OT: Tools of Modern Terror

No free gas :-)

Actually, the needs were taken care of quite satisfactorily. They gave you all your clothes and they laundered them free. Lodgings were sort for communal, for the lower ranks, At Randolph AFB I slept in a room with about 100 other guys. As I remember the food at permanent installations was pretty good . Medical care was good and totally free. What more could one want?

And, if one had visions of actually being a Bad Ass M-16 Toter all one had to do was volunteer.... and, of course pass some fairly rigorous physical and mental tests :-)

Reply to
John B.
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I believe the original comment was permanently stationed in Laos".

Reply to
John B.

No one could be stationed at nonexistent sites, because if they were, a leak of any personnel data would have revealed those places. The reason you had only an APO mailing address was to conceal troop deployments.

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

I would have to question the claim of "busiest airports in the world" though. The Wiki references some sort of tour group. The Long Tieng runway was 4,133 ft. while Udorn RTAFB the closest air base in Thailand has 10,000 ft. Chicago, during the 1860's was handling in neighborhood of 1,600,000 passengers annually.

Reply to
John B.

It was free if I wanted to draw a military vehicle for a trip, but then I couldn't stay overnight in a Gasthaus in some little village that hadn't seen too many Americans.

Tax-free gas for my VW cost $0.18 a gallon for up to 200(?) liters a month for a small car, twice as much for a big American car. We could sell unused ration coupons and towards the end of the month only VW owners had any left. I needed more once, to visit Switzerland.

The pumps had signs on them reminding the buyers that 3/4 of the price was tax.

--jsw

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

Wouldn't know, was elsewhere at the time, Gott sei dank. Maybe they meant sortie rate.

--jsw

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

^^^^^^ ????

Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

Strange. I didn't know that an APO address was to conceal Troop deployments....

Given that the U.S. Department of Defense publishes a complete listing of every APO in the world and its physical location. It is called a Military Post Office Location(MPOLL) and the copy I have is stamped "Approved for Public Release, Distribution unlimited".

Reply to
John B.

Reply to
Larry Jaques

The base locations can't be kept secret but a sudden, massive movement of troops into say Korea or Poland or Kuwait is. That's why foreign agents record the flights in and out of military bases.

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You can track planes yourself:

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The declassified story of ULTRA/ENIGMA is a fascinating revelation of the incredible amount of effort put into technical espionage. ULTRA is largely what gave us computers.

This describes the traditional practices:

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--wc2mp

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

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