Taksin Finds Out Cowboy Will Be Flooded...!

[waerth]

p.s. Das Boot made me wonder why anyone in their right mind would serve in the U-boats. Something like 80% of the U-boat crewmen were killed. Even about 25% of the US submariners died in WWII

 

Maybe has something to do with the hunting instinct in mankind. Approaching your pray, surprising it and then knocking it out .....

[Flashermac]

By mid-war radar was the death knell of the U-boats. They used to attack at night on the surface, but with radar they were spotted immediately and sunk. Even a periscope could be spotted. By 1944-45, most U-boats were being sunk with all hands on their first mission! By Adolf kept ordering them out.

 

The US Navy right after the war admitted that its submarines followed the same rules as the U-boats did, not a lick of difference. My dad's cousin served on the US sub that had the second highest total of Japanese tonnage to its credit, the majority of it merchant shipping. Subs were commerce raiders. That was there main purpose. The merchant seamen knew it too. Such is war.

[rookie]

The_Munchmaster wrote: "Yes, it is very good, which is why I posted it yesterday!"

 

**As usual, I'm terminally a day late and and a dollar short....

 

Flashermac wrote: 'You weren't going to get me into a tank or an APC.... The 'PCs were even worse, since a ordinary .50 cal round could pierce it. We called the PC's "moving coffins".'

 

**I was with the only APC group attached to the 1st Air Cav. Most of the time my platoon was 'coptered into a village for search & destroy missions, less often did we use APC's for missions. Yet, on one mission my PC was hit in the front, by a B-40 rocket grenade. Nasty and scary and lotsa yellow flames everywhere which lasted a mere moment!!! Fortunately only the radio and the hydrolic system in my PC was destroyed, but small pieces of schrapnel, from the exploded radio, decorated most of us, luckily without serious injuries to anyone.

The main purpose of the APC was to carry troups and equipment into the field to be deployed, not to be used as a primary weapons support vehicle. I'd never heard anyone use the term "moving coffins", until your post. Further, never encountered any small NVA units carrying a 50-cal (though possible); usually primarily AK's, SKS and often a few B-40's.

[Flashermac]

We gave them the "moving coffins" name after seeing one hit an anti-vehicle mine on the road between Kontum and Dak To. Every man inside it had to be medivac'ed to Pleiku and thence to Japan. Probably a TM46 AT mine (or something similar), since it was more powerful than a box mine.

 

As an engineer, I spent a lot of time on minesweeps. We would head south from Dak To, and C Company's team would move north from Kontum ( distance of about 30 miles). We were usually on our own, but once in a while we'd get a couple of PCs for support. We swept the road and the PCs drove along each side. Charlie got smart that day and put a mine off the side of the road, where we did not sweep. The APC found it. I don't recall the 4th Division providing us anymore PCs after that.

 

p.s. One of our platoons got hit with a 12.7 Soviet or Chinese machine gun in an ambush on a mine sweep west of An Khe. The LT was a gun nut and had swapped around for a little 60mm mortar. He had it set up in the back of a 5-ton truck, and he immediately began firing on the machine gun. They quickly didi'ed the area. When the LTC heard about it, he chewed out the LT's butt for having an unauthorized weapon and ordered him to get rid of the mortar.

[zen4dummies]

You weren't going to get me into a tank or an APC. Ground pounders love their freedom of movement. Armour is a sitting target, and if you do get killed it is going to be nasty ... like burning to death. The 'PCs were even worse, since a ordinary .50 cal round could pierce it. I saw an PC hit a mine on a sweep north of Kontum. Blast came right though the bottom and blew the fark out of the guys inside it. We called the PC's "moving coffins".

 

 

p.s. Das Boot made me wonder why anyone in their right mind would serve in the U-boats. Something like 80% of the U-boat crewmen were killed. Even about 25% of the US submariners died in WWII

 

I had the misfortune to be trained in tanks (M48s) in January at Fort Knox and they are walking freezers. An attempt to wash the white inside of the tank with hot water and rags would up with a rag frozen to the tank. The PCs at the time were unreliable but the newer models were made out of some sort of aluminum alloy and would burn furiously when hit with the proper round. I remember reading that the Israelis had some and drove them from the outside, through the drivers hatch, with sticks because of this problem.

 

Years later a German too young to be in the WWII German submarines told me that his dream was to be a submariner. He went to the docks to watch them come in and the sailors were so shaky and beaten up that he decided that was not for him.

 

zen

[Flashermac]

I finished combat engineer AIT at Fort Lost in the Woods in the Ozark Mountains in January. We then went right into 3 weeks of intensive infantry training prior to shipping off to RVN. It was 8 degrees Fahrenheit (13C) and everything was blanket with snow. We froze our butts off in the woods. We got up one morning and were in formation when we heard a crack, followed by a KARUMP. A frozen tree had fallen across 3 pup tents which minutes before had been occupied. The Army really prepared us well to go to SE Asia. I remember being in a snowball fight 2 days before we set off for Oakland and RVN.

 

p.s. The VC village at Leonard Wood was really cool ... frigid actually. Our trainee platoon leader tripped over a booby trap hidden in the snow.

[rookie]

Hmmm...

Some posts of old farts reminiscing...

 

Cold: I can relate to Flashermac's experience. As a native Californian, I thought that the South was always warm. Wrong! When obtaining my commission at Benning School for Boys, in Georgia, one training exercise kept us in the woods for a few days. Poncho liners do not make decent blankets! It was so cold that I experienced frostbite and it was a few weeks before feeling returned in the affected toes.

 

Tanks: While at Benning, I missed nearly a week of training due to the flu. The training I missed was on tanks. I'd always wanted to try driving a tank. Upon being commissioned, my first assignment was to an Infantry training brigade at Fort McClellan, Alabama. My staff and I were to teach AIT recruits in a remote and large wooded section of the Fort. We we teaching the basics of using a compass, escape & evasion and how to interrogate a Vietnamese prisoner. The latter was ridiculous and typical of military _stupidity_, as no one spoke any Vietnamese, so the designed class was done totally in English!

In this remote area, there was a section where the National Guard stored a few tanks, which were unguarded, for their training exercises. This was my opportunity, so during a break in training, I went there and got in a tank. After figuring out how to start it, I drove around until somehow I was butted up against a tree and the hydraulic system broke. I abandoned the tank and returned to my training area. The Brigade colonel found out an was furious, but never learned who the culprit was. Fortunately the Statute of Limitations has surely long since passed. :-)

 

FWIW: Ft. McCellan was also the home of the WACS (Women's Army Corp) training area. One day I drove by their area and observed a WAC drill sergeant dealing with a hundred of her trainees. She was loudly hollering and dressing them down for not cleaning their barracks properly. Just prior to dismissing them she shouted 'Remember that there is 6-miles of dick on this post and none of you will even get even a inch, and your overnight leave will be cancelled if your barracks are not clean"!! I was shocked! I'd never heard a woman talk that way!

[Flashermac]

I was called in by my 1st Sergeant at Dak To firebase. He told me, "You're going home." I asked what he meant. Seems my orders for OCS had finally caught up with me. I asked since when did he think Fort Benning was my home? By then I was acting operations sergeant and had been transfered out of a line platoon. No way I was about to give that up to spend 16 weeks running all over the Georgia woods just so somebody could salute me and I could go right back to RVN as a grunt. I refused my orders and finished my tour in RVN as an NCO.

 

I'm glad you mentioned the WACs. They could cuss in ways to make a male drill sergeant green with envy. I walked past the WAC area at Fort Leonard Wood one day, and a female sergeant was out on the platform leading PT. They were doing jumping jacks. She yelled at them, "Come on, you bitches! I want to see those tits floppin' and hear those cunts clap!"