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Good Morning -- BroJon Readers !! Here's the latest edition of
THE BROTHER JONATHAN GAZETTE
DAILY DIGEST
Friday July 7, 2006
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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when
everything the American public believes is false."
-- William Casey, CIA Director (from first staff meeting, 1981)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
THE NORTH KOREAN MISSILES - of July 4th 2006
What The Mainstream Press Never Knew or Report
Part 1
A number of news sources in the last several days have reported on the strange
connection between North Korean missiles and the Space Shuttle. Their
information was based on articles from the BroJon Gazette going back several
years, and from a recent BroJon Digest article showing how the North Koreans
were being used as puppets to run a secret Chinese military program to probe
American space and missile defense systems.
Unfortunately, those news sources usually got the story a bit wrong. They
didn't quite understand all the technical parts, so they made up the parts they
didn't understand and then filled in the gaps, as needed, to fit their pet
theories.
THE KOREAN MISSILE PROGRAM
The last firing of a Korean missile at a Space Shuttle or at the United States
was not in 1998 or 1999 as most news sources report. The last
"attack" was in February 2003. It was the cause of the downing
of Space Shuttle Columbia. The Korean missile was not aimed at the
Shuttle nor anywhere near it, but it was made to be on a slightly lagging or
parallel orbital path that made it look like the missile might converge with
the Shuttle somewhere over Texas. That was enough to make the US Air
Force turn on its main top secret space weapon and shoot at the Korean
missile. That was the purpose of the 2001 Chinese military test. The
Chinese wanted to see what defensive radars, and weapons were turned on when an
American asset is threatened. And boy, did they find out a lot.
It wasn't until late in 2003, that the US Congress actually spent some money to
built a missile-based anti-missile system. Mainly since preliminary tests
showed that hitting a missile with another missile was a pretty
"iffy" business at best. The early test results were less
than 50-50. Many scientists even claimed that a missile-based defense
system was a bad idea for two primary reasons: (1) what if the
"enemy" puts up more missiles than you have defensive missiles, then
you shoot your load of missiles and then you are defenseless, then what?
And (2) what if the "enemy" has missiles which in space eject ten
dummy missiles made out of balloons or something. Then when the
"enemy" fires ten missiles, they quickly appear to become one hundred
missiles spread out in space, and 90 of them are dummy balloons -- which
"missile" do you shoot at? So far, there has been no answer to
that question.
THE US SPACE SHIELD
In the early 1990's Congress approved the construction of a space shield device
seemingly left over from the 1980's Star Wars SDI program. Actually, the
project was based on a space shield design going way back to 1954, which was
three years before Sputnik in 1957 and the beginning of the Space Age.
What was that very old design?
In 1954, both the Soviet and the American rocket designers knew that in just
several years each side in the Cold War could make a missile, an ICBM
(Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile), which could carry a nuclear weapon all
the way around the world and could drop the weapon anytime anyplace. So,
what to do? Well, what if you take a small rocket and flew straight up
about 100 miles and then blew up a nuclear bomb? All the radiation from
the nuclear blast would remain in space and any ICBM flying through that high
radiation would have its electronics fried. Old 1950's-style transistors
did not like any kind of radiation. When whacked with high radiation, the
old "semiconductors" changed their internal structure and became
"conductors," meaning they all shorted out. They became
useless.
THE PROBLEM WITH ICBM MISSILE PROGRAMS
One of the problems with nuclear missile weapons that most people don't know
about is that it's easy to put a missile up in space and aim it at a target,
but the warhead has to make a reentry into the atmosphere. If the warhead
is not under some computer guidance control with a protective heat shield, then
the warhead tumbles during reentry and simply burns up like a shooting-star
meteor. And then the nuclear warhead melts and lands harmlessly, in some
farmer's field, as a melted pile of uranium or plutonium, which is easily
picked up by a Haz-Mat team and carted away in a pickup truck - with no damage
done. Without electronic guidance controls for reentry, it is impossible
to make a nuclear-tipped ICBM. And that was the purpose of the 1954
"Space Shield" nuclear tests. Using intense radiation in space
could make all ICBMs useless. You probably didn't know that.
By some strange coincidence, both the Soviets and the Americans, shot a missile
up into the air and blew up a nuclear bomb about 200 miles out in space.
And these two top secret military programs were both within months of each
other. What was the result? The intense radiation from the blasts
stayed in space and were trapped in the earth's magnetic field, much like the
intense radiation from the sun following a strong solar flare. Later, the
US sent another sounding rocket straight up to sample and measure the
radiation. It was Dr. Van Allen who claimed he "discovered" the
Van Allen radiation belts.
THE VAN ALLEN RADIATION BELTS
I always laugh at Van Allen's claim of discovery. He worked for the
military on the top secret "nuclear shield" program in 1954, so he
already knew what he was looking for. Do you claim you
"discovered" the morning newspaper when you walk out and find the
paper boy put it on the lawn rather than the driveway? No, you merely
"find" what you were looking for. But actually, Van Allen had
discovered a strange secret. Dr. Van Allen did find the layer of
radiation from the US blast at an altitude of about 150 miles, just as expected.
What he didn't expect was another much more intense intense radiation layer at
a height of about 200 miles. This was the result of the much bigger
Soviet blast just weeks before. But it was created from a spot on
the other side of the planet, so no Americans were supposed to know about the
Soviet test. This was all very top secret military stuff. The
public was never told. They were only told, several years later, that the
Van Allen Belts w
ere natural solar radiation.
The result was one of the first horrendous spy vs. spy programs during the
early Cold War - releasing the information to the "enemy" about the
results of the nuclear space defense shield. This was done several years
later by having Dr. Van Allen announce his "discovery" of the Van Allen
Radiation Belts. But as I said, Van Allen never discovered anything,
since he already knew what he was looking for and it was man-made by the US
military. Thus, all those encyclopedia articles and historical records
about Van Allen's discovery are false.
SOLVING THE VAN ALLEN RADIATION PROBLEM
But what Dr. Van Allen did do was put the Soviets on notice, "We know what
you Soviet boys have been up to. We cautcha doin it."
Studying the Van Allen Belts was even a part of the 1959 IGY year-long
geophysical program. But it was all a sham, and a military cover-up of
the real story. That story was that all ICBM missiles were made obsolete
in 1954, simply by blowing up a nuclear bomb in space, with the resulting
radiation that could make all ICBM missile delivery systems useless. But
again you were never told.
So if those missiles were obsolete, then what was the Cold War all about?
I don't know, I didn't make up the story. From the 1950's through the
1980's, the US Air Force with the Strategic Air Command (SAC) ran a program
called ChromeDome. This was a series of B52 bombers, with an air
mobile command headquarters always flying somewhere over Kansas, and at least
three B52's on a regular circuit which circled around the Soviet Union.
Why was the Air Force flying nuclear bombs in airplanes, when there already
were several other ICBM delivery systems? Most people were told, it was
because you can send a plane on a bombing mission, but the President with the
"nuclear football" could send the planes and then recall them before
actually dropping bombs. This was much safer than ICBM which couldn't be
recalled. That's a nice story for the public, but the real reason was
that the planes and bombs never went into space and couldn't be knocked down by
intense space radiation in an
y man-made Van Allen Belts.
US B52 BOMBERS AND THE SOVIET SAMS
But the Soviets developed a defense for the B52's. They were called
Surface to Air Missiles or SAMs. The real Cold War testing ground
for SAMs was Vietnam. At first the B52's could hit North Vietnam with
dumb iron bombs. The Soviets sent thousands of SAMs to the
Vietnamese. US bombers started falling out of the sky, until electronic
counter measures were developed to evade the SAMs. What the
Americans learned was that B52's were OK for conventional warfare but probably
not so good for strategic bombing with nuclear weapons. Why?
Because the Soviets learned in Vietnam, that SAM missiles make very good
defensive weapons against B52's. The Soviets could simply surround Moscow
or any military site with a large number of SAM missiles, and the B52's might
as well stay home, since they aren't getting through. So then how can the
US deliver nuclear weapons?
What about all those very expensive 1970's Minute Man silos in Texas, Kansas and
South Dakota, what were they for? They were already shown to be obsolete
by the 1954 Van Allen Belt tests. Even if the electronics were highly
shielded, some missiles will always be destroyed by the intense
radiation. But how many could get through, -- half, a few or maybe
none. Who knows, without knowing the intensity of the
radiation? So why did Congress pay trillions of dollars for an
obsolete missile system? Don't ask me, I didn't make up the
program. That probably comes under the category of Congressional pork, or
in today's congressional lingo, it's "earmarks" meaning building
bridges to nowhere. But trillions of dollars of ICBM pork over a period
of several decades? Yep.
THE US NAVY GETS BACK IN THE PORK BUSINESS
In the 1980's the US Navy, not to let the Air Force take home all the
congressional bacon, also found a way to get back into the military pork
business. This was the nuclear-powered Trident submarines. Each
submarine could carry 12 missiles, and each missile could travel about 3,000
miles. This meant that the submarine could travel close enough to the
target that it could be fired and land before the Soviets or Chinese could send
up a nuclear radiation space shield. In 1983, the Navy decided to upgrade
the 3,000 mile Trident C4 missile to the 6,000 mile Trident D5. That way,
the Navy could then target 100 percent of the world simply by secretly moving
their boats around in the oceans. I know about this missile since I built
the control panels in the firing command control room and instrumented
and wired up the very first prototype D5 missile. The Navy contingent
under the command of Commander Lewey actually ran the test, after requiring
some last minute changes to my
computerized missile control panels.
I decided not to go watch the actual firing test. The 20 or so
technicians who worked at the laboratory and who had built most of the panels
according to my designs, decided to go sit on the hill above the test site and
watch the "fireworks." For the test, the missile was
laying on its side and aimed into a huge concrete block to hold it in place, so
it actually didn't move while in the test stand. I watched the
missile test from the closed circuit TV monitor in my office. The
Navy Commander must have been watching another monitor or something. He
didn't see what I was seeing.
THE NAVY LIGHTS THE FIRES IN CALIFORNIA
My new computer controlled panels automatically went through the count down and
firing of the missile. Commander Lewey ran his bright red joystick I
built for him, around and around in circles as if it were a video game
controller. Instead of a normal 10 or 15 foot missile flame coming out
the back of the rocket, the new hotter more powerful fuel produced a brilliant
blast of flame about 150 feet long. At this point you are probably
wondering why I'm telling you this story. It's to explain why Kim Jong Il
fired all those missiles on July Fourth
2006.
So in 1983, Commander Lewey was doing the first Navy acceptance test of the
prototype more powerful D5 Trident missile. He swung the joystick full
right. The long flame hit a telephone pole down the access road.
The pole went up in flames and quickly fell over. The Commander went full
left. The flame hit a concrete bunker house and a wooden tool shed, next
to where I had just parked my car an hour before, while I made last minute
adjustments to the rocket's instrumentation. Then - Poof -- in seconds
the tool shed was gone. He pulled the rocket nozzle full up. He hit
a tree way down the road and the tree was completely in flames. He aimed
the nozzle full down. The long rocket blast hit the one-lane blacktop
access road going up to the test site. About 200 feet of road suddenly
roared into a sea of flames. The road was on fire. The rocket test
was supposed to fire for about two and a half minutes. But about a minute
into the test, the whole back end of the rocket
caught on fire. All the electrical controls and instrument wiring I
had spent months installing on the missile suddenly went up in flames.
Even the flame resistant rocket nozzle itself started burning away because of
the ultra high temperature flame from the much hotter new D5 rocket fuel.
The Commander continued to swivel the joystick and the rocket flame until the
whole nozzle and nozzle assembly simply blew away in flaming scraps. At the end
of the computer sequence, the rocket flamed out, and a large mechanical fire
hose dropped down to spray water into the rocket nozzle to cool the
rocket. But there was nothing left to cool. It was a sad scene of
compete smoking destruction.
Minutes later the technicians who had gone up the hill to watch the test, came
back. They were laughing and shouted, "Hey, Marshall, you missed the
test, it was a great show." I said, "I watched it on the
monitor. I saw what happened." One of the techs asked,
"So where's Tom?" I said, "The boss was here with me
watching the monitor, but the last time I saw him he went back to his office
and had his head on the desk and was crying." All the techs
laughed. It was the best California barbecue we had had all summer.
MILITARY SECRECY VS. MILITARY INTELLIGENCE?
The Chemical Systems Division of United Technologies in San Jose, California
has numerous NASA and military contracts to build missile systems. The
military contracts are supposed to be top secret, such as the Air Force's Titan
IV, the Tomahawk cruise missile, and the Navy Trident D5 missiles.
At the time I didn't have any top secret clearance. I didn't need one.
When I worked on the Navy Trident system, they couldn't find anybody with my
special background, so the president of UTC signed a piece of paper so I could
crawl all over that missile. Thus I signed no security document or
agreement. But I really didn't learn any top secrets about the Navy D5
Trident missile, other than it simply doesn't work. If you light off a
Trident D5 missile you might as well kiss it goodbye. And, keeping with
my security agreement, I won't tell anybody, if you don't. That way nobody
knows.
So what did the Navy do with its massively expense D5 Trident submarine
program? I found out two years later when I worked for Westinghouse
Marine, but again on another Trident program. In 1985, the Navy was
having a problem. The Trident missiles were stored and transported in
large canister containers. A large crane lifts the container over the
nuclear submarine, and a sailor with a remote control lowers the missile into
the boat with a "hoist system" built inside each container.
THE NAVY TRIDENT D5 MISSILE PROBLEM
But the Navy was having a problem with the Westinghouse designed Trident D5
hoist system. If the electrical power on the dock was suddenly lost then
the hoist system failed. What happened during tests at Hunter's Point
Naval Shipyard, if a welder fired up his arc welder, or the cleaning lady
plugged in her vacuum cleaner and circuit breaker popped and opened up, the
Trident D5 Hoist lost control. The multiple ton dummy missile suddenly
started dropping, with smoking brakes, cables and wires, and the dummy slammed
into the dock with enough force to smash the dummy missile and even damage the
dock. This was not the "safe" system that Westinghouse wanted
to sell to the Navy, nor did the Navy want to buy it. I was hired to
"fix" the problem. I was hired on with a team of seven
others. Within a week, I had solved the problem, and all the others were
let go. I remained as the designer of the new D5 hoist system for the
next year and a half.
Solving the Navy hoist problem was actually no problem at all. I solved
it in about 2 days. The circuit diagram for the Westinghouse design was
massive and complicated. The whole schematic diagram was on my boss's
wall about 10 feet high and about 8 feet wide. It had thousands of
components. I memorized all the parts in the diagram, and figured out the
logic. I told my boss, "See this point way up here," I said
pointing way up high on the wall, at the diagram behind his desk, "and it
goes through a diode and by the time it gets down here," I said pointing
at a component on the chart down on the floor behind his chair, "this
logic is fail sure, not fail safe." "If you lose
main electrical power, you automatically release the brakes and the missile
goes through the bottom of the boat." This accounted for the
complete loss of control and the smoking screeching brakes, and dropping the
missile. I said I could fix the problem by just reversing the logic and
changing a
few parts.
THE RUSSIAN BEAR VS. THE NAVY BEAR
This so impressed my boss that he quickly marched me over to meet the Navy
Contract manager, another Navy Commander, something like Commander
Lewey. Both men were built like burly 300 pound "bears"
and somebody you don't want to mess with. But me being me, I just had to
mess with the Navy. Not only did they have a hoist problem, but the Navy
dating back to 1776, was also rather old fashioned when it came to electronic
designs for its weapons systems. They had a policy that no
microprocessors could be used in any Navy system. The Navy did not think
that microprocessors were reliable, so they only used separate transistors, TTL
microchips and components. This was in 1985 when almost everybody had
microprocessors on their desk as IBM PCs or Apple Macs. But No, the
Navy wouldn't touch them for weapon systems. The Navy, like everybody
else used IBM PCs and Macs as office devices but not in any weapon
system.
SOLVING THE COMPUTER CRASH PROBLEM
If you used a computer in the early 1980's you know that they all had a bad
reputation of freezing up or crashing, usually on some perverse or evil
schedule of their own, such as just as you were about to save several
hours of some project you were working on and then, wham beep, you lost
everything - don't remind me. People often go on Prozac just to forget
such horrible memories. This turned out to be, not a microprocessor
or computer problem, but a software problem. The solution was something
called putting the stack out of the main control loop, but that's too technical
and you don't need to know. I knew the solution to the crashing
problem way back in 1981, when I worked at ROLM and they built ultra-high
reliability computers for the military. I and a few software designers
told Apple, IBM and MicroSoft how to solve the crash problem, but did they
listen, No.
It was 20 years later, when Microsoft finally solved the problem by going from
Windows 98 to Windows 2000 or Win XP. About the same time, Apple did the
same when they went from System 8 to System 10, and that solved the
problem solved. But before that microprocessors had a horrible
reputation, but it wasn't their fault. It was a software problem.
In dedicated applications with a fixed program, microprocessors were extremely
reliable. Even 25 years ago, dedicated apps were reliable. One
example was a handheld calculator. When was the last time you
"crashed" and had to reboot your calculator? - Never. Another
very reliable application from the 1970's was the front panel controls on
microwave ovens. When was the last time you needed to reboot your
microwave just as you put your kitty in the microwave to dry it and the
controls "froze up" and it needed to be reboot so you could get your
flaming kitty out of the microwave? -- Never. So the Navy was wrong about
micropro
cessors, especially in fixed dedicated applications.
THE BEAR SAYS NO NO NO
At second meeting with the Navy's Commander "Bear" I told him the big
problem with the D5 hoist was that it was just too complex with almost 1,000
parts. That's why the Navy had been fumbling with the hoist problem for
two years, and nobody could figure it out, until I came along and could
memorize all the parts and figure out the backwards logic. If the circuit
were made simpler, then anybody could figure it out. I could redesign the
circuit into a much more reliable and sleeker design with fewer parts to fail,
if I just replaced some of the safety circuits with
microprocessors. But the Navy's answer was, "No no no no no
no." But being resourceful and wanting to help out the client to get
a better product, I went back to my office and did some research.
The Trident D5 hoist system was a an electric-hydraulic control system to raise
and lower a heavy multi-ton missile. The heart of the system was a large
LCD voltmeter on the front panel of the remote control box. The box was
about 3 feet wide and 4 feet tall, with the voltmeter which read out the height
of the position of the missile in inches, a joystick to raise and lower
missile, and a few on/off buttons and lights. The purpose of the big box
was to hold the 1,000 parts on the huge circuit board. I told my boss, I
could redesign the circuit with about 5 microprocessor chips and build the
whole thing into a box about the size of a lunch box. My boss told me
there was a problem with that. Westinghouse wanted to sell the D5 hoist
controllers for about half a million dollars a pop. If I made the circuit
into something the size of a lunch box, the Navy probably wouldn't want to
spend a half million dollars for a lunch box. So I agreed, for marketing
purposes, the D5 hoi
st controller remained a big box that took two men to lift, but inside
was nothing but a teeny little circuit board, along with joy stick and a meter
on the front of the box. And how did that happen?
BOXING NAVY STYLE
I found out that the voltmeter actually had a self-test function built into
it. I told Commander "Bear" I could increase the reliability of
the design if I replaced about 50 component parts of the discrete components
with the self-test built into the meter. The Commander approved my
design, and that's when I knew that I had just boxed the Navy into a
corner. Not to be too obvious, I went back several days later to get
approval for another design change. I wanted to change about five
critical circuits with microprocessors, which would reduce the parts on the
circuit board from about 1,000 parts to just 5 parts.
The "Bear" scowled at me and said, "NO no no no. You know the
Navy does NOT use microprocessors in any weapon systems." I
said, "Yes, sir. But last week you approved my self-test design using the
voltmeter. The company that made the voltmeter, used a microprocessor
inside the voltmeter to implement the smart-voltmeter self-test design.
The Navy approved that voltmeter with a Navy mil-spec part number about 10
years ago. The Navy has used it in a number of weapons
systems." I gave him a list of the weapons programs which used that
part. "So therefore, Sir, the Navy has been using microprocessors in
its weapons systems for over ten years."
THE BEAR HAS KITTENS
With logic like that, I again made my request and submitted my design to build
the D5 missile hoist system using simple microprocessors. The look
on the "Bear's" face was something between the Bear just got his ears
boxed, or maybe the "Bear" was about to have kittens. Still
using his booming Navy voice, he said, "Alright, Smith, tell ya
what. Let me talk to the big boys and then I can tell you what I can
approve. I'll call you in a couple days." He called me
several days later. I went to see him. What I didn't know was that
the Pentagon had already just sent a formal approval for my design
addressed to my boss at Westinghouse Marine, with copies to the corporate
president and down the Westinghouse line. It was a major change in the
Westinghouse Navy contract. "Bear" congratulated me and shook
my hand. I had no way of knowing what would happen next.
I got back to my office and it was surrounded by about a hundred Westinghouse
design engineers. They all started clapping and cheering. I
wondered, "What the hell..." It wasn't my birthday and I hadn't
won any lottery. One of the old timers spoke up, "Marshall, for
decades all us designers on Navy contracts have fought the Navy over using
microprocessors. They always refused. We took months to build
huge circuits which we could have made in just days or weeks with only a few
parts. Then you came along and made life easier for all of us.
Thank you. We all thank you for bringing the Navy into the twentieth century."
They all started cheering, hooting and clapping again. I then said,
"I was just doing what I do on all my jobs. I find out what the
customer wants, and then it takes me a week or so the teach the customer what
he really wants. If he "really wants" microprocessors, I give
him microprocessors. Twern't nothin. I'm just doin' my
job." Well, the clappin
g started up again for another ten minutes.
TOP SECRET CLEARANCES VS. TOP SECRETS
The Trident D5 missile system was clearly a top secret military project, which
required a top secret clearance. But I didn't have one. But since I
seemed to be the only person who could make the system work, some high
muckity-muck at Westinghouse signed a piece of paper, which was co-signed by
"Bear" which authorized me to work on the Navy Trident
system. But I signed nothing and had no agreements to keep
anything secret. And I promise not to tell any secrets, if you
don't. That way nobody knows. So what top secrets did I learn?
Not much, really, but one thing is rather strange to tell. To fire a
Trident missile from a submarine, you actually don't fire the missile
while it is still in the boat. The missile is "popped" out of
its chamber with compressed air. Something like firing a spitball from a
peashooter. Highly compressed air fills the chamber below the missile and
then the missile is lifted about 30 feet into the air above the top of the
submarine, and then and only then is the electrical signal sent to ignite the
missile. In the Trident system, this "shooting the peashooter"
is called the "Air Elevator." It uses air to shoot the missile
up and slightly to the side of the boat, so that if the missile fails to fire,
then it will fall down in the water next to the boat and not back on the deck
of the boat. You don't want to drop a D5 missile on your own boat.
The Navy gives its boat commanders demerit badges for things like that.
THE AIR ELEVATOR - WATCH YOUR STEP GOING UP
So here was the Navy's problem. To make the Air Elevator work, the lining
of the rocket cylinders inside the Trident submarines had to be lined with
rubber liners to make sure there was a good airtight fit with the Trident
rocket. The rubber liners were something like thousands of pieces of
rubber about the size of a kitchen sponge, all glued around the sides of the
rocket chamber. It made an airtight fit, but sometimes one of the gaskets
might come loose. This would jam up the rocket as you tried to lower of
remove the rocket for replacement. This could damage the rocket or even
the submarine if you tried to force the rocket in or out of the chamber with a
jammed gasket. To prevent that, my D5 hoist system actually
"weighed" the rocket as it was lowered or raised in the boat.
The Navy specified that the weight of the rocket was 175,000 lbs and if the
weight seemed to suddenly drop or rise 2,000 lbs during loading then the hoist
would automatically stop, since it indic
ated a jam. Those are not the real actual wight numbers because you
don't need to know, so I'm not going to tell you.
The problem was that there were actually two versions of the D5 missile.
The second version was a dummy missile which wasn't filled with real rocket
fuel but was filled with plain concrete. The dummy was used for testing
and training. Concrete was lighter than rocket fuel so the dummy missile
only weighed about 150,000 lbs. In order to make the loading system work,
I had to put another switch on the front panel. It was something like, in
the up position it was "D5 missile" and in the down position it was
"Dummy missile." If the switch was in the wrong position, then
the hoist would automatically stop and nothing happened. The computer
controls constantly weighed the rocket and if the weight was wrong then the
computer thought the rocket was jammed, and it shut down.
TRIDENT AIR ELEVATORS FOR DUMMIES
So how many of the Navy's D5 missiles were real and how many were
dummies? I was in the D5 program for almost two years. I
didn't really need to know and never asked, but one of the Navy officers did
let it slip that most of the time, a Trident sub is loaded with 1 live missile
and 11 dummies. Sometimes, with a new boat commander he was given a full
load of dummies, until the Navy felt comfortable that they could rely on him to
handle real fire crackers. But nobody else on the boat ever knew.
Only the Captain and his executive officer ever knew what the full missile load
was. What that meant to me was that the Captain and EO were the only ones
on the dock loading the missiles with my super simple automatic D5 hoist
loading system. Only they knew which position the "D5/dummy"
switch was in. If some lowly Navy E4 swabbie were in charge of loading
the missiles, and he knew he was loading a full load of dummies, well then,
later a full crew of nuclear submariners would b
egin to wonder why are they sitting on the bottom of the ocean for six
months at a time, away from home and family, with nothing but concrete
missiles? We're talking mutiny here, so the best thing was that nobody
except the captain ever knew the whole truth, and everybody else just
assumed the the missile load was a full complement of active D5's.
But actually, that worked quite well for the Navy, and it was cheap and an
effective deterrent during the Cold War. The Navy always assumed that the
Soviets had satellites actively photographing all the loading of nuke missiles
at the Bremerton or Groton Navy shipyards. But the missiles were always
either inside the loading containers or inside the boat. The missiles
themselves were never visible, and even then the actual D5 and the dummies
looked exactly the same on the outside. The only way the
"Russkis" could tell if the missile was real or dummy was to
photograph the position of that "D5/dummy" switch on the hoist control
panel, and I made it go up and down, and not side to side. From an
overhead satellite photo you could not tell the position of that switch.
And that's assuming anybody knew the actual purpose or meaning of that one
switch.
WICKED DESIGNS FOR THE NAVY
The Navy loved my "perverse" sense of secret wicked designs.
That little switch on the front panel was one of my best designs. It was just
too simple. It not only fooled the Soviets, but it also fooled the US
Congress. The congressmen could only ask "How does a single switch
save millions of dollars?" The Navy only had to answer, "That's
military classified top secret. We can't tell you," as the Navy filled its
boats with cheap concrete missiles. So it's safe to assume that
nobody knew, and that the "Russkis," to be sure, had to assume that
the nuke subs were all fully loaded with 12 or 16 live Trident missiles.
So the Trident system was an effective deterrent during the Cold War, even if
the boat was fully loaded with concrete dummies. Nobody really knew for
sure. The only real dummies, in this case, were the US Congress.
They never even knew enough to ask, "Are those submarines actually filled
with real missiles?" Since they never asked, the Navy never
had to te
ll them about cheap concrete. I had no top secret clearance nor
security agreement to sign, but just in patriotic good faith, I promise I won't
tell anybody, if you don't.
Thus most of what you thought you knew or were told about the Cold War and the
War in Space was mostly wrong. In fact, in the mid-1980's a new
devastating weapon was developed which caused the Soviet Union to drop out of
the Cold War. By 1991, the Soviet Union disappeared. What was
that weapon that you were never told about? And, even more so, what does
all this have to do with Kim Jong Il firing off a bunch of Korean missiles on
the Fourth of July, 2006? Yes, they are related. That's
coming next in part two...
Marshall Smith
Editor, Brother Jonathan Gazette
newseditor@brojon.com
Click here to find the live links to the full stories in the Gazette -
http://www.brojon.com
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