Devotion to the truth is the hallmark of morality; there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
If you really want a better idea of what happened
https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval...h-about-tonkin
“Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.” - Robert E. Howard
"Only a rank degenerate would drive 1,500 miles across Texas and not eat a chicken fried steak." - Larry McMurtry
“Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.” - Robert E. Howard
"Only a rank degenerate would drive 1,500 miles across Texas and not eat a chicken fried steak." - Larry McMurtry
Peter1469 (04-16-2023)
Yes I wish I knew what they have now. If you were an OT you must have had a very high need to know. When I was in the service 75 to 79 they were keeping even the existence of arrays as secret as they could.
Back then there was really no defense against determined attack by a submarine.
I wonder if things are different now. I suspect the subs still have the advantage.
From FB, so will disappear soon. Too funny
ΜOΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ
I have no idea how much of the way we did things 30-40 years ago is still classified, so I'll have to be a little cagey in telling this story. When I was on the west coast, flying and deploying out of Moffett Field, we used to track U.S. subs during exercises and just for practice. It was not a big deal. Then I went to the east coast, flying and deploying out of Jacksonville, Florida, and I can remember being in, I think it was Rota, Spain, in the building where they did the flight crew debriefs and the more in-depth analysis of what we'd brought back, etc., and I happened to walk over to where the acoustic signature of a U.S. nuke was being displayed. One of the staff guys walked over and said, "Hey, you're not supposed to be looking at that!" I said, "What, the U.S. nuke?" and he got all flustered, like I was an acoustic analyst, but I wasn't supposed to know what frequencies a U.S. nuke sub generated. Different coast, different rules, I guess.
I'm not sure when the existence of the SOSUS arrays become public knowledge. I recall that Reader's Digest published an article about it at one point, but I'm not sure what the original source of that was. My last duty station was Centerville Beach, just south of Eureka in NoCal. I got there in '89, when the "cover story" the Navy put out was just that we were conducting "oceanographic research". One day we were in formation during a Change of Command ceremony, and there were some dependents and other civilians present, and a visiting Admiral made mention in his speech about "sub tracking", and we were all just looking at one another out of the corners of our eyes, like, "WHAT did he say?!" That was the first any of us peons knew that our mission had been declassified. (I was getting a haircut in town a short time later and I happened to say something to the barber about how we'd really been tracking subs the whole time, and he just scoffed and said, "Yeah, we kind of always knew that".)
In April of '92 the Cape Mendocino earthquake, magnitude 7.2, hit off the coast, and our local SOSUS array was just GONE. We continued to monitor other arrays for about a year and a half, but then Centerville Beach was decommissioned.
OOPS! I forgot this was a picture thread.
This is what the facility looks like now, with all the buildings demolished. (No, the earthquake didn't do that!)
Last edited by Standing Wolf; 05-02-2023 at 02:44 PM.
“Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.” - Robert E. Howard
"Only a rank degenerate would drive 1,500 miles across Texas and not eat a chicken fried steak." - Larry McMurtry
MisterVeritis (05-02-2023)
See it while it lasts
ΜOΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ
Standing Wolf (06-02-2023)