Word: fleetness
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Kissinger telephoned Ford to report that a fleet of 81 helicopters was about to embark on its mission, then, at 1:08 a.m. Tuesday, he called again with the news that the evacuation had begun. In Saigon, the center of activity for much of the day was the landing zone at Tan Son Nhut airport, a tennis court near the defense attache's compound. Landing two at a time, the helicopters unloaded their squads of Marines-860 in all, who reinforced 125 Marines already on the scene-and quickly picked up evacuees (see box following page...
...ships of the Soviet navy were under full steam. Off the Azores, NATO spotter planes reported one of the 10,000-ton Kara-class two-year-old missile cruisers that Western naval experts rate among the world's best modern warships. In the Mediterranean, where the U.S. Sixth Fleet customarily roams while Soviet vessels lie in Syrian and North African ports-except for a few "tattletale" scouts dogging American carriers-the roles were reversed. The Soviet fleet was out in force and the Sixth Fleet was doing the tattling. Other Soviet task forces were sighted in the Pacific Ocean...
...Soviet navy took pains to advertise its muscle flexing. It passed routine naval orders over regularly monitored radio channels. Okean's essential message was a now familiar one: under Soviet Admiral Sergei Gorshkov, the Soviet navy is no longer a coastal force but an impressive blue-water global fleet. Said one U.S. officer last week as he busily monitored the Soviet fleet at sea: "What they've done in just ten years is absolutely fantastic. From almost nothing, they've built up a first-rate navy, and it's an imposing threat...
Most significant for a global fleet, Okean 1975 tested "command and control" communications networks employing satellites and satellite relay. Using a mixture of very high and very low frequencies and linking even submerged submarines, the Russian navy apparently achieved near-instant communications. That would be a considerable asset in Gorshkov's "first salvo" concept, in which scattered Soviet fleets are supposed to undertake simultaneous attacks within a 90-second period...
Churchill appears underbriefed, garrulous, exhausted. One day he offered the Soviets access to the Mediterranean; on another he almost gave away the German fleet (then in British hands). Stalin comes carrying plans for a neo-czarist empire stretching across half of Europe. Dapper Harry Truman arrives with such members of his old Missouri gang as his "personal rascal," General Harry Vaughan...