Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!att!cbnews!military From: mcgp1!flak@beaver.cs.washington.edu (Dan Flak) Newsgroups: sci.military Subject: Low Tech Warfare Part 2 of 5 Message-ID: <11915@cbnews.ATT.COM> Date: 4 Dec 89 01:42:18 GMT Sender: military@cbnews.ATT.COM Organization: McCaw Cellular Communications, Inc., Seattle, WA Lines: 38 Approved: military@att.att.com From: mcgp1!flak@beaver.cs.washington.edu (Dan Flak) LOW TECH WARFARE - PART II Having determined that putting bomb craters in the middle of the roadway was no guarantee that the road would remain cut, the Air Force decided to try to deny the use of the Ho Chi Minh trail by other means. They decided to use CBU (Cluster Bomb Units). CBU came in a number of varieties. The type used for road denial was specifically designed to do damage to, (but not necessarily destroy) trucks. This type CBU was golf ball in size, and delivered by the thousands from rearward or downward ejecting bomb racks. This laid the CBU out in a tight rectangular pattern which the fighters attempted to place on the roadway centerline. Many of this type of CBU was time delay. That is, some of it went off immediately, and the rest went off at random intervals, or when run over by a truck. This meant that there were small explosions waiting to rip up truck tires or gas tanks, going off at odd intervals all day long on the road. To clear the road of such obstacles, the V.C. took two water buffalo and walked them down either side of the road, outside the CBU pattern, if they could. The water buffalo tailed ropes tied to a heavy log. The heavy log would prematurely detonate the CBU which "thought" it was being run over by truck tires. After losing several water buffalo, the V.C. decided to use women with long sticks of bamboo (the preverbial 10 foot pole) to flip the CBU out of the path of the buffalo. -- Dan Flak - McCaw Cellular Communications Inc., 201 Elliot Ave W., Suite 105, Seattle, Wa 98119, 206-283-2658, (usenet: thebes!mcgp1!flak) Brought to you by Super Global Mega Corp .com