HISTORICAL ADVENTURES: REAL LIFE vs MY LIFE

Last night we reviewed historical adventures at my local five star with friends

Some of us had a hand in it, one of us made things up.

Guess who is who?

Even I got confused, so much so that I have to get things straightened out.

How does a baby boomer blogger do that? By going to work.

Four of us sat in circle of comfortable chairs, a salon-ish circle, before the Sunday roast.

We caught up with each other, sharing views on current topics and plans, while raising our glasses together.

The ladies finished setting the table close to dinner time, leaving two men.

We were talking about historical adventures of a sort when my buddy casually mentioned the listening devices on the Ho Chi Minh Trail he’d had a hand in delivering.

My ears perked up.

He did what?

I don’t have an investigative reporter gene on BoomerPdx, but listening devices on the Ho Chi Minh Trail sounds incredible, so I asked a few questions, got a few answers, and everything checked out.

From the National Museum Of The United States Air Force:

 

Using the cover of darkness, dense jungle and bad weather, North Vietnamese trucks carried critical supplies down the Ho Chi Minh Trail nearly undetected.

Since large numbers of American ground troops were not permitted into neutral Laos to stop the trucks, the U.S. Air Force deployed a system of electronic equipment to thwart the enemy’s cover and alert U.S. commanders.

This highly-classified electronic system was known as Igloo White.

Dropped from F-4 Phantoms, CH-3 helicopters, OV-10s and other aircraft, they were designed to drive into the ground but leave the antenna exposed. The antennas were made to look like a small tree or bush to hide them from the enemy.

Over 20,000 sensors were dropped in Laos, and 80 percent of the sensors were operational after dropping. 

 

 

My pal covered all of the highlights without research, just sitting together in a circle sipping tequila and lime, when I pointed my finger and said, “You are a spy.”

Or maybe I politely asked him if he was a spy and didn’t bring out the pointer?

Either way, he inspired me to review a similar story, which turned out not so similar.

 

Not A Spy Story?

During the Iraq v Iran war in the 1980’s America sided with Iraq, I said.

Since Iran had superior numbers, Iraq needed deterrence.

Like cluster bombs.

 

Just how a Chilean arms dealer got snarled in the U.S.-Iraq conflict – and wound up on the board of a winery with ties to Northern California – is a tale of betrayal and hard-fought redemption.

Export records showed that in the past five years, Swissco and a company in Albany, Ore., called Teledyne had shipped more than 130 tons of zirconium to Industrias Cardoen in Chile.

Zirconium, a silvery-white metal, usually sets off alarms with customs inspectors because it is commonly used in nuclear reactors. Industrias Cardoen had discovered that it made an excellent incendiary additive in cluster bombs.

But the export license applications that Swissco and Teledyne had submitted to the Commerce Department said that Industrias Cardoen would use the material for “mining operations.”

In July 1991, a former CIA operative told ABC’s “Nightline” that in 1986 Gates, who was then a CIA deputy director, had met with Cardoen in Florida.

A “Nightline” source said Gates had personally supervised a shipment of materials from the United States to Industrias Cardoen in Chile to make cluster bombs for Iraq.

 

In my spy story the hero chases after the connections between Albany and Iraq, always showing up late.

Any similarities between the hero and this writer are purely coincidental? Sure they are.

It’s strictly coincidence that my hero grew up in North Bend, Oregon, joined the Army, didn’t get his chosen assignment, got sidelined to a forgotten backwater clinic in Philadelphia where he met a spy recruiter who put him on the trail of connections between Albany and Iraq and cluster bombs from Chile.

 

The Story That Writes Itself

The part of the evening that took us to listening devices was the Iraq Super Gun.

During a trip to England I stopped at the American Air Museum at Duxford and saw this length of pipe.

Instead of a pipe it was a section of Super Gun.

I explained who Gerald Bull was, but didn’t remember his name, just his claims for fame.

 

The culmination of Bull’s work came in the late 1980s with the Supergun project.

After serving jail time in the US for dealing arms to South Africa, Bull had moved away from clients in the West, and had taken up work with China and Iraq.

Ultimately, though, this gave him the opportunity to pursue his dream of an orbital launch gun once more.

The PC-2 was intended to be capable of launching a 440 lb (200 kg) satellite into an orbital trajectory, carried by a 4,400 lb (2,000 kg) rocket-assisted projectile. Alternatively, it could have launched a 1,300 lb (600 kg) projectile over 620 miles (1,000 km).

 

The distance is important.

The historical adventures for my spy story ends with the beginning of the first Iraq War, where he is back in Philadelphia after chasing the Super Gun parts around the world.

Inspired by true events, I made some things up to keep the story going.

My buddy didn’t have to make anything up to keep going.

He’s a man who knows how to keep going and make it look easy.

 

PS: How thrilling is it to share historical adventures with people who have lived it? There’s always more than meets the eye, and some people have seen it.

 

PSS: Just because you look and sound like a James Bond character doesn’t make you a spy. But it doesn’t hurt.

“Shaken, not stirred.”