Berlin Wall

[mirth]

Wolverines!!!

[bayonetbrant]

Wolverines!!!

pretty much.  except I wouldn't be armed...  too obvious

[mirth]

Ferrets!!!

[bayonetbrant]

Ferrets!!!

Muskrats!

[airboy]

I grew up in West Germany as a missionary kid. My parents traveled secretly behind the Iron Curtain for more than a decade to share the gospel with the people of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, East Germany, Bulgaria, Romania, and the USSR. Being US citizens, the risk to them was very small. But the people they ministered to and worshiped with needed to make long treks into the mountains or meet in darkened homes in the early hours of the morning to avoid detection, arrest, and imprisonment by the secret police, simply for practicing their faith. State atheism is a jealous god.   

When the wall came down, my dad drove up to Berlin with a sledge hammer and brought back a big chunk of it. I still have a small piece.

That's pretty awesome.

My dad has a chunk of it at his house.

I don't have a piece of it myself, but I pissed on it at least twice in the 80s.

I bought a piece when they were available.
I peed on part of the wall in a Las Vegas bathroom.

[mirth]

I peed on part of the wall in a Las Vegas bathroom.

Truly, you have live a full and rich life :P

[BanzaiCat]

Gus, your uncle sounds like Captain America.

I had a piece of the Berlin Wall back in high school - my German teacher brought back tiny bits of it, one piece each for each of her students. No idea where it went to.

Ferrets!!!

Muskrats!

Werwolf!

(Wait, wrong political ideology...right idea though.)

[OJsDad]

I got a piece of the wall when I got World In Conflict; collectors edition.

[OJsDad]

Dad was in the air force for 20 years.  For 6 of those years, he was air crew on NEACP.  Odds were 50/50 that if there was a nuclear war, he would be with the president and mom and I would be dead.

I saw a map of the top soviet targets for nuclear strikes.  I lived half of my childhood in the top 3; DC, Offutt, and Ellsworth. 

[BanzaiCat]

Dad was in the air force for 20 years.  For 6 of those years, he was air crew on NEACP.  Odds were 50/50 that if there was a nuclear war, he would be with the president and mom and I would be dead.

I saw a map of the top soviet targets for nuclear strikes.  I lived half of my childhood in the top 3; DC, Offutt, and Ellsworth.

That's pretty interesting. We have a friend of the family that unfortunately I haven't seen or talked to in years but we used to visit all the time when we lived in northern VA. He was the navigator on Air Force One for three Presidents - Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon.

Whenever I think of NECAP I think of that movie with James Earl Jones in it...By Dawn's Early Light, I think it was. They called it 'Looking Glass.' Was that the same as NECAP? I always thought they were the same thing.

[trailrunner]

Dad was in the air force for 20 years.  For 6 of those years, he was air crew on NEACP.  Odds were 50/50 that if there was a nuclear war, he would be with the president and mom and I would be dead.

I saw a map of the top soviet targets for nuclear strikes.  I lived half of my childhood in the top 3; DC, Offutt, and Ellsworth.

I grew up a block outside the main gate of a Navy base in San Diego, and lived there through undergrad and half of grad school.  That was a likely early target.

After that, for almost four years I lived in Los Angeles a couple of miles from LAX, LA AFB, and the huge Mobil refinery in Torrance.  That was maybe a secondary target, maybe not.

Now I live 15 miles south of DC and work in the Pentagon.  Certainly an early target.  Actually, I work in the part of the Pentagon that was hit on 9/11, so almost every day is a reminder that I'm a likely target, nuclear or not.

[OJsDad]

Looking Glass was an EC-135.  One was air borne at all times. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_EC-135

NEACP is an E-4 that would be used by the President and his battle staff in a war.  It used to always follow the President wherever he went, though usually a different airport.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_E-4

When dad was first with NEACP, they were at Andrews outside of DC.  Then they moved them to Offutt, with one rotating to Andrews, or where the President was traveling to, all the time.  Due to a shortage of radio communications specialists, there were times he was gone every other weekend. 

Dads team was clear back in the tail.  When I say tail, I don't mean the last row of seats, I mean further back than that.  There were four of them.  They would trail a antenna from the back of the plane, extending up to a couple of miles at least.  Dad had the record for the longest length lost for quite some time.

[BanzaiCat]

^ Cool, thanks!  O0

[Gusington]

That is some fascinating stuff, OJ. Are there still aircraft that are always in the air or did that end when the first Cold War ended?

And thanks BC...he is Uncle 'Murica to me.

[bayonetbrant]

That is some fascinating stuff, OJ. Are there still aircraft that are always in the air or did that end when the first Cold War ended?

We stopped most of the "always airborne" rotations around '94 or so.  I remember it was a really big deal when they stopped the bomber rotations.