[Milsurplus] Re: surplus ships fleet

[telegrapher at att.net]

When i got to Germany in 1965 the US forces were being moved out of our 
powerful "friend" France's facilities.  There was a crunch on to get 
people and stuff out of there ASAP.  Across the border from where i was 
they took everything that was expendable, not worth recovering, and 
dumped it in trenches (big ones i might add), ran over it and then set 
it on fire then covered it up.  This was to prevent the French from 
digging it out and reusing it.  Main thing from what i understood was 
that it concerned office equipment that was not worth recovering.  There 
was probably more to it than that but this was what i was informed of.

On the other side of the world in the Pacific, my dad who was in the AAF 
out there told me of times they would take barge loads of radio gear out 
into the ocean areas and dump everything overboard.  New, repaired etc. 
  Didn't make any difference as the Gummit had agreed that they would 
not return this to the US economy.  WOuld cause a big overload and 
reduce production causing companies who had gummit contracts for war 
material to have severe cash flow problems trying to compete with war 
surplus material recovery.  You should have seen the tears streaming 
down my cheeks when i was told of NIB radios going into the drink.  Made 
me want  to swim out there and look around right then.  Yeah right!

I was told the same thing happened in Vietnam.  SUpposedly there was a 
pier built out of BC-610 transmitters.  This was brought out on the list 
here several years back i think.

While in Germany i made TDY trips to Wheelus AFB down in Tripoli, Libya 
on a rotational basis.  Having a ham license i spent some of my spare 
time at the MARS station which was located in the corner of one of the 
warehouses.  Getting to know the guys there was fun.  They also had just 
across the partition from the station a whole big bunch of crates. 
Nosing around i found that they were brand new BC-610I models.  Probably 
20 + in number.  Never been opened.  When i would get ready for 
departure back to Germany they would harp on me to take some of them 
along.  had to get rid of them somehow.  On my final rotation out of 
there they offered to put them on the cargo manifest, as many as i 
wanted and would even get them shipped to my stateside address if i 
would just take them along.  Being single and living in the barracks was 
not a good place to store BC-610's in the crate so i had to leave them 
behind.  My last trip down there was in 1968.  Shortly thereafter the US 
was asked to leave the country and I have no idea what happened to that 
equipment but i can guess.  It probably now resides either in a trench, 
smashed and burnt or is swimming with the fishes somewhere off the beach.

Larry
W0OGH


Hue Miller wrote:

>> 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
> 
> 
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