Operation Bloodhound - Red Shadow Air Cushion Landing Craft

[Quickfire]

Lost thread recreation ... remember the scene-stealing "Military Cushion Craft"? from the Galapagos fiasco?



Here's where stole it from:

dzheryan12321-1.jpg (63.58 KiB) Viewed 19225 times

http://xn----7sbb5ahj4aiadq2m.xn--p1ai/ ... 2321.shtml

It was based on this Soviet Air Cushion Assault Landing Craft, the "Dzheryan" (Джейран).



Superb bit of improvisation by Mr. Campion, I wonder if he had a copy of Janes' Fighting Ships as this must have been it, squirreled away in the depths of the Soviet Flot.

BLOOD FOR THE etc. etc. etc.

[Thundershot]

Thats a cracking peice of film .

I've been watching a fair few episodes of Wings Of The Red Star on YouTube recently, it's been interesting to view the cold war from the 'oppositions' perspective.

[Quickfire]

Thats a cracking peice of film .

Indeed, though I suspect our tovarich Gospodin 'Yolk' may have some ultra-nationalist tendencies ... but he's keeping them in check for now and providing some high quality vid

Also it's always gut to be reminded of the ubiquity of Soviet tannoys and tannoy-announcers ... replicated almost perfectly as you fight your way into the Krystal Peak ICBM base in Modern Warfare as well (urban tannoys at Pripyat -exfil was pretty much pitch perfect too - you still hear them in public spaces, especially bus stations etc. in the ex-CCCP)

I've been watching a fair few episodes of Wings Of The Red Star on YouTube recently, it's been interesting to view the cold war from the 'oppositions' perspective.

Agreed. There was a BBC documentary about 20 years ago about all the air casualties in the Cold War ,mainly from secret missions, if you were a Soviet then all the B52s flying low-level over Siberia were a bit of a WTF? moment if you were a Soviet decision maker (or Curtis LeMay ordering the USN to test-launch a Polaris missile towards the CCCP at the start of the Cuban Missile Crisis, instead of the usual Florida-Ascension route). Ike had stopped all such B52 missions but LeMay continued them in secret ...

In the Far East some places are still closed military districts, Japanese fishermen still get blown up instead of USAF C130s.

But today you can visit the crash site of a C130 in Armenia, shot down by a MIG-15 (featured in the BBC doc) as it carried out an ELINT mission along the Soviet border, brings home the hotter features of the Cold War.

Hey, I never got a copy of that French produced Brixmis vid. Must chase them again.



EDIT - the BBC documentary was in the Timewatch series, 1994, 'Spies in the Sky'. The producer Paul Lashmar followed up with a book called 'Spy Flights of the Cold War' and appears to still be involved in efforts to trace missing airman.

For a flavor of Curtis LeMay's psychotic tendencies - inspiration for the USAF General in Dr. Strangeglove - see this other Timewatch

[Chopper]

Wish that could be got in 1/18 scale.

In Ghost Force there was mention that the Soviets and NATO knew they were poking around in each others sh*t but did little about it in most cases. They would often waltz on to Soviet basses and take happy snaps for back home. Didn't make them any less nervous though. In light of that it would be easy to imagine them becoming complacent about US aircraft too.

[Quickfire]

Wish that could be got in 1/18 scale.

In Ghost Force there was mention that the Soviets and NATO knew they were poking around in each others sh*t but did little about it in most cases. They would often waltz on to Soviet basses and take happy snaps for back home. Didn't make them any less nervous though. In light of that it would be easy to imagine them becoming complacent about US aircraft too.

Yeah Ghost Force is a little atypical in that regard. Connor's stories from BRIXMIS - like standing on the hill in the DDR and the RAF C-130 flying over at head-height - are just people mixing it up on the periphery rather than at the heart of Soviet territory, he still had a few close shaves, like the visit to the 'unoccupied' bunker late at night, he just makes it all sound a bit casual because he was good at it. But jumping over walls at night to get the new AK74 rounds and such are part and parcel of what military attachés still do anyway from the Balkans to South Asia. Also the French version of BRIXMIS had a fatality or two at that time, so it wasn't all plain sailing.

The West were a lot more aggressive than the Soviet Liaison mission itself. Besides, the Soviets had other ways of getting higher value intel (and they got their most valuable stuff inc. from the US mil-ind complex at places like Corning and General Dynamics in that era via French double agents).

The Curtis Le May crap is of a whole other order. USAF lost maybe 10 C130 crews in the Cold War over Soviet territory, the B52s were just lucky, in so far as they were entering via northern Siberia so not a lot of air cover there and thus it's a bit of a cake walk. That's why the Soviet's developed aircraft like the Foxhound in the 70s to have massive patrol ranges. The likelihood of misperception of all these types of aggressive flights was what led Ike to ban them when he was President (and give his warning about the mil-industrial complex), they were on attack simulation runs rather than pure ELINT or other intel missions.

Also RAF crews who were ordered in the 50s to gather intel and radar profiles of targets around Moscow, they were going in with radars on, all the AA around Moscow was firing at them as they cruised around lit up in the electromagnetic spectrum if not - all the time - by searchlights.

And the U2 flight before Powers' was piloted by the RAF. UK and US would alternate pilots. So the UK was lucky (or just better than a certain USAF pilot...)

Basically if you were a radar operator east of the Urals and you had authority to fire on unidentified targets and you'd just do it. This was one of the reasons the Soviets shot down the Korean air liner in 81, they were used to just shooting at anything in their airspace, it was routine.

Sakhalin island had a massive GRU presence in the Cold War, mainly ELINT related, to ensure no infiltration, and to interrogate and then liquidate all the shot down USAF crews. Still has a fair number there today to monitor Japan and US fleets, but also to watch all the Shell guys as they dig up all the oil and gas in their gated community.

The UK spent a lot of time flying recces over the nuclear test and bioweapons facilities in Central Asia out of Incirlik, often in the Canberras that were in service until recently (or maybe they still are .. or maybe someone decided a drone is more effective precisely because it's not).

And that leads to one of the great mythological Cold War raids, the destruction of an underground bioweapon facility by UK forces in Kazakhstan that was probably the basis for the Yankee assimilation of the story in Black Ops. But it'll remain a myth for a good while or even longer than that. Although some terrible oik from Langley will probably pronounce upon it one day. Totally deniable for eternity as if it did happen it was probably facilitated by some intra-Soviet infighting whereby one faction asked outsiders to waste a facility controlled by another set of siloviki.

Here's the Potsdam mission film intro, you see the wasted French car towards the end after they got caught by East Germans or Soviet forces.

[Chopper]

sh*t, there were some pantie filling moments there. The amount of gear they were lugging around and out in the open too. Nucken futts.

[Red Laser]

That russian landing craft looked very intimidating you can just imagine Shadowtraks and Hyenas rolling off it with hordes of Red Shadows escorting them.

[Quickfire]

That russian landing craft looked very intimidating you can just imagine Shadowtraks and Hyenas rolling off it with hordes of Red Shadows escorting them.

Indeed, it was a bit of Gerry Finley-Day & Geoff Campion perfection to have woven this kit into the universe.

[Quickfire]

sh*t, there were some pantie filling moments there. The amount of gear they were lugging around and out in the open too. Nucken futts.

Yeah, perhaps it was easy to get a bit casual, especially when they could drive around with sort-of diplomatic plates and in their uniforms.

Doesn't Connor have a story about walking over to the railway sidings in daylight to scrape metal off a new T-84? As if there was nothing more natural.

When that ZIL truck turns in on the car I thought they were gonna take a bit hit.

Trying to get the vid. Artline may have kept a low profile as with the level of photos and video they had access to they maybe didn't want anyone knocking on their door getting all ploddy with them.

[Chopper]

That incident with the T-84 was what I was referring too. About as James Bond as you like, only with bigger balls.