Another Code War

Chapter 1-”Cease Fire”

“Cease fire! Cease fire”, came the command over all of the radio channels and intercoms at the same time. As had happened for the past five minutes, we were rocked again by the blast as a 90 millimeter antiaircraft gun launched another projectile skyward. Again the radio boomed the command, “Cease fire”. This time the voice was amplified even more and was pitched with what could be described as panic laced with sheer terror. As we would find out shortly, we were commencing a routine in preparation for a confrontation with an inbound potentially hostile aircraft. It was coming at us from the North Pole. It had not responded to I.F.F. (Identification Friend or Foe). We had not heard a response from the two all weather interceptors that had taken off twenty minutes earlier to identify the intruder. We were following the standard operating procedure. I think the ack-ack guys called it “firing settling rounds”. It had something to do with synchronizing the anti-aircraft guns with the target-tracking radar to shoot the enemy aircraft down before it could deliver its destruction.

I was a radar mechanic on a long range radar system. I was assigned to an Army Air Defense Command Post that just next door to a 90mm gun battery, one of four assigned to base defense for Thule Air Force Base Greenland. We were the first line of defense against any sort of attack coming over the North Pole from the Soviet Union. The year was 1958. The “Cold War” was in full swing. But this about another cold war. Believe me, it was cold at Thule Greenland especially to a 19 year old boy from the Gulf Coast of Texas.

It was almost 50 years ago that this and all that follows took place. But it is so vivid in my memory, that it could have happened yesterday. Why is this one period so prominent in my memory. I have pondered this for the years that have passed. I have talked to many men and women about why memories are so vivid. Do you remember your first date? Your first “steady”? Your first car? Of course you remember all of these “firsts” in your life. I do too. I can't remember what happened yesterday but I remember Thule, Greenland. If you have ever been there, you know exactly what I mean. The “Cold War” I'm talking about is the war your mind has with itself in order to not only fight the bitter cold outside but also the isolation, the loneliness, the first time away from home, from family and, especially, from your “sweet heart”.You see, there was so little distraction in Thule that the uncluttered mind of a teenager was forced to concentrate on every minute of every hour of every day of every week of every month that passed. See what I mean. It was a defense against a sort of insanity.

That year was a great year-1958. It was the International Geophysical Year. Sputnik was “up”. Elvis wasn't the “King” yet but , keeping with royal terminology, was at least a “Prince”. Korea was past. Viet Nam was ahead. There was peace in the world of a sort although there was always a war going on somewhere. Then, too, there was the nuclear threat that created the need for our presence in Greenland. “Greenland”. What a propaganda ploy. Erik the Red was the great propagandist of his time. He had “discovered” Greenland on behalf of Denmark and named it Greenland so he could secure more funds from the King of Denmark in order to explore, settle and exploit this fabulous new world he had found. It (Greenland) would become a county in Denmark. With all this line of B.S., Erik would have been a terrific congressman today. Oops! Sorry about that.

Anyway, the year 1958 presented the wildest array of people and events of any one year of my life. Sort of a magnetic period of time. Maybe it was the alignment of the planets or something. Or maybe is was just a time where a somewhat naive teenager witnessed things that were commonplace to everyone else. One thing for sure, it wasn't that cold in Houston, Texas where I was raised. Who knows? Or, for that matter who cares? If you think this is ho hum, wait till you check out the snooze factor of the rest of what happened.

Now, in a literary “flashback”, I'll go back to where it all started with a short visit to 1956 when I “joined” the Army. What's that? What about the “Cease Fire”? That was a literary flashback, too. What an author? 1956 can wait. This is what had happened: I was in the radar shack. The “radar shack” is a term of endearment given to the structure that houses the radar system. I know it is so obsolete now that it would be okay with the Department of Defense to mention its name. It wasn't a Model “T” of radar. More like a Model “A”. It was the A/NTPS-1D which stands for Army/Navy Transportable Radar Search model One Dee. Or as it was called by those of us associated with it, the “Tipsy One Dog”. Ah yeas, the phonetic alphabet. Try this one on, “This is Tango Hotel One Two Romeo. My One Foxtrot is now Yankee Whiskey”. That was Army code for “This radar set is broke.” Keeps the “enemy” confused when we broadcast it. Ha! It kept everyone confused.

Where was I? Oh yes. Back to the vivid memory. We were on surveillance duty. The radar was sweeping the sky for “bogeys” and, sure enough, there appeared a blip a inbound from the north. A succession of radar plots determined it to be subsonic. Probably propeller driven. (Remember this was in th '50's.) No IFF signal, so it was coming in “unknown”. We notified the command post who notified the Air Force. Having no flight plan that would anticipate arrival at the air base, an alert was sounded and a sequence of events started into motion. Two interceptors were scrambled to visually identify the bogey. He was two hundred miles out when we radared him. The S.O.P. Is really too long and boring to go into. Never the less, at a certain point of time in the S.O.P., the 90mm gun crews were deployed to their warm up huts. The temperature is at least 20 below zero outside. The crews fire up the gasoline heaters to warm up both the huts and the guns. Kind of like outer space. Grease and oils freeze or become so thick that mechanical things don't seem to work right at ambient temperatures and they need to be warmed up. Yep, same for people, too.

Next in the sequence is a “Request to fire settling rounds” posted by the various battery commanders. As the alert progresses, the operations officer at the Command Post will grant permission to fire these settling rounds. The procedure allows the gun crews to test the big guns for proper operation, check projectile fuse settings and synchronize the guns to the target tracking radar. There were four gun batteries, each with four 90mm guns. The gun batteries were equally spaced away from the main air base to provide defense against an enemy aircraft attempting to bomb the base. This is important to know to make this story work. It is also important to know that there were at least two types of aircraft whose missions were secret at that time. One was the P2V “Neptune” flown by Navy pilots supposedly to check the North Atlantic for icebergs. I say “supposedly” because there was really nothing secret about checking icebergs. Probably were on spy missions. The other plane that flew “secret” missions was the KC97 tanker. Now I can understand their mission being secret. We know now that they were refueling our ever constant alert force that was our deterrent during the “Cold War”.The theory was that if anyone knew when a tanker was returning, the would also know when he was to be refueling a bomber making them both vulnerable to attack. Sort of a “two for one”.

Anyway, the Soviets were known to have our IFF technology and were suspected of having the capability of transmitting a “friendly” response when an electronic IFF signal was transmitted. As a counter measure to this capability, the Air Force would scramble the two interceptors to visually identify the bogey. But......no one canceled the alert or told the gun crews to stand down. Wouldn't you know that about the time the KC97 tanker was on his down wind leg, the gun battery dead ahead of him started firing settling rounds. Its dark out. Through his window sees four muzzle flashes a mile ahead and about 1000 feet below. Shortly after that he sees the air bursts above and in front so he cranks the tanker hard left to evade the firing which outs him on a path toward.......you guessed it.....the very next of the four gun batteries to start firing...........hard left again..........yes, the third of the batteries was about to open up when he very quietly said, “Look up guys. I'm a friendly up here. Please stop shooting”..... or something to that effect. That's when the first “Cease Fire!” was called. One more round and the more panicky second “Cease Fire!” was called.

So the big tanker landed safely, and once again, disaster had been averted, In a few moments the “All Clear” was sounded. I left the radar shack and headed for the main building in our complex. While the tanker was in potential danger, it probably was never close enough to be hit.. I would image that the pilot went directly to the shower and sent his flight suit to the laundry. It was never explained to us whether we nearly got him or not. But the buzz immediately, I mean within seconds of the “Cease Fire”, we were aware that communications had failed.

Now being an enlisted man and having had my butt chewed out by non-com and officer alike, I must admit that since no harm had been done except to maybe a fight suit or two, I was somewhat joyed by the fact that as I approached our main complex, a blue Buick slid to a stop. Blue is an Air Force color and Buick's are base commanders' staff cars. The stocky little man in blue who lit from the Buick was a full “bird” colonel. He stood under six feet tall. Our C.O., the major, was about 6 feet four inches tall. No matter. The eagle over shadowed the oak leaf. The chewer had become the chewed. The colonel went into the plotting room. Then he and the major proceeded to the major's office, closed the door and had a “fatherly” chat. I went into the projection booth of our theater next door. It shared a wall with the major's private office. I couldn't hear any of the chat. Just muffled sounds and a punctuation mark every now and then as the colonel's fist hit the desk. Sort of an emphasis mark more than punctuation. If you know what I mean.

Now the major was really a fairly decent guy and while I really hated to see him get chewed out, he took it for all of the really not-so-good officer guys that I had encountered in my short military career. Why is that so important? Because one of the hardest tings to maintain in a peace time army is the morale of the troops. Anytime an officer or non-com gets chewed, the morale soars for awhile among the underlings.

This whole episode is really out of the chronology of events that took place in 1958. So I'll go back to 1956, like I said. But doesn't it give you a warm feeling to know that you were being protected by professionals.