[Milsurplus] Re: surplus ships fleet

[Hue Miller]

>On 2/22/06, C Whitaker <whitaker at pa.net> wrote:
> > de WB2CPN
> >
> > I'm sure that a lot of the contracts with manufacturers during
> > WWII included  provisos that covered the disposition of the
> > equipment at the end of the war.  I know that on Enewetok
> > some heavy equipment was pushed out on the reef at low tide,
> > then the valve and other covers were removed.
______________________________________________________
>
>One of my professors told stories of this kind of thing after the war
>ended. New flight jackets piled up and burned, new Hallicrafters
>receivers dumped on a runway and run over by a bulldozer. Another old
>timer from the Pacific told me about pushing aircraft off a steep
>cliff into the ocean with a 'dozer, and off ships at sea by hand.
>Wasn't too many years back I saw photos of tanks being shoved off a
>barge with a large bucket loader.  Now, there's something you want to
>be careful doing......
>
>de Todd/'Boomer'  KA1KAQ
>______________________________________________________________

I would sure like to know the truth about this issue of government - 
industry
agreements. One veteran told me, "And that was because the manufacturers
had an agreement with the government, this stuff would not show up on the
market back in the USA."  I have long figured this just as a  myth, but  i 
may
be wrong. I can understand how one could logically accept that, when for
example you watched a bulldozer push factory-fresh tool cabinets full of 
hand
tools, over othe side of a Saipan cliff. Hard to understand that 
wastefulness
of human productivity these days, but i suppose somehow, in that flush
period just after the end of the Pacific War, that this "seemed to be the 
best
thing to do at the time". Meanwhile, while Uncle Sam was dumping or trashing
much of his wealth, basically any individual could keep anything he could 
get
away with.  This includes carrying back issued but unused equipment, and the
higher up in rank you got, the easier it was. I know in fact of 
"clandestine" or
"spy" equipment that made its way into private hands this way.   Also, as 
with
much of the construction insdustry still, the "down" channel is works well 
but
there really isn't much of a provision for an "up" channel to return excess
material.
(Not really in the category of gov't waste, but Tony Grogan told me an 
interesting
story he was aware of: a Marine radioman was wounded on a Paicific island, 
and
his fellow gyrenes mailed his TBY radio back to his family as a kind of 
mimento. )
Also this topic has me wondering about this: was there an identical wastage 
situation
in the European theater? I am tending to think not: there were maybe US 
allies
eager to take up US military equipment for their own militaries ( France, 
Italy?
Greece?? ).  I also now recall hearing from fellow here that mil-surplus US 
Army jeeps
were sold in Switzerland right after the war. Maybe a big factor in the 
Pacific theater
waste was simply the isolation of many of these sites from any population 
center (=
markets ), plus a need for ship space to return troops to the States.  Altho 
it still
seems difficult to me to understand the burning of surplus PT boats in the
Phiippines. Seems like someone could have put them to some kind of gtainful
employment. -Hue Miller