[Milsurplus] Your Tax Dollars At Work, part nnnnnn

[Thekan, Paul]

A older friend had told me that as a boy just after the war his family and many others would go on the weekends up to  Pt  Reyes , Bodega Bay up in Marin County and find crated items tossed off the ships out by the Farallon Islands as the ships were returning to San Francisco. Evidently a lot of the crates did not sink to the bottom and the currents being what they were deposited  these on those beaches . All sorts of items were recovered with the big finds being binoculars , and jackets. I guess the jackets must have been in water sealed packaging as well as the binoculars.
 A funny find that he and his brothers came across were boxes of prophylactics that they tried to blow up like balloons.  He said those turned out to be a very popular find also with the adults.

Paul
N6FEG

From: Milsurplus [mailto:milsurplus-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Todd, KA1KAQ
Sent: Sunday, March 12, 2017 5:44 PM
To: Kenneth G. Gordon
Cc: Milsurplus
Subject: Re: [Milsurplus] Your Tax Dollars At Work, part nnnnnn

One of my profs in school told me similar stories from WWII. He said he watched brand new leather flight jackets dumped in a pile, gas poured over them, and burned. He said there was so much stuff that releasing it for sale on an already feeble consumer market (due to 4+ years of war) would've really messed up the economy and driven some companies out of business.
Same thing with a bunch of radio gear. He specifically mentioned the 'airborne SX-28' - a dump truck full of new, unissued radios slowly dumped them in a line on the runway. Following behind was a bulldozer which ran over them and crushed them into scrap. Same reasoning.
Another old timer was a SeaBee in the South Pacific. He told stories of pushing planes over the cliff at the end of one of the runways, and also shoving more off the ship on his way home.
More recently I was chatting with a fellow in NC who has a car stored for me. He came here from Oz and was into warbirds before the move (had to sell his Spitfire project due to the move). He mentioned an island where apparently, to this day, there are (I think) P-39 Airacobras sitting in crates where they were unloaded. He said the island hopping campaign was moving so fast in that area that they just left them behind. I'd never heard of them being used in the Pacific, so I'll recheck his email.
Some of it certainly makes sense - tired, shot up, worn out equipment wasn't worth the effort or expense of moving. Maybe a lot of newer stuff, too.

On Sun, Mar 12, 2017 at 7:21 PM, Kenneth G. Gordon <kgordon2006 at frontier.com<mailto:kgordon2006 at frontier.com>> wrote:
When I was a much younger ham, I was told a similar story by one of my Elmers who was a
WWII vet.

He was in Alaska at some small airbase at the end of WWII. As I remember it, it was in the
Aleutians somewhere. FAR out in the sticks.

His commander was told to get rid of everything in inventory except what was immediately
needed for the troops to come home.

When he asked what he was supposed to do with the stuff, he was told "Throw it in the fire".

So, he had a long thin bonfire constructed down some portion of the length of the runway, lit it
off, then had his men "throw the stuff in the fire".

He had notified the people who lived in the town to which the airbase was attached, and had
them come out to the base. His men lined up, started throwing the stuff in the fire, while the
towns people lined up on the other side of the bonfire and caught the stuff as it came flying
through the flames.

Blankets, cots, clotheing, food, first aid items, radios, medical supplies, kitchen supplies,
tents, tools, spare parts, everything possible, etc.

I don't remember all of the items, but my Elmer was quite specific at the time. I can
remember him shaking his head as he told some of us of it.

Ken W7EKB

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