The weapons that won the Cold War

[F2d5thCav]

Supposedly, we "won" the Cold War.  But how?  What did we use that brought about such an outcome?

You may be thinking ... tanks ... fighter aircraft ... maybe helicopters.

NOPE.  The truly important stuff was much more mundane.  Take a gander:



This little gem was known as the P-38.  It is without a doubt the finest can opener known to man, and was absolutely essential in the days of canned rations.  Practically indestructible.



A soldier doesn't get far if he or she can't take a dump.  Thus, one of these TP packets was included in every c-ration or MRE.  Sometimes, that meager ration of paper wasn't enough. 



An army goes absolutely NOWHERE without potable water.  These trailers carried water, and had an outlet for a plug to run from a generator and provided heated water as well!  A helmet-full of hot water made cleaning up outdoors much more pleasant.  Known as the "water buffalo".


Rolling along unpaved roads kicks up a LOT of dust.  An unofficial but popular uniform item was the "drive-on rag", otherwise known as a neckerchief.  Tied behind one's neck, it could be pulled over the mouth and nose to keep the dust out.  Often, medical service units traded tourniquets that were ideally sized to serve as a drive-on rag.




100 mile per hour tape.  This literally held the Army together.  It was employed in so many ways that it deserves the description, "universal".

Oh, but what of the heroes of the rear echelon?  You know, the guys and gals who had desk jobs.  Well, they had their essential tools as well:




Actually, two items in this image.  COFFEE ... consumed in inhuman amounts by practically every soldier in and out of the field.  Usually the quality was akin to Maxwell's, but we cared not, drank it, and demanded more!  And what produced the coffee in the office was the venerable "silver bullet": huge percolators that held gallons of piping hot coffee.



This weapon of war was manned by clerks, secretaries, and other admin personnel: The IBM Selectric II electric typewriter.  Having access to one of these ruined manual typewriters forever for me.



A neat thing about the Selectrics was that one could change the font by changing the print ball.  A very useful font was known as "OCR", for optical character recognition.  That was the font used to type messages for the record communications network, because a message typed in that font could be automatically read by message network hardware and did not have to be manually entered by a network operator.



Now, if you wanted to get anything done, and I mean ANYTHING, in the Army, you learned the magic of Optional Form 41: the routing and transmittal slip.  It accompanied much correspondence and often served purposes for which it was never intended.  A pad of these was always kept close by in office environments.

Cheers

[Mystic Wanderer]

Nice little tid bits people never think about.  Interesting.  

[PLOTUS]

As seen on TV.......  that's where most people get their perceptions, their behavioral compass, and even more from Family. Mothers cousins, aunts and uncles and to a lesser degree dads. The Russians and the Americans. Who lost the most ? It really relied on monetary capabilities. $$$$$$$$ make the world go round $$$$$$$

We ran out last, or rather Greenspan worked the financial like a genius. Our failing to entrench a Hawk in the framework of the White house surely gave some moving room for the Russians. Bush and Obama were not actors of any consequence beyond Bush and Cheney being WAR CRIMINALS..  

Fact is, Russia ran out of money first. THIS Current administration seems to think they can ride this democrat horse anywhere, but the horse is failing. More a kiddy ride. A simple weapon, and the fact that most of that money was either fresh printed, or relieved from "WORKING" citizens who mostly kept it in their contaminated wallets that sit inches away from CaCaCalamity. So the war was just postponed a while until something better came along. PUSSY RIOT, didn't phase them, and 'The DIXIE CHICKS' didn't harm us.. it just showed our hypocracy. There were no winners, They won great benefits in crude oil pipelines that would later contribute to monetary successes. Losers ? There were many that fell when both our and their funds to foreign countries dwindeled or dried up altogether. Collateral damage not expected, not escapable.

[Ninurta]

Those P-38's were the shit! I still carry one on my key ring, just in case... my Dear Old Dad carried one on his key ring from the Korean War era, when he was stationed in Germany on the Czech border. He had carried it so long that the hole the ring passed through had been worn paper thin, nigh to snapping. There were two sizes , a large one and a small one. The small ones worked, the large ones bent because you could put more leverage on the bigger shank than it could handle.

Trioxane fuel bars were pretty handy, too. A third of one would heat a canteen cup of coffee in about 10 minutes or so. The came in green heavy foil packets, and you could fold the end back over to save the other 2/3 for the next time you had to heat anything, but you had to use it fairly soon, because when the packs were broken and air got to the trioxane bar, it would "evaporate" over just a little time. I recall once when my son was about 11 or 12, and the power got knocked out in an ice storm. He laughed at me and said "well you won't be drinking any coffee now, 'cause ya can't make any!" I told him to just hide and watch, went and dug out a canteen cup, one of those handy little "stoves" that was just a piece of ventilated sheet metal that slipped over the cup and when you took it off and turned it upside down, the cup would sit in. I took those outside with the cup full of water, and a trioxane bar, sat it all on a rock and lit the trioxane, and while the water was heating, dug out a jar of instant coffee that I kept for emergencies like that. He never doubted my ability to round up a cup of coffee again.

Those OD green triangular bandages that could be used as a bandage or as a sling for a damaged arm did admirable double duty as either drive-on rags or boonie rags to be wrapped and tied on the head as head gear to sop sweat and generally keep your dome from getting all scratched up by branches, or to hide hair that was either too light, too dark, or too bright red, as a sort of camouflage.

The "helmet full of hot water" you mentioned was one of the old steel pots with the liner removed. Made a handy kettle. You couldn't do that with the kevlar "Fritz hats" that they use now. The kevlar doesn't have a removable liner, and I'd hate to try to heat any water in one, nor would I want to try to shave or clean up out of one - I imagine hot water would wreak havoc on the leather parts of the suspension web.

I've still got a bunch of those old plastic canteens, a couple canteen cups, and a couple of those sheet metal cup stoves, and I still keep a jar of instant coffee on the back of the shelf, for emergency use. I don't have any trioxane any more, but since I live surrounded by woods, I'm never at a loss for fuel anyhow. Some of the canteens have those old cold war lids with the drinking valves built in, that you were supposed to be able to hook a gas mask to in the event of a chemical attack. I never trusted that arrangement much, but the gas mask I have here still has the drinking tube and connector built on to it, too.

.

[PLOTUS]

So content that the time is short. The powers that-be had their chances.... Just waiting to be received by 'I AM'

The rest is all illusion. 

[Ninurta]

As seen on TV.......  that's where most people get their perceptions, their behavioral compass, and even more from Family. Mothers cousins, aunts and uncles and to a lesser degree dads. The Russians and the Americans. Who lost the most ? It really relied on monetary capabilities. $$$$$$$$ make the world go round $$$$$$$

We ran out last, or rather Greenspan worked the financial like a genius. Our failing to entrench a Hawk in the framework of the White house surely gave some moving room for the Russians. Bush and Obama were not actors of any consequence beyond Bush and Cheney being WAR CRIMINALS..  

Fact is, Russia ran out of money first. THIS Current administration seems to think they can ride this democrat horse anywhere, but the horse is failing. More a kiddy ride. A simple weapon, and the fact that most of that money was either fresh printed, or relieved from "WORKING" citizens who mostly kept it in their contaminated wallets that sit inches away from CaCaCalamity. So the war was just postponed a while until something better came along. PUSSY RIOT, didn't phase them, and 'The DIXIE CHICKS' didn't harm us.. it just showed our hypocracy. There were no winners, They won great benefits in crude oil pipelines that would later contribute to monetary successes. Losers ? There were many that fell when both our and their funds to foreign countries dwindeled or dried up altogether. Collateral damage not expected, not escapable.

I don't know that I would call Bush and Cheney "war criminals", but they were certainly dumbasses who had no clue how to run the wars they started, so there IS that... one should never start a war that he is not willing to actually fight like he means it, nor should one ever open a second front (Iraq) when the first front (Afghanistan) was not wrapped up tight.

One of Russia's advantages is that they can do more on less money, so they could stretch a ruble farther than we could stretch a dollar. They have fewer people on a larger land area, meaning they are less concentrated than we are, and that helped, too... but it is a reason they'd better keep a weather eye on China, since China has a more concentrated population, and will soon be, if not already are, looking for more land to expand that population on to. Russia has that land, China eyes it, and that can't be a good thing for Russia.

I can recall a time when you could get a brand new AK, still in the cosmoline and direct from the factory, for about 280 bucks - and the Russians were still making money on them, even at those prices, so production was done on the cheap. More stuff on less money - it seems to be the Russian way!

.

[F2d5thCav]

@"Ninurta" 

A lot of Soviet gear and weapons went missing when the Wall fell.

There was an odd period of a couple of years with the Soviets still in eastern Europe and people in the West being freely able to visit.

I took a drive through the former East Germany and had a convoy of HUGE trucks pass me on the other side ... Soviets.  Driving through a small town, I saw a café with Soviet soldiers seated outdoors, wearing those ridiculously large service hats they had.  Odd times!

Cheers

[Ninurta]

@"Ninurta" 

A lot of Soviet gear and weapons went missing when the Wall fell.

There was an odd period of a couple of years with the Soviets still in eastern Europe and people in the West being freely able to visit.

I took a drive through the former East Germany and had a convoy of HUGE trucks pass me on the other side ... Soviets.  Driving through a small town, I saw a café with Soviet soldiers seated outdoors, wearing those ridiculously large service hats they had.  Odd times!

Cheers

I expect there were a lot of Eastern Bloc/Warsaw pact items that went missing. East Germany in particular seems to have viewed their former stock as a cash cow for a cash-strapped economy. A few years after the Wall fell, I was buying East German MPiKM-74 magazines for about 3 bucks apiece, and they were all over the place. Now they are going for anywhere from 60 dollars to 130 dollars EACH, with the sweet spot appearing at around 80 dollars each. The most I ever paid for one was 5 bucks, so I could conceivably realize a 1200% return on investment at a minimum if I wanted to sell what I have!

East German mess kits, canteens, even uniforms and coats in their "Rain Pattern" camo was going for a song so that they could generate enough capital to play in the western world they found themselves suddenly in. Gas masks, gas mask cannisters - all going for next to nothing here. I guess they were trying to unload all of their former Warsaw Pact military stock in the expectation of getting new issue from NATO.

Bulgaria and Poland were cutting up their stocks of AKs and selling the cut up guns as "parts kits" for rebuilding in the west by entrepreneurial souls. To a lesser degree, it seems Russia also sold off bits and pieces, but they sold a lot less of it, at much higher prices. For the most part, they seem to have retained most of their Soviet stock, and just changed the patches on the uniforms to reflect their new normal.

It makes me wonder what will become of OUR military stock here when BidenHarris crashes the economy and we collapse, and China steps in to "resupply" us and reform our military in their image...

.

[ABNARTY]

550 cord and 100mph tape. No Soldier worth his/her salt would be caught dead without them.