Blistex posted:

Was it that Pioneers sound too European, or that they've got a bit of overlap in duties and merged them into something else?

Scratch Monkey posted:

Pioneer sounds vaguely communist (eg Young Pioneers)

I thought a Sapper was the term applied to an assault element that used explosive charges exclusively to breach enemy lines whereas pioneers used engineering techniques to breach obstacles and then assault as normal infantry.

Sjurygg posted:

Sappers generally are assault engineers who blow poo poo up, in the 19th century a sapper was a diehard who placed gunpowder caskets underneath enemy fortifications to breach them. The name still has connotations of recklessness and vague insanity today in many countries.

Sjurygg posted:

Sappers generally are assault engineers who blow poo poo up, in the 19th century a sapper was a diehard who placed gunpowder caskets underneath enemy fortifications to breach them. The name still has connotations of recklessness and vague insanity today in many countries.

As for pioneers it varies considerably. A Norwegian pioneer is a guy who takes out a usable transportation axis for other units - setting up minor temporary bridges, clearing mine fields, cutting down trees and so on. It' can be a pretty big undertaking in a mountaneous, forest-studded sub-polar country. Naturally, they pride themselves on being First In (which they're not, recon was there first).

Blistex posted:

They do almost no live-fire training because commanders want to save money to show their bosses how awesome they are. If your troops expended the amount of ammo in a year that the same number of US troops expended in a week, you'd probably find yourself canned or demoted pretty fast.

madeintaipei posted:

This was my father's experience in the Bundeswehr. He was the company commander's radioman, riding around in a low-top M113. Their job was to get the regiment up to their staging areas and them support them from there using AVLBs, pontoon bridges, mine clearing devices, and explosives (lots and lots of explosives). During the inevitable retreat they were to blow up the roads behind them by placing C4 into predrilled holes or blocking them with huge concrete obstacles. Life expectancy was pretty short, something to the tune of 90% casualties in 24 hours.

Nebakenezzer posted:

Jesus, this sounds like thinking from the royal navy circa 1800. This is all information I've gotten from the Master and Commander books, but apparently the RN used to only provide enough gunpowder to do live fire drills once or twice a year. Enterprising commanders with the money to do so (like Jack Aubery) would buy gunpowder themselves so live-fire drills could happen more often.

Cyrano4747 posted:

Maybe that's why they subbed everyone in chinese characters? Some bizarro hillbilly dialect from wherever it is that they have wasps nests the size of family sedans?

I know in Germany when they interview someone who's speaking some really non-standard dialect they'll usually run subtitles in standard High German .

Koesj posted:

Engineers are such an overlooked part of Cold War military history. Soviet bridging dudes could cross almost anything, you had scatterable mine systems making GBS threads out stuff at entire grid squares, backpack nukes to take out important points, and dudes in vans blowing up every primary and secondary street. poo poo was cray.

Nebakenezzer posted:

Jesus, this sounds like thinking from the royal navy circa 1800. This is all information I've gotten from the Master and Commander books, but apparently the RN used to only provide enough gunpowder to do live fire drills once or twice a year. Enterprising commanders with the money to do so (like Jack Aubery) would buy gunpowder themselves so live-fire drills could happen more often.

Caconym posted:

Quite a few bridges in the north of Norway are longer than they have to be just so that the distance betwwen the bridgeheads would exeed the length of a soviet mobile bridgelayer like the MT-55 when the bridge had been blown.

Insane Totoro posted:

Who the heck knows. The idea of a modern Chinese identity is pretty tenuous.

Insane Totoro posted:

Also who the hell thought a flamethrower was a good idea?

Koesj posted:

So he was part of regular army Pioniere? Do you know whether or not he was part of a company attached to other BW units or one of the Korps-level battalions or something?

Engineers are such an overlooked part of Cold War military history. Soviet bridging dudes could cross almost anything, you had scatterable mine systems making GBS threads out stuff at entire grid squares, backpack nukes to take out important points, and dudes in vans blowing up every primary and secondary street. poo poo was cray.

Nebakenezzer posted:

Jesus, this sounds like thinking from the royal navy circa 1800. This is all information I've gotten from the Master and Commander books, but apparently the RN used to only provide enough gunpowder to do live fire drills once or twice a year. Enterprising commanders with the money to do so (like Jack Aubery) would buy gunpowder themselves so live-fire drills could happen more often.

canyoneer posted:

And the actual story of Thomas Cochrane capturing El Gamo with HMS Speedy is even more incredible in real life than the re-telling in fiction. That guy was a grade A, genuine badass.

quote:

Finding that he had been beaten by such an inferior foe, the Spanish second-in-command asked Cochrane for a certificate assuring him that he had done all he could to defend his ship.[8] Cochrane obliged, with the equivocal wording that he had 'conducted himself like a true Spaniard'

wdarkk posted:

I'm thinking about going to Cape Kennedy Space Center this december, but I'm getting confused by all the different tours. Has anyone been there recently and could tell me which are/aren't worthwhile?

TheFluff posted:

Everyone had their dirty fingers in the northern Finland pie, it seems.

NRK, my translation, posted:

Dads dark secret.

All their lives Arne Lund from Sappen in Nordreisa had kept the secret that he'd been an American agent from his 6 daughters.
He never told them about the last trip that went wrong and that he shot and killed three Soviet soldiers.

Five days before his death he told his story to NRK.

-I had no choice, I had to do it, he said.

When NRK showed his daughters the recordings of their father earlier this month they reacted strongly.
Several began crying when they understood the perilious missions he had undertaken.

- We never knew about this, says one of the daughters, Hilde Lund.

- When we were small it happened often that dad sat in the barn and cried. We never understood why.
That he, who was supposed to be the strongest in the famliy, cried so much. He never told us why. I think he had it really tough, she says.

The daughters are certain that he tells the truth when he tells about his missions into the Soviet Union during the cold war.

- Would you have lied about killing someone when you knew you were dying, asks Hilde Lund, who like her sisters thinks it was a relief for their father to unburden himself before he died.

- Recruited by the USA
The daughters just knew a father who had at times been frought with anxiety and a difficult temper.

Arne Lunds story is the first time a Norwegian publically tells about some of the most dramatic operations during the cold war in the north.

It was around 1950 that the first agents were sent across the Norwegian-Soviet border, to find out what happened in the large and hermetically sealed empire in the east. When Soviet forces liberated eastern Finmark in 1944 and withdrew a year later many people thought we were headed for a new age of openness and contact across the borders in the arctic.

It was not to be. The Iron Curtain descended across Europe and in 1949 NATO was founded, with Norway as a member. Europe was split into a Soviet-dominated eastern bloc and a weestern Europe dominated by the USA.

Arne Lund was born in 1932, and like a lot of youths from the northern parts of Norway, chose to extend his military service with an NCO course. He became a sergeant, and later a 2nd LT [Norwegian officers are all mustangs, all line officers have advanced from sergeanthood] in the artillery, mountain artillery battalion number 3, based in Narvik.

As he was participating in an excercise in Hjerkinn he was approched by an American officer who asked if he would be interested in a special assignment in the north.

- He said it was in Finmark. He said it was about bringing some equipment across the border to Finland. That's how it all began, Arne Lund said in the interview with NRK just before his death.

Lund was at that time in excellent condition and additionaly equipped with a bright head. Being raised with nature right outside his door in the beautiful Reisa valley was probably also a factor when the American officer, with his Norwegian accomplices, chose just him for this kind of mission.

Wife suspicious
Arne Lund was at that time unemployed. His "employers" got him a teaching job where it wouldn't raise suspicion that he went away for a couple of weeks.

- A substitute was always arranged for me, or I arranged it myself, he said. He was a teacher at Uløya in Skjervøy for about 10 years.

- But what did your wife say when you suddenly dissapeared for weeks?

- Good question. She got suspicious of course, but I just told her I was going to training courses. Courses were also the official explanation I gave to others who asked.

Seven trips across the border.
Arne Lund said he made seven trips via Finland into Soviet with "equipment". Instructions always came in the form of a letter stating that he had to make "a trip".

He travelled by ferry to Hammerfest where he went to a certain store. Sometimes he met his American contact there, and was given a package to bring along. Then he travelled by bus via Karasjok to Ivalo in northern Finland. From there the trip went east towards Virtaniemi and Raja-Jooseppi.

The last bit was on foot. Along the border he was instructed to orient himself by telephone or power lines.

I walked along, counting a certain number of poles. And there you coudn't count worng, and I didn't. Then I'd walk a certain number of steps in a certain direction from the pole, and that was very important. The place was checked out beforehand so it wasn't hard to find. There I was to bury the package and make a natural mound on top.

- So you didn't mark the site in any way?

- No, nothing.

- Do you know what might have been in the box you buried?

- I think it must have been dollars, Lund says.

Arne Lund had with him pliers to cut holes in the border fence and weapons if he got into dangerous situations. He had both a German Luger and another, silenced, pistol, as well as food.

He never spent long across the border, at most a day.

- I wasn't really scared. And I was young and had guts and trusted in my weapons. And of course there were some money to be made as well, he says.

But when asked how much he made he wouldn't answer. Finnish nationals who were recruited as agents were paid one or two years wages to make a trip across the border. Arne Lund also confirmed there were quite a lot of money to be made for a poor schoolteacher and farmers son like himself.

Killed three Russians
But during the last trip something went wrong. When he was passing back trough the border fence he ran into three Russian soldiers who were mending a hole in the fence, and had placed their weapons on the ground as they worked.

Arne Lund determined that he had no choice but to shoot first, and used his silenced pistol.

- How many shots did you fire?

- At least two at each soldier. I don't think they died immediately. Their eyes have haunted me all my life, he says.

Arne Lund is the first Norwegian to come forward and publically tell about being on covert operations into the Soviet Union.
He had, like all the others, made a wow of silence, but chose to tell his story before he died so that it could be a part of Norwegian history.

Unconfirmed
It's been hard to confirm what he had been a part of from official sources. The former head of CIAs Oslo office, Rolf Mowatt-Larssen says in a conversation with NRK that he doesn't know of this particular story, but he finds it "not implausible".

- CIA had a lot of operations into north-west Russia during the cold war, that's well known. And what Arne Lund says is belivable, says the retired intelligence officer.

It's not possible to confirm Arne Lunds story in Russia eighter. But the well known writer and historian Mikhail Oresjeta says to NRK that he believes it must have been some kind of listening device in the box Arne Lund buried just across the border. Oresjeta also says that the KGB around 1980 found listening equipment near a communication line from the border area towards Murmansk. It was NATO equipment, he says.

Arne Lund died at Sonjatun nursing home in Nordreisa feburary 15th this year. His story is told in the documentary "An Agents Confession" on NRK tonight.

Thief posted:

Koesj posted:

It seems the Scando-Falklandian (Malvinian?) connection goes even deeper than I thought! In a very roundabout some people I know might have stumbled upon the alleged Argie attempt to buy intel of UK fleet movements from the Soviets in Stockholm back in '82

Thief posted:

Psion posted:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_747_Large_Cargo_Freighter

I didn't get photos (I was driving) but I saw one of these flying around recently. They are completely absurd. But they're not as awesome/absurd as the Super Guppy.

Psion posted:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_747_Large_Cargo_Freighter

I didn't get photos (I was driving) but I saw one of these flying around recently. They are completely absurd. But they're not as awesome/absurd as the Super Guppy.