"frank" wrote in message
...


Frank you have a lot of stimulating ideas.
Ken

Best one was when Ronnie was president. They decided to dust off the
old how to survive a nuclear war bit. drive 40 minutes to bunkers that
would have food, water for weeks. Single road to get there.

I told them I'd drive home, put the Nikon on a tripod, get a six pack
and wait for a good shot of the flash and cloud. They were not
amused.

I think they wanted volunteers to do a test one weekend. See if
everybody could drive out there. Don't remember if they ever did. Knew
the engineer who was to look at 'fallout shelters' one was one of
those old hangars with glass windows. You know the type. All over the
AF bases. They weren't thrilled when he asked when fallout shelters
would have glass windows. Not to mention what the probability of glass
breaking.

At least White Sands took it seriously enough to practice it every
year. Printed tons of paper manuals. Went out and played war games.
When was done, had annual hunt for 7 - 10 days of deer if you were
base personnel. Can't beat that. Pretty much blew off October as far
as getting real work done. But for a training and doctrine base, took
stuff seriously. Ever if we were an AF unit on it.

I was at CFB Chatham as the Ops O of an air defence battery back in Reagan's
second term. My CO sent me on a pleasant waste of time in the form of a recce
to find a hide for the battery off the base in case a nuclear exchange
threatened. The aim was to shield the battery's men and equipment from a
nuclear attack on the airfield -- it had a 12,000' runway and much of what you
might need in a dispersal or diversion field for large aircraft -- so to be
available for deployment post-strike. I did a dead ground trace for a likely
maximum burst height and looked among the "shadows" for some place to hide
upwards of 200 troops and 70 vehicles. I ran the results by the base ops
staff; they were somewhat horrified. In order for the battery to deploy with
its essential kit, it would have taken about four hours to get it on the road:
two hours to recall personnel and then two hours to draw weapons, stores,
consumables and to issue orders. To get to the hide we had to move the battery
north across the Miramichi on a two lane bridge to the Tabusintac River, some
40 Km north as the crow flies, 50 km by road. IIRC, it was Indian land, and I
am not sure how they would have viewed us landing on their doorstep
unannounced, I obviously could not consult them about the plan. Here's the op
area: http://preview.tinyurl.com/ovcyyr. While the plan showed initiative on
the part of my CO, I really think I was on a fool's errand.

Fortunately, the battery changed command and the successor CO concentrated on
getting the battery ready for where it was likely to deploy for operations
(Germany or Norway). We never exercised the plan.
--
Andrew Chaplin
SIT MIHI GLADIUS SICUT SANCTO MARTINO
(If you're going to e-mail me, you'll have to get "yourfinger." out.)