-Rurik
Tuesday, February 23, 2021
T-h-a-t close.....
Soviet fighter jets, forward-based in what was then East Germany, were loaded with nuclear bombs and prepared for “immediate use,” as Moscow readied its forces for a potential full-scale war with NATO in 1983. These are among the latest details to have emerged about the ‘war scare’ that year, which saw the two sides on the brink of a major conflict, all due to very serious misunderstanding.
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I had the honor of being paid to harass the Godless Commies off the coast of Petropavlovsk in the summer of '83, right before the heathens shot down Korean Air 007.
ReplyDeleteWant an idea of how bad things were, look at the way they dealt with the US and Japanese during the recovery operation. The fired tons of officials for NOT shooting down planes from Midway and Enterprise in the weeks leading up to that fiasco and harassed every thing that moved. It was a real shitshow.
I was there stood by just short the inner German border facing the First Soviet Shock Army at that time. My mechanised squadron and I were not expected to last more than thirty minutes if it kicked off.
ReplyDeleteYeah, did a few Able Archers. Big CP exercise, they did it every year, no deployments just message ex.
ReplyDeleteLol anyone else here remember those early phone calls "Lariat Advance"?
Well, we learned a lot about what a soviet response would be.
ReplyDeleteHere is what was going on with spies for the other side, during this exercise.
ReplyDeleteLater in the 80s, I was in the Soviet Union as part of a student exchange. A bunch of of us got to go the the Kremlin one day to see some of the historical stuff. It was very bizarre to be standing at a guaranteed ground-zero for some serious US firepower and not have any idea how things were going between the countries, since we did not get any foreign news for the entire time we were there.
ReplyDeleteMeh. In the very center of the 5 wings of the Pentagon was a small coffee Kiosk/snack bar...the "Ground Zero Cafe".
DeleteNever lived anywhere that wasn't "First Strike - God's Lightbulb" until I moved to only a 2nd tier strike in 85.
DeleteWeeeee! Life back in the day was interesting.
Cheyene Mountain, Colorado-the self-contained Mountain Post, supposedly able to take a direct nuclear attack, survive, and stay in operation to carry out the mission. Although the surrounding area would have been toast after multiple nukes raining down on the Post. Now pretty much on stand-by with minimum staffing inside the mountain but a nearby cadre always ready to head up and into the mountain through huge blast doors that will close and seal them in. Abundant amenities inside, though one would think things could get boring after awhile especially with family nearby, but on the outside. One of many Ground Zeros.
ReplyDeleteWere we different?
ReplyDeleteGermany had two FKG (missile wing) with 36 nuclear warheads per unit. Those warheads were controlled by an US unit.
And before 1988 both FKG had a QRA Quick Reaction Alert station where 9 Pershings per FKG were ready to be fired at a moments notice.
Please google the Newyorker magazine of 2014 with Harold Agnew. He toured Germany in 1960 and nearly had a heart attack when he saw West German Fighterbombers loaded with US nukes and only one lone US soldier as sentry was there to stop the Germans from bombing the Sovietunion
Alex Lund
My father was in a Pershing missile outfit at Hardt Kaserne in Schwäbisch Gmünd from 1967 to 1970.
DeleteSo when did the Reds decide immediate death was not knocking on the door?
ReplyDelete