Maggie’s Military Jeopardy

[tsavo303]

Ok I’ll start one.
During the war is SE Asia, an unlikely USAF crew shot down a Russian helo with an improvised weapon (not any kind of firearm, missle, bomb, etc.) Credit was given to a nearby A1 sky raider
What were they flying? What was the weapon?
And best of all, why didn’t they get credit for the undeniable air to air kill?

 

[sirhrmechanic]

^^^ Obviously not this, but I have a nice signed print of this hanging in my office...

Cheers,

Sirhr

 

[tsavo303]

Thats cool. didn't know that print , but i just saw it looking if mine was googleable. That would have been a good question. I can't think of a post swordfish/Bismarck bilplane engagement!
Hint on the improvised thing.
It was unarmed USAF flight that encountered a rare target of opportunity - an mi-8 resupplying the ho chi mihn trail.
not a fighter, bomber, or attack a/c

 

[tsavo303]

Ill start another. On what USN active duty warship was the last wooden or paneled room? (not the USS Constitution!)

 

[Barneybdb]

View attachment 6889304

^^^ Obviously not this, but I have a nice signed print of this hanging in my office...

Cheers,

Sirhr

Came across this while looking for the answer to the question:

In one of their few offensive air attacks by the VPAF during the entire conflict, on 12 January 1968 a four aircraft formation of Antonov An-2 biplanes was reported flying towards a secret USAF TACAN and radar site in Laos guiding American bombers over Northern Vietnam. Two aircraft flew on to the strike, while the other two split off.[5] As the two continuing An-2s flew over, their crews dropped 120 mm mortar shells as bombs through the aircraft's floor and also strafed their targets with 57 mm rockets from the wing pods.[6] However, as the two aircraft flew back and forth attacking the facility, one aircraft was heavily damaged by ground fire from the facility and crashed. Meanwhile, crew at Lima Site 85 managed to call in a nearby Air America helicopter; a crew member aboard the helicopter armed with an assault rifle fired on the last biplane and caused it to crash.[7] The site was eventually overrun by People's Army of Vietnam commando climbers.

 

[sirhrmechanic]

Ill start another. On what USN active duty warship was the last wooden or paneled room? (not the USS Constitution!)

I thought all the carriers and 'big ships' that could be used as flag officers ships... had fancy wood-paneled admirals quarters? So wouldn't the Reagan and whatever the most recent carrier... have had wood-paneled rooms?

On an un-related note, U.S. carriers in WW2 and up into the '60s had teak decks... Other carriers used steel decks. Lots of advantages in teak, including absorption of impact and no metal splinters. Faster to repair, too.

Cheers,

Sirhr

 

[Sean the Nailer]

On an un-related note, U.S. carriers in WW2 and up into the '60s had teak decks... Other carriers used steel decks. Lots of advantages in teak, including absorption of impact and no metal splinters. Faster to repair, too.

Cheers,

Sirhr

As did the BB's (Battleships).

 

[tsavo303]

I thought all the carriers and 'big ships' that could be used as flag officers ships... had fancy wood-paneled admirals quarters? So wouldn't the Reagan and whatever the most recent carrier... have had wood-paneled rooms?

On an un-related note, U.S. carriers in WW2 and up into the '60s had teak decks... Other carriers used steel decks. Lots of advantages in teak, including absorption of impact and no metal splinters. Faster to repair, too.

Cheers,

Sirhr

You are correct that I am referring to the captains quarters. It had a special decorator. It was my understanding that it was the last of its kind. I saw in in 1987 , and was told it was the last of its kind due to building code. Big Hint. The ship was also the last of kind with regard to power plant. It is also mentioned in a Jack Ryan novel...

 

[tsavo303]

Ok I’ll start one.
During the war is SE Asia, an unlikely USAF crew shot down a Russian helo with an improvised weapon (not any kind of firearm, missle, bomb, etc.) Credit was given to a nearby A1 sky raider
What were they flying? What was the weapon?
And best of all, why didn’t they get credit for the undeniable air to air kill?

Ok. More hints.
Chopper was an MI-8 over Laos. Cargo plane on a “Candlestick” mission

 

[Barneybdb]

You are correct that I am referring to the captains quarters. It had a special decorator. It was my understanding that it was the last of its kind. I saw in in 1987 , and was told it was the last of its kind due to building code. Big Hint. The ship was also the last of kind with regard to power plant. It is also mentioned in a Jack Ryan novel...

USS America (CV-66)?

 

[tsavo303]

USS America (CV-66)?

Close. I think same class

 

[Barneybdb]

Ok. More hints.
Chopper was an MI-8 over Laos. Cargo plane on a “Candlestick” mission

in his book "flying through midnight" John T. Halliday talks about downing an Mi-8 over Laos during a candlestick mission by dropping a chain net on top of it from his C-123

 

[Barneybdb]

Close. I think same class

USS John F. Kennedy (CV-67)

 

[tsavo303]

Yep , you got both. Jackie O designed the Captains quarters. The JFK was also burdened with a non nuclear power plant that was a burden for maitaince and range. They are described also in Hunt for Red October. I was lucky to get to eat lunch with the Captain there with my dad when I was a boy and fascinated by the 18 story city afloat.

The MI8 was spotted on a C123 mission to illuminate activity on the HCM trail. The made a couple passes I was told before the aircrew in the back correctly timed throwing out chains and tie downs as the pilot yelled Now! That was awesome resourcefulness.

I have heard that since it was Laos and the C123 was unarmed they were not given credit for the kill, but I heard it was because the pencil pusher who programmed the msdos usaf software did not have a tab for air to air kills for cargo planes! Make one!

 

[Sean the Nailer]

It's wednesday evening now, and sunday night was a long time ago. Let's pick it up, people. There's a lot of shitty tv out there that I/we would rather not be watching. So come-on you edumacated brainiacs, lets stir some grey-matter.

Speaking of stirring, what WAS in the coconuts that The Professor had Gilligan, The Skipper, et al stirring, and to what end? I'm sure there's some sort of military based connotation there. For those who remember....

 

[bigdaddydmd]

OK, I finally got around to digging up an old photo.
Tried to come up with something that isn't easily googled.
Don't mind the cropping I did. I figured you boys didn't need to see my ugly mug, but that is a pic of one of our DMRs.

*side note. They dug those out of some National guard armory, bought some scopes with Impact cards and dropped them in our laps 2 weeks before heading to the box. If I remember correctly it was a Leupold 3-9 with duplex reticle. The scope mount was so high we took cartridge boxes, stuffed them with foam, and 100 mph taped the piss out of them to the stocks to make a cheek riser. Grunts are resourceful. We had absolutely no clue on how to maintain, clean, or utilize the M14. I am certain there are some fine upstanding deplorables here that know the manual of arms for it by heart, but we were SOL. We were lucky that there was an old retired SFC from RVN that was shook out of the local VFW and was willing to spend the day with us and show us how to "properly" disassemble, clean and utilize the weapon system. Then our Scout Sniper section took some time with us on the range to try and make a DMR 101/ballistics class for us.

On with the question. What are the things those two yahoos are looking into and what do they do? picture is circa 2004.

 

[Barneybdb]

Raven RQ 11 UAV controllers?

 

[bigdaddydmd]

You are absolutely correct. Guess it was too easy. I did leave the box in the pic that is stenciled "Raven" on it as a clue in case this was way too out there of a question.

 

[Sean the Nailer]

Raven RQ 11 UAV controllers?

And/or that there is the personal training Call Of Duty edition, designed for 'on the ground' practice and improvement, right? The 'legit'er' version eleventy-point-nine-point-nine.

And those are the 'tactical' iPads with the extra-padded Otterbox protectors making the gaming system 'grunt-proof'. (notice the secure "non-wireless" system).

 

[Barneybdb]

Emu's and cheap tricks??

 

[Strykervet]

Hey bigdaddy,

Wow, you got the rifles, we got the training. We BEGGED for them to open the stores up of M14's they had at Lewis and they just bitched and moaned about how they couldn't. So we took stock M4's and modded them with M16 lowers, modded M14 slings, Harris bipods and an ACOG TAO1 NSN (not sure how it got that designation but we were one of the firsts to use it) and made the best of it (minute of man at 600m). Being friends with the SF gunsmiths helped us get better parts when we needed 'em. That picture looks 2004-ish, early that year or a year or two earlier and we'd have taken you on at our SDM school had you asked! We trained guys from several units but mostly Stryker units. It was FAR better than what they have today at Ft. Benning (they stole our program, copied it, removed all the important stuff, kept the most basic and slapped "TRADOC" on it and I'm sure some other fuckstick gets the credit for our work). As for scopes and mounts, didn't you know that during that time period we could call up ANY of the mfg.'s out there and they'd send us shit for free? I still have rail systems, lights, mounts, even a Beowulf upper I tested for Alexander Arms and our unit. Probably could have gotten nice mounts and decent optics for those M14's...

 

[Strykervet]

So I'll throw one out.

Why are "tanks" called tanks? Why is the nomenclature for tank parts the way it is (ie, why do they call 'em "hatches" instead of doors?)

 

[Barneybdb]

My post above, #1223, is meant to be a question, could not think how to word it, an Aussie Navy pilot received a Silver Star 20+ years afterwards.

 

[sirhrmechanic]

So I'll throw one out.

Why are "tanks" called tanks? Why is the nomenclature for tank parts the way it is (ie, why do they call 'em "hatches" instead of doors?)

When they were making prototypes at, I believe, Woolrich Arsenal, they were trying to disguise them by claiming that they were water bowsers. So they called them 'tanks.'

Cheers,

Sirhr

 

[sirhrmechanic]

Which raises another question... why did a water tank get called a "Bowser?"

Cheers,

Sirhr

 

[bigdaddydmd]

@Strykervet PM sent so I don't take this thread off on a tangent.

 

[Fig]

Sylvanus Freelove Bowser

I thought all the carriers and 'big ships' that could be used as flag officers ships... had fancy wood-paneled admirals quarters? So wouldn't the Reagan and whatever the most recent carrier... have had wood-paneled rooms?

It's a common misconception that carriers are flagships (maybe because Top Gun made it look like their CIC was bigger than a closet).

The carrier is a floating air field. It doesn't radiate (sometimes not even an air traffic radar for the pattern) during combat. It is essentially blind for it's own protection. They can run a traffic pattern to launch and recover, but that's about it.

The planes are directed from the air side in the CIC of a cruiser or destroyer equipped with a phased array radar. Surface engagements are fought from the surface side of the same. When Maverick is talking to the air coordinator (?, can't remember his title) vectoring him to the bogeys it's not coming from the carrier. It's coming from an AEGIS ship.

However, you are right. The Captain's "in-port" cabin usually becomes an embarked flag officer's quarters, and though not the penthouse at the Ritz compared to even the officers quarters it's usually very nice.

QM2 (ESWS)

 

[Sean the Nailer]

Emu's and cheap tricks??

No Barney, I haven't got a clue. And I tried to search it using Ixquick (Classic.Startpage.com) and got absolutely no-where. So, somebody intelligenter will have to chime in here about that one.

 

[Barneybdb]

The answer is in the first part of this link, along with a bit of interesting reading about Australian Navy helos in Vietnam: https://www.faaaa.asn.au/ranhfv-stories/

 

[Sean the Nailer]

Damn fine work, gentlemen! And thanks for sharing that with us here, Barney.

 

[Strykervet]

When they were making prototypes at, I believe, Woolrich Arsenal, they were trying to disguise them by claiming that they were water bowsers. So they called them 'tanks.'

Cheers,

Sirhr

Pretty close, that's the common answer. More detailed, what happened was that the tank was dreamt up by a naval guy (submariner IIRC) not an army guy. They called it a "tank" in part to disguise it's nature like you say but also to get funding for something that wasn't naval at all because it was presented to Churchill, who was "Lord Admiral" or the equivalent of Secretary of Navy, and he's who authorized it for WW1. So the nomenclature for the tank ended up being naval nomenclature, with "hatches" and "ports" and "decks" and so on.

Carrying on naval tradition of designing tanks, the largest one conceived and almost built were two P.1000 Ratte tanks designed by a sub guy and used several sub engines and weighed 1000 tons. It had the same turret and main guns as the Gneisenau battleship with the middle gun removed. The idea was a "land battleship". It had a lot of other naval aspects to the design and nomenclature as well.

There were even larger ideas and designs (I'm not sure how advanced) to take guns like the Paris gun and Anzio Annie, etc., and mount THOSE on tracked carriages, in effect a super massive super tank, but abandoned because those big ass guns actually stripped out the bore after fifty or so rounds!

 

[sirhrmechanic]

^^^ You do have to remember, however, that Churchill did not need things disguised. He was the driving force behind a lot of this and was totally behind creating the tanks. It wasn't that the Navy didn't want to fund it and it had to be disguised from him as a 'navy thing'... it was all disguised to keep the Army from blocking the Royal Navy from building it it! Churchill also created the first Armoured Car squadrons (note the term... squadron). Supposedly to protect RNAS Air bases... but that was the excuse. The reality is that he saw the future in mechanization and knew that as soon as he got his armoured car squadrons on an airbase, he could send them careening around the countryside shooting things up. Which is what he did. But all the early armoured cars were RNAS armoured car squadrons... until along came the Duke of Westminster who bought 24 Rolls-Royce's himself, built his own squadron, named the cars after his Fox Hunting Dogs... and went off to war as a happy colonel. You could do that back then.... if you paid for your own army, you got to play with it. To his credit, the Duke of Westminster proved highly-competent and his armoured cars did great service!

As for Churchill... he was a visionary and a 'boffin.' He loved internal combustion. And in Oil. And in "Land Ships." And planes. And sneaky booby trap device... and daring-do.... So as First Lord of the Admiralty, Churchill didn't need anything 'hidden or disguised' within the Navy. But he did need to make sure the Army didn't find out about it and have a collective hissy fit.

Remember that back in WW1, the Germans were the Opposition. The Army was the enemy!

Cheers,

Sirhr

 

[Barneybdb]

Churchill had a very interesting career, he served in the Army both before and after that stint as First Lord of the Admiralty, he was Prime Minister when I was born in Yorkshire and died just before I moved to Australia.

 

[sirhrmechanic]

Interesting career... heck... interesting life! I think his greatest quote was "Of course history will treat me well, since I intend to write it."

And he did.

BTW, the book Hero of the Empire about his time in the Boer War is an amazing read!

Cheers,

Sirhr

 

[sirhrmechanic]

Ok... this is an easy one if you Google. But harder if you don't.

What's a Quaker Cannon?

Cheers,

Sirhr

 

[sirhrmechanic]

No one?? Bueller.. Bueller?

Cheers, Sirhr

 

[Barneybdb]

Down here in Australia we would call it "Claytons cannon"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claytons

 

[sirhrmechanic]

I'll give you that one, Barney! Not on the alcohol (but I love the term!)

Quaker Cannons were wooden logs carved to look like artillery, often used effectively by the South to intimidate weak Union generals into thinking they were facing bigger opposition. Or to funnel troops to 'stronger' areas of the lines. Or to cover retreats.... get the real guns out while the fake ones looked... real.

Cheers,

Sirhr

 

[Sean the Nailer]

Uh, SirH,,,, did the Pole's not do this as well, when the Germans were invading back in '39?

(no pun intended)

I seem to remember something about this, being spoken by my teacher many MANY moons ago.

 

[sirhrmechanic]

Sean... I would not doubt it. The British also did it masterfully at Gallipoli during the withdrawl (In fact, I think it was the ANZACS who really engineered the withdrawal).

It's been done by every army, everywhere... probably since the cannon was invented.

In the Gulf War.... Saddam put sewer pipes on trucks.... lit gasoline fires in them... and in came the SCUD hunters... who hit pieces of sewer pipe with a heat signature. Sorry night-fighters. Took the SAS and Special Forces to really shut down the SCUDS... Mk1 Mod0 Eyeball trumps FLIR some days....

Cheers,

Sirhr

 

[Barneybdb]

Can anyone identify this aircraft? Michigan 1952.

 

[Sean the Nailer]

Barney, is that the Ryan L-17B Navion?

 

[sirhrmechanic]

So this guy looks like a pretty serious Nerd.

Why is he, most-decidedly, not?

Cheers,

Sirhr

 

[Strykervet]

Is that Flucky? Got a MOH and four Navy Crosses? Sure looks like him but younger.

Mushmouth Morton would have been a good one but in his pictures he actually looks like the type of motherfucker to do the crazy shit he did!

 

[Barneybdb]

Nerds don't carry stretchers, disarm bombs or run nuke schools.....

 

[Barneybdb]

Barney, is that the Ryan L-17B Navion?

I think you got it Sean, found another interesting pic....

Ryan L-17B Navion on USS Leyte (CV-32), 1950.

 

[Strykervet]

Ok, so whose the badass?

 

[Barneybdb]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draper_Kauffman

Rear Admiral Draper Laurence Kauffman (4 August 1911 – 18 August 1979)[2] was an American underwater demolition expert, who served during the 1960s as 44th Superintendent of the United States Naval Academy. During World War II, he organized the first U.S. Navy Demolition Teams, which later gave rise to the SEALs. His wartime service also included participation in the invasions of Saipan, Tinian, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa.

 

[Sean the Nailer]

How/where did the USS Intrepid get it's name?

 

[Foul Mike]

What is the difference between a DFAC and the chowhall, messhall?
Don't say buffet, Chowhalls ain't got time for that shit.
Do they even have KP anymore?