant 5 (in order) are: Oxygen, Silicon, Aluminium, Iron, Calcium.
The only real variance I noticed, beyond the obvious difference in payloads, was that some we used had a wide door, while others had just the narrow door. Of course, RCs were the poor cousins in the military world, so we got what others didn’t want.
All of our mission aircraft were used and then later converted into RCs. That was 47s, 130s, and 135s. Needless to say, we didn’t have a lot of pull, basically because we didn’t have our own pilots and aircraft, they were all assigned to other commands. We were “just passengers”, even though there was no reason to launch the aircraft if we weren’t on it.
NSA is commanded by the three-star, and the Air Force segment was often a Brigadier. Not a lot of power in the Pentagon world.
Well, the refining process does require electricity, and that isn’t something that exists continuously in the natural world, so why would any creature use it? The US had a big lead in refining it because of abundant and cheap hydro-electric power. As the costs increased, the producers to be closer to cheap raw materials, having used them up where they started.
Well, every living organism needs, and uses, electricity. 😉 But I know what you mean. 😉
I just got home from dinner at a friend’s. Turns out I was invited mainly because the 18 YO son wants to join the Army, and wants to get into SF. (Kid’s play way too many games that make everything seem easy and simple!) *sigh* So I kinda had to burst his gung-ho bubble and bring him down to Earth (because our Recruiters can’t be trusted any more than yours! I’m pretty sure it’s universal.) 😉 Anyway, it took about for hours to explain *how things work in the Real World*tm. To his credit, after initial disappointment, he asked some good questions. 🙂 One thing he was keen to do was a HALO jump! 😆 *sigh* So I explained (kinda thus):
“OK. First off, HALO’s are rare and dangerous. A HALO jump is only used when you have to get to ground as fat as possible. the major problem with a HALO is that low opening a ‘chute can be heard from the ground, and you better pray that intel did there job and there’s nobody within a klick of the LZ! If there is, you better pray they are blind or can’t shoot straight. What we trained for and used mostly, was HAHO jumps. High-Altitude, High-opening. All the gear and chutes are black low-reflective, low noise.”
Then he asked some questions and we chatted about options. In the end, I told him:
“In any case, it doesn’t matter what you want. At least, until you prove yourself in one of the regular units. To get entry into SSR or SASR, you better score better than 300 on fitness, be very agile mentally, be good at math, and shoot 9 of 10 at 1km! Oh, and scoring very high on C3 (Command, control, and communications) will help a lot also. Do some advanced courses. Your best bet is to get into a Commando Regiment, which will make it easier to transition to SASR or SSR (if you are asked or if you qualify and are put forward) because they are all under the Special Operations Command. Transitioning within a Command is easier than cross-Command, and it’s easier to get into one of the Commando Regiments from outside SOCOM. But you will have to have been in a regular Regiment for 3-4 years and have a very distinguished record. One black mark, and forget it.”
Then, he said: “It would be easier to kill someone from a long distance than up close, I mean mentally, right?” Which, I have heard before.
“The answer is a HUGE “NO!!” It’s easier (mentally) to kill someone in close quarters, because it’s you or them! It’s usually self-defense. When you are a sniper, you spend time planning, target selection, and then when you are on the mission, you have to select the target, and kill them. And they never know it’s coming. And you have to deal with that. If you are even a half-decent human, you will wonder if that face you now know so well had a family, if it was the right target, what they did to deserve to die. We are trained to deal with that, and we have constant Psych eval’s & counseling… But no, it’s not easy. If you thought it was, you wouldn’t even be considered for the job! If you think it will be easy to kill someone, then I hope someone get’s you first, and they probably will!”
And so on… you get the idea. 😉 I have heard a lot of kids saying the same thing, wanting to get into snipers or SAS etc. They seem to think they can just walk in and sign up! 😆 Heh… I tol d his parents that they should take him to see some dead bodies and see how he reacts. I said that if he doesn’t throw up, they have a problem. They looked at me like I suddenly grew another head! 😆
Sad, isn’t it? *sigh*
Anyway… apart from that, dinner was very good. And I told my *friends*… they owe me bigtime! I was setup! Hmmph! 😉
We always had a designated area at homicide scenes and fatal accidents = the vomit zone – so we didn’t lose evidence. We carried Vicks VaboRub to smear on our upper lip to kill the smell, especially if the body had been undiscovered for more than a few hours. Once you have smelled death you never forget it.
You can’t trust people who like killing, you don’t know what they’ll do. People don’t ever seem to understand that the military is about groups, not individuals. You survive by putting the group first. If you aren’t able to do that, stay away from the military.
Too many young people go in and just can’t deal with the necessary loss of individuality. Special skills are worthless if they don’t help the team. I hated mission on which I was the odd man out because they needed language skills. I was a burden, and a danger to everyone around me because I didn’t fit and couldn’t automatically react as required.
I hope you caused the kid to rethink his future. A tour in military might do him some good, but he doesn’t even know if he can adapt to military life, much less Special Ops.
When asked I give a detailed explanation of Basic Training, what will happen and why, which is always met with “the recruiter never said anything about that”, and most are really upset when they find out that their choice of jobs is dependent on their skills and ability, as well as military needs, not on that silly piece of paper the recruiter handed them that included their “preference”.
Yep! You are quite right there m8. 🙂 Recruiters will tell you you can have “Your choice of assignments” and you usually pick 3 or 4. But what they don’t tell you, is how long you will have one of those assignments! 😆 You can get one of your pick’s, only to be transferred out 24 hours later! (though, that will generally only happen if you make an annoying fuss about not getting your choice of assignment! It’s a bad idea to push that far because they hate the paperwork! And the military WILL make you pay!) Recruiters are evil, sneaky, lying devils! 😈
I was kinda lucky I guess. I was fastracked because of my civilian skills. I’d been in the Scouts (from Cub to Rover), so I had most of the basic skills (and the badges to prove it), including woodcraft (exploration, tracking, fieldcraft, hunting/gathering, survival and self-reliance), orienteering/navigation, camping, aquatics, hiking, backpacking, sports and leadership. Also, I’d worked in civilian security and had a security license that included crowd control and control room op’s. And then of course, my Grandfather had taught me how to shoot! And I could use a handgun (I’d used a revolver and a German Navy 9mm Luger) and everything from a slug (BB) gun through a .22 to a Weatherby Mk4 that my Grandfather had made into an accurate sniper rifle (he was an armorer, and one thing he hammered into me was: “Never! Ever! Use a weapon you don’t know without striping it and checking it first!” 🙂 I’d also embarked on a martial arts program starting with Judo & 10, to Karate which I left because I found it boring. I joined a junior weightlifting program at 14, and loved it! I also took up Shodokan Aikido to give me balance, speed, concentration etc. (A misconception with weightlifting is that it’s all about muscles & strength. That’s only 1 aspect.) One additional aspect of the Dojo I chose was that they also had a Kendo & Shurikenjutsu programs. So, anyway… they decided to give me a trial. 🙂 The first thing was unarmed combat, and I did very well in that (almost too well at one point). Then they took me to the Willamstown rifle range that had a long (1 mile) range, and gave me a rifle (Parker-Hale). I smiled and remembered what my gandfather taught me, then stripped it and checked everything, cleaned it & reassembled it. Then I asked for all the *books* (ballistics, service records, manufacturers spec’s etc). They gave them to me, and I saw that it’s had a trigger problem and it had been replaced. I’d have to check that (a typical problem is that a trigger will *catch* occasionally, which messes up the shot). Then I asked for weather reports etc, and balistics on the ammunition and the range. Then I asked for a ‘scope to check out the range, and then asked permission to sight-in the weapon. The Range Sargent gave me three rounds. I adjusted the scope and trigger etc., and settled and did what I’d been trained. I was in my element. 🙂 I hit the target at 1KM slightly high, and 1.5cm from center. A very good first shot. 2nd shot was to adjust height, and third to center it. Then I took 6 shots and had a spread of just over 2cm around center target. I told the Sargent that if they allowed me to load my own shells, I could do better (I wasn’t being a smart-ass, was perfectly matter of fact. And they took it that way.) 🙂 Anyway, after a few more trials and eval’s, I was told to pack and headed for Sunny Qld. And the rest, is history! 🙂
And yeah… It’s the smell that get’s you. Especially when an entire village has been killed and burned to the ground, and you have to search for survivors.
I couldn’t go to a BBQ for years after my discharge. Had nightmares for a long time too. Kids don’t think about that stuff. Nobody ever thinks about *afterward*, not even Governments it seems.
*shrug*
You had been in training for the job your entire life, so the personnel people would have seen the big savings in training costs to bring an average recruit up to that level if they were a suitable candidate. I was amazed at how long it took for people to learn how to shoot a rifle to the loose Air Force standards. Most people are a danger on the range, much less combat. In the police they spend a lot of time “unteaching” bad habits with hand guns by people who apparently learned by watching television.
My Mother hates to watch shows with me because I’m constantly pointing out when people leave weapons behind them, or fail to switch to weapons better suited to the situation when they become available. Most of the “good guys” are morons who wouldn’t last in their first firefight.
I gave up on hunting. Too many bad memories, and too much empathy for the “prey”, having been in their “shoes”.
I have suspected for several years that my Grandfather was a sneaky old codger who was grooming me for a Military life (and making sure I survived it)! 😉 Even the cubs as a kid was his idea… He took me to the pool and beach and taught me how to swim, dive, kayak… We went fishing and I learned to row, use an outboard, snorkel & spearfish, etc. I had a very active childhood & teen years thanks to him. (There are reasons I won’t go into about why, but I understand).
LOL Your mother sounds like my house-mate! I’m the same. 😆 If we watch some show and it has someone who’s supposedly a *sniper* or some military or spook movie, I usually get royally annoyed and will say things like “What a load of BS! Never happen! If I was there, he’d be dead before he knew what hit him!” and various other comments… To which she will usually reply something like “It’s just a movie! It’s not real!” And I’ll usually say “Tell that to the kids and assorted idiots who watch it and believe it!” 😆
I’ve been watching the new (2010) Hawaii Five-0. It’s better than the original (The guy who play’s McGarret now isn’t such a huge ham at least! And he’s an ex-SEAL etc.) I find it funny actually! 😉
Funny you mention hunting afterward… Yeah. I hadn’t thought about it, but I haven’t been hunting or even fishing since. And I used to love both before. Interesting.
It came home to me when I started thinking about homesteading in Alaska and I realized I really didn’t want to do the necessary subsistence hunting to live in the interior. I might be fine as a vegetarian, but you need a dog team for emergencies, and the dogs wouldn’t go along with that plan.