Word: gears
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Strangely enough for a ship of such sophistication and strategic value, Pueblo had no automatic "destruct" mechanism. As the Koreans swarmed aboard, U.S. Navymen feverishly set fire to the files, dumped documents, shredded the codes, and did their valiant best to wreck the electronic gear with axes, sledge hammers and hand grenades. In the process, apparently, one sailor's leg was blown off and three others were injured. According to a Defense Department official, Bucher's instructions "covered everything except being boarded...
...ship crammed to the gunwales with electronic hardware, hostages to one of the Communist world's most belligerent and intransigent regimes (see THE WORLD). Though the Navy bravely tried to make light of the loss of the equipment aboard Pueblo, arguing that the Russians have comparable gear, few electronics experts were so blase. "This equipment is so esoteric that it verges on the unattainable," said one U.S. authority, who considers Pueblo's capture "a really major catastrophe." In purely political terms, it was also a crisis of the first magnitude...
With the capture of Pueblo, Kim went a long way toward achieving one of his goals. He also had possession of a U.S. spook ship packed with supersecret gear and if he did not have Lyndon Johnson for burning, he did have the hapless Commander Bucher. Nobody can be certain what happened to Bucher, but the Pyongyang regime was plainly making every effort to exploit him. It was a sad conclusion to Lloyd Bucher's first command...
...actually one of more than 80 immensely sophisticated ELINT (for electronic intelligence) ships in the U.S. Navy. That ferret fleet is intended as a counterforce to Russia's 60-vessel ELINT armada, made up mostly of converted trawlers and hydrographic craft, all bristling with antennas and sensitive snooping gear. Just as the Pueblo and her kin prowl the international waters off China, North Korea and the Soviet Union, Russian trawlers are stationed off California, South Carolina, Florida's Cape Kennedy, Guam and Alaska. A Soviet spy ship dogs every move of U.S. aircraft carriers on "Yankee Station...
...Vietnamese soldiers now sent South are members of the Lao Dong (Communist Party) or its labor youth affiliates-almost double the number of card-carrying troopers three years ago. Between propaganda drumbeats, the recruits practice marching with rock-filled rucksacks to ready them for the 73-lb. burden of gear and ammunition each must carry for as long as six months down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Banjo-and-songfests brighten recruit training, and each squad gets a regular issue of a deck of cards-with the stern warning that it is not to be used for gambling...