[Milsurplus] Your tax dollars at work My stories

[Hubert Miller]

Jeff - thanks for explaining the difference between "EXCESS"  and  "SURPLUS".  Now ah understands !
Thanks to all who posted "stories".  I assiduously collect these and save them in a file.
Jeff - or anyone - if & when you have time, i'm all ears, so to speak, for more.

I recall years ago, at a buffet restaurant with my parents, there was another older gent with a veteran cap and i got talking to him. Not sure how we got on the topic of surplus disposal,
but he was telling me, when his unit "moved out", and i don't recall where this was, so it's kind of a useless anecdote, the men were ordered to burn, i assume, all their encampment.
One GI made the dumb mistake of trying to enhance the fire by throwing gas on it, and he died of his burns. No doubt his next of kin received a statement that he died "in action against
the enemy."  Accidents under wartime conditions have a much greater potential to be lethal. Just think of all those many air crashes during training or proficiency hours flights.
-H

From: Milsurplus [mailto:milsurplus-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Jeff Kruth via Milsurplus
Sent: Monday, March 13, 2017 8:18 AM
To: milsurplus at mailman.qth.net
Subject: Re: [Milsurplus] Your tax dollars at work My stories

Hello All!

Been reading this thread with interest. I have a lot of stories. My first "real" radio (BC-455) was given to me by a sympathetic ham who saw me fooling with a homebrew portable regen in a park.  My next was a BC-779 saved from a "basement about to flood". So I grew up loving WWII surplus radios and electronics.

One of my first papers written for 7th grade English class was on an article I saw in LOOK or LIFE (circa 1969-70) on WWII surplus, its showed rows of 2-1/2 ton trucks out on Kiska in the Aleutians left over from WWII. Looked like they had been brand new when parked at the end of the war, and still were incredibly good shape.  Further research on my part led to an agreement by manufacturers with the US Gov't  that material furnished at low cost for WWII would NOT be repatriated as Ford, etc. did not want to compete with their own product (now surplus) in the post war period.

Another: My Uncle Johnny, a great cook, was made a mechanic by the AAF (of course), and was in the Pacific. During the island hopping period of the war, as they were leaving an island airbase, they were told to go bury their Snap-On and Proto tools sets, just issued, on the beach, at the waters edge. They would be re-issued new ones at the next island.  My old man, a mechanical engineer and backyard mechanic, used to shake his head and groan when John (re-)told this story. Johnny also told of Bulldozer contests where they would put tin can stack extensions on air inlet and exhaust stacks and run the bulldozers out into ocean to see whos would make it the farthest.

Another: At the end of WWII, piers full of electronics, radars, comm gear, supplies, etc. were stacked up in Australia. The US Navy "offered" to transport this material out into the Pacific to "help the Aussies out" by getting rid of the leftover stuff. The Aussies said" That's OK mate, we'll take care of it". This is how CISRO was started, on WWII stuff.  (From IIRC, "The Invention that Changed the World, The invention of Radar", R. Buderi, 1996).

Another: My good friend, John Jolly (no kidding), was a Navy lifer in Comm, he told the story of decommissioning ships headed for mothball/scrappers. He said they would throw everything they could over the side. He laughed as he told of Tek scopes, HP spec an's, new drill indexes full, tool boxes, spare parts, you name it, that they carried up and threw overboard.  The incentive: less stuff to write up when the ship arrived, so a lot easier.

I spent 30 years buying Gov't electronic surplus, in LARGE volumes. when I lived in the Baltimore-Washington area: Ft. Meade, Belvoir, Pax, Dahlgren. Aberdeen PG, Mechanicsburg, and others. I knew & horse-traded with all the surplus dealers in the area.

I saw enormous quantities of wasted stuff. I complained. One old gal who ran Fort Meade DRMO said "You do not understand, we are not tasked with making money or saving this material for civilian use. We are here to DISPOSE of surplus material."

I learned when I joined a Screeners and uses of federal EXCESS material, what the definitions were and why.
"Surplus" means the gov't and all associated civilian organizations have had a crack at the EXCESS, and now it becomes SURPLUS (read: waste) in the gov't mind.

I have more......

Regards,
Jeff Kruth
WA3ZKR


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