2/12/2025

 Wednesday, February 12, 2025

D+97

1935 First secret demonstration of radio signals detecting aircraft (radar)

28 January 1965 - 17 February 1966 Operation Double Eagle I, the largest operation to date,  in southern Quang Ngai province, a 2 battalion amphibious & vertical assault.  Marines claim 312 enemy KIAs & captured, with 24 Marine KIAs & 156 WIAs.

1993 Comedy film "Groundhog Day" opened across the US

2019 US national debt topped 22 trillion for the first time

2025 Tulsi Gabbard confirmed as DNI

In bed at (?), awake and up at 3 a.m. with an unpleasant dream of private practice.         

Prednisone, day 297, 5 mg., day 8, Kevzara, day 8/14.  2.5 prednisone at 4:25 a.m. and 5 p.m.  Other meds at 10:20 a.m.   

Elon Musk's Oval Office presser with his son "X".  Wearing his black MAGA cap (how appropriate, the man in the black hat) and accompanied by his 4-year-old son  X Æ A-Xii to demonstrate his humanity and paternalism, Elon Musk held an Oval Office presser next to President Trump who had just signed an executive order giving Musk's DOGE team more authority to reduce the federal workforce.  Musk sanctimoniously reminded us that the federal debt is huge and unsustainable and that our annual deficits need to be reduced.  This has been gospel for Republicans for decades and no right-thinking person should deny it.  However, there are two ways to reduce our chronic deficits: reducing spending and increasing revenue, i.e., raising taxes.  The Republicans always strive to reduce spending; the Democrats always look for ways to increase it.  The Republicans fight fiercely to avoid increasing taxes, at least the most revenue-producing taxes, i.e., income taxes.  The Democrats usually work to increase spending by urging new social welfare programs, like  Obamacare.  Both sides yammer about the need to pay for new expenditures, but it's usually just BS.  As but one example, when George W. Bush and the Republicans created Medicare Part D, the prescription drug benefit, it was completely unfunded.  Now, with the debt at an 'unsustainable' level, the world's wealthiest man scolds us about reducing spending while standing next to the man whose 2017 tax cuts mostly for the wealthy dramatically increased the debt and the deficits  He now proposes to increase the tax cuts and to make them permanent, benefitting men like himself and Messrs. Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Thiel, et al.   Perhaps he'll pitch it as a child welfare program since it will also benefit youngsters like the cute little X Æ A-Xii and other children of the wealthy who will start their lives already wealthy and with the skids greased for additional successes in life.  William Blake: "Every night and every morn, some to misery are born.  Every morn and every night, some are born to sweet delight.  Some are born to sweet delight and some are born to endless night." 

There's nothing surer

The rich get richer and the poor get poorer

In the meantime, in-bеtween time, ain't we got fun 

 Cole Porter, Worcester Academy 1900, Yale College 1913 $$$$

Geri's home exercises now include bending her new knee and straightening it.  She's doing much better but is not yet assured of no limp.

Next experiment.  A favorite van Dongen.  I did a knockoff with colored pencils many years ago which is now hanging on one of my bedroom walls.

A crude beginning on an old painted-over canvas.

  

 Operation Double Eagle.  From my memoir:

The other major operation I participated in was Operation DOUBLE EAGLE, which was a bit of a fiasco  both from my personal perspective and from the strategic perspective.  DOUBLE EAGLE was the Marine Corps participation in a much larger operation by the U. S. Army, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, or ARVNs, and the Korean Army, or ROKs..  The Army/ARVN/ROK operation was named Operation WHITE WING.  The Army encountered serious resistance on the first day of its operation and killed a large number of alleged hostiles.  After that first day, however, they encountered little resistance.  The Marines never encountered sustained resistance.  The VC and NVA units that were supposed to be in the field were nowhere to be found.  At Headquarters, we all thought they had been tipped off from within the ARVN chain of command.  The scuttlebutt around DaNang was that some of the ARVNs were sympathetic with the VC cause and others just didn’t want to risk injury or death in battles.  Either inclination was reason enough to let the VC/NVA know a major operation was about to get underway.  In any case, despite elaborate planning and coordination and operational and logistical preparation, the operation was a flop.

So much for the strategic stuff.  On a personal note . . .

During the preparation for the operation, the TAC Center officers had many planning meetings.  Our officer-in-charge was a major whose name I have forgotten.  He was a Nervous Nellie, more like a nervous wreck, a guy decidedly not cut out for service in a combat zone.   In fact, he was simply not like any Marine I ever served with.  Whatever faults and deficiencies we might have, it was hard to find any Marine who was a “Nervous Nellie.”  Basic training had weeded out those guys.  

In any event, as is the case for all large scale military operations, the timing of DOUBLE EAGLE was weather-dependent.  As had happened in STARLITE, most of the Marines were to make an amphibious landing; others were to make helicopter landings inland.  Unless the weather at the helicopter landing zones was clear enough to permit air operations, however, everything would be put on hold.  The Deputy Commander of the Wing, Brig. Gen. Marion Carl was to take off from DaNang early on what was hoped to be D-Day, fly to the landing zones to check out the weather, and, if the weather was OK, to call back to the TAC Center on a certain radio frequency with a coded message, something with no inherent meaning like “Phoenix  Phoenix”  or “Booga booga” for good weather and “New York New York” or “Shithole shithole” for unacceptable weather.  At the planning meetings, our OIC drove home how terribly important and how secret the code words were.  We couldn’t write them down; we couldn’t disclose or discuss them with anyone.  We were not to even say the words once we left the meeting in which we were informed of them.   The Senior Air Director at the TAC Center would get the coded transmission from General Carl.  The SAD then was to call the helicopter squadrons at Marble Mountain and Chu Lai and the fixed wing squadrons at DaNang, Chu Lai, and the landing force commander at sea.  Thousands of assault and support troops were awaiting the go/no go message from General Carl to be relayed through the Senior Air Director at the TAC Center. 

As it turned out, I was the Senior Air Director on D-Day. I arrived at the TAC Center before sun up to make sure that everything was ship shape and that I was thoroughly briefed on what had occurred during the previous watch, etc .  As General Carl flew to the LZs to check on the weather at dawn, I sat in the SAD’s chair in the dimly lit Bubble with my headphones on and with Major General Keith McCutcheon, the Wing’s Commanding General, and Lt. General Lewis Walt, Commanding General of the III Marine Amphibious Force, the senior Marine in Vietnam, sitting right behind me, literally looking over my shoulder.  We all sat and waited silently in the dim lights of the TAC Center.  Finally my headset crackled with a call from General Carl.  General Walt, General McCutcheon and I waited for the magic words “Phoenix Phoenix,” “Booga booga” ‘New York New York” or “Shithole shithole..”   Instead, Carl said “The weather’s OK.  Let’s go” or “It look good.  Let’s go” or some non-super-secret, no hidden meaning words of that ilk.  Apparently everybody got the word about the super secret code except the guy who was supposed to say the magic words.  I sat there for a moment thinking ‘I don’t fucking believe this’ and wondered what to do, with Lew Walt and Keith McCutcheon looking over my shoulders.  I remember the three of us sitting there and looking at each other after I reported to them the radio transmission, each of us thinking but not saying the words going through our minds: What an asshole. I called Carl back and said something awkward like “Firefly 123, this is Joy Ride.  I understand you have a message.  I’m having difficulty reading you.  Say again your transmission, over.”  Carl said the same thing again, this time testily.  I turned to the generals behind me and repeated his message, word for word.  These guys were impressive, unflappable Marines; I had a lot of respect for them.  They were unflappable with this unexpected occurrence but clearly unhappy.  We had received English language transmissions from time to time, with no telltale accents, that we were sure came from hostile forces.  Was this Marion Carl or someone else?  Could Carl possibly be so clueless?  Placing troops in the landing zones was critically important to the mission of trapping hostiles between the sea and the LZs.  If the choppers couldn’t land and other aircraft provide close air support and medevac missions, the operation had to be delayed.

I suggested a way out of the quandary and it worked.  Each Marine aircraft had an identification numbers called (for some reason unknown to me) its ‘modex.’  The squadron that provided the aircraft for Carl’s flight knew the modex of the aircraft he was in, as did the pilot.  I called the squadron at Marble Mountain, got the modex (not without some explaining) and then called the aircraft asking for its modex.  The chopper pilots (and Carl) were wondering why in the world I was asking for their modex., but they provided it, it was the same as the modex number provided by the squadron at Marble Mountain, and the commanding generals were satisfied that it was indeed the somehow-completely-out-of-the-loop Marion Carl who was telling us that it was OK to launch..  The operation proceeded, with a knowledgeable few of us berating General Carl.  The super secret code turned out to be a fiasco.  I think it was for my work as SAD as well as my participation in this fiasco that our officer-n-charge, Major Nervous Nelly, nominated me for a Bronze Star (or said he did.)  The Marine Corps was wise enough not to memorialize this embarrassing snafu with the award of a medal.

Other anniversary notes.  (1) Radar and radio were my everyday tools in the Marines, escept in Vietnam - no radar at the TACC.  (2) "Groundhog Day" is one of my favorite movies. "I like to see a man of advancing years throwing caution to the wind.  It's inspiring in a way."  (3) The national debt is now $36.5 trillion and growing by the day.  (4) Donald Trump and Tulsi Gabbard are Russian assets.  Are they also Russian agents?  We're in deep trouble.