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.