[ARC5] RAT and RAT-1: The Arizona Connection

[Todd, KA1KAQ]

On Mon, Jan 9, 2012 at 4:37 PM, Kenneth G. Gordon
<kgordon2006 at frontier.com> wrote:

> I also remember being told of a base in Alaska. At the end of WWII,
> there was a huge pile of material at the base. Blankets, food, etc.
> When the commander of the base asked his higher-ups what to do with
> it, he was told, "Throw it in the fire.".
>
> So, he had a long, but not very wide, fire built down the center of
> his local runway, lined up all the "excess" material on one side of
> the fire with the necessary men to handle it, and had them throw it
> all "in the fire".
>
> Meanwhile, the locals on the OTHER side of the fire caught it and
> took it home.

A far better outcome than the one I heard of in college. One of my
profs was a high level Naval Electronics guy. He told me of truckloads
of gear being destroyed: in particular, G3 leather flight jackets
being burned, and NIB Hallicrafters receivers (repackaged SX-28A,
can't remember the nomenclature) being dumped out of a truck on the
runway and flattened with a dozer. Another old timers from my early
radio days was a seabee. He told of pushing aircraft off the cliff at
the end of the runway, and pushing others off the deck of a carrier on
the way home.

> There is supposed to be an entire shipload of AR-88s at the bottom of
> the ocean near Seattle, but that is most likely an apochryphal
> story...

I exchanged email with a fellow from Canada who claimed to have been
involved with that somehow. Rather than a shipload, it was several
dozen new-in-crate receivers that were dumped(easily a shi*load to
most of us). He held some hope that some had survived since they were
sealed up inside the crates and was looking into organizing a dice but
couldn't get permission since it was a busy harbor. It was supposedly
on the BC side.

Some store in Boston or surrounding area did this recently to a bunch
of new, unsold wedding dresses, spraying them with red paint. At least
it was their own money getting wasted, not ours.

~ Todd/KAQ