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Home
Page as originally published in September 2015
— This Month —
The Latest
Useless But Interesting News For
Military Zealots
And...
The Signal Corps At War
Inside One Of The 36th Signal
Battalion's Radio Relay Vans
Cinematography And Still Image Film Production Command
- - - - -
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Our Association is a not-for-profit fraternal
organization. It's purpose is a) to foster camaraderie among the
graduates of Signal Corps Officer Candidate School classes of the
World War II, Korean War, and Vietnam War eras, b) to organize and
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and Enlisted OCS cadre who are in need, and c) to archive for
posterity the stories and history of all of the Signal Corps OCS
Officers who served this great country. We are open to ALL
former Army Signal Corps OCS graduates,
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Please, come join us. For more information about our Association, to
see a list of our Officers and Directors, or for contact details,
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We are here to serve you.
The Latest
Useless but interesting news for military zealots...
While you’ve been busy living your life, others
have been busy playing games. Games that just
might determine what the next American Soldier
looks like… Signaleer even… Robot Signaleer,
that is.
It turns out that there’s a whole industry
starting up these days, where the focus is on
building robots that can mimic human behavior…
GIANT ROBOTS, that is.
While not of the giant size, DARPA and NASA are
jointly working on humanoid robots and self
thinking machines able to replace men in
disaster relief and search-and-rescue
operations. In the video below you can see their
effort to develop a humanoid able to manage
itself in fall avoidance situations. Here they
are testing the robot in push recovery
techniques.
This video has no audio
But these are not the robots we’re interested
in. Nope. We’re interested in GIANT ROBOTS able
to engage in kinetic combat. If you want to know
what’s going on in this segment of the robot
world, you have to look at what’s going on in
the robot games area. An area of “sport” that grew
out of animated gadget wars, recently an
American group issued a challenge
to a Japanese company to engage in a giant robot
fight. The Japanese company,
Suidobashi Heavy Industries, is
no stranger to giant robots, as it is currently building a 13 foot
tall robot called Kuratas (see video below), which people can
purchase for their own use and pleasure.
Intended to be sold on Amazon for in
excess of $1 million each, the company
has accepted the American group’s challenge, and
is now in the process of building a competitor
able to engage in hand to hand combat.
The American robot, called MegaBot is being
fielded by what is being called Team USA, who
has accepted the Japanese’s proposed rules
of engagement. Those rules include that the
fight must be "melee" based, and involve
hand-to-hand combat.
Team USA is busy building their robot at this
time, however, it seems that they are short on
the cash they need to give their robot the extra
speed, heavier armor plating, firepower, better
hydraulics, better weapons system, dynamic
balancing, life safety system, and the stronger
power unit it will need if it is to conquer
Kuratas. To find the extra $500,000+ needed,
Team USA has turned to a new internet phenomena
called Crowdfunding. In Crowdfunding people
follow a company via the internet, and where
they find value in what the company is doing,
donate small sums of money to the company's cause. In
return donors usually receive minor perqs,
such as tee shirts and the like. An effective
method for a start-up to acquire the capital it
needs to fund a new business, Crowdfunding raised
more than $1.5 billion in 2013 alone.
The video below explains about the MegaBot
humanoid being developed. We caution you however
that our video was taken from Team USA’s
Crowdfunding website. So while we recommend you
watch it and learn about
this fascinating new form of giant robot war
gaming that is creating an industry around it,
please be aware that the video you are seeing
is, at its simplest, a pitch by the company to
raise money. Don’t fall victim to it and
don't donate
money to their cause unless you really, really
know what you are doing. But DO follow the story
over the next few months, and be sure to watch
the battle when it takes place.
Please also
note, this website and the U.S. Army Signal
Corps Association has absolutely no
connection with Team USA, the MegaBot, or any
business or company affiliated with it. We are not in any way
recommending them to you, nor are we promoting them. All we are attempting to
do is alert you to a new form of combat that
most military geeks like us find fascinating...
especially since this whole area of study may
one day
result in the U.S. Army fielding GIANT ROBOTS in
the next war it fights.
Finally, if you're missing the point in this
form of gaming, you might want to focus on how
the concept of men piloting complex machinery
for combat purposes (e.g. tanks and fighter
aircraft) has finally trickled down to its
lowest common denominator: direct human-on-human
engagement, where the man becomes the machine,
and vice versa. So, unlike other forms of human
on human engagement where each "pilot's"
personal strength was multiplied by the
machinery that surrounded him, mostly
via standoff kinetics, in this new form of
humanoid combat the man is
the machine and the kinetics are his.
One can see the difference this nuance makes by
considering that— putting aside knife fights,
hand to hand combat and the like—while over the
past 70 years mankind has developed complex
tools and machines to allow a man to expand his
own limitations at war craft by launching
munitions from the machine he would pilot, in
none of those cases was there involved direct
man–machine–enemy
contact, where the man directly touched the
enemy through the machine. Instead, generally
speaking, munitions
were fired from a standoff position.
That is no longer the case.
Now, via this new format of GIANT ROBOT melee
engagement, where the man has become the
machine, for all practical purposes, the man has
also become the munition. To that end, while at
present all that is happening is that a group of
enthusiasts are bringing video gaming and
science fiction together in a real life form...
one that includes giant fighting robots being
piloted internally by real people, i.e. humans
manning humanoids, in a fight to the death of
the humanoid, but not the human...one wonders
whether this will one day soon morph from just
another form of entertainment to a new military weapon
system?
As for the battle that is soon to come about between MegaBot and Kuratas, both sides have vowed to make their robots, and
the combat melee that ensues, “the coolest thing
seen yet.” Team USA has said that they are
determined to do more “than just build
something huge and stick guns on it.” Instead,
their promise is to build something that is
“super American". In our view, that, plus a
Hollywood paint-job, is all that we military
zealots need to tune in when the battle takes
place. Watch for the final date of the battle; we will
too.
The Signal Corps At War
Inside One Of The 36th Signal Battalion's Radio Relay Vans – A Flashback In Time
–
Candidate Don Fedynak,
Class 04-68, sent along a video that he thought
our readers would like. As a Signal Corps
pictorial officer, he, as with so many others,
shot film like that in this video… only to see
it archived somewhere along the way... likely
stored in the National Archives in some dank,
dusty spot, where it will never be found or seen
again.
It's amazing then that what appears to
be mundane shots of Signalmen at work eventually found its
way into this short but worthwhile video of life in the
Signal Corps during the Vietnam War. The video itself shows
the activities of Signalmen from the 36th Signal Battalion,
in one of the unit's Radio Relay vans. Originally shot by
1LT Ted Acheson, DASPO (Department of the Army Special Photo
Office), the footage was turned into a short movie by 1LT
Paul Berkowitz, of the 221st Signal Company (Pictorial).
Lt. Berkowitz took the time to edit
the film by adding comments and background music, and then
reassembling it in the movie you see here. As Lt. Berkowitz
commented in his notes to the video "It was shot by the book
and nicely done to cover a boring, routine but vital
subject. Ted, or someone, had good captions to go with it so
even 46 years later I could make sense of it. Lots of us had
assignments like this. But was it ever actually used
anywhere?"
The video is 3 minutes in length. It
is one of our best, as it shows the people and equipment
that kept the troops in the Vietnam War talking. Our
thanks to Ted Acheson for shooting the story, Paul Berkowitz
for editing it and especially Don Fedynak for bringing it to our
attention.
This page last updated 1 September 2015. New
content is constantly being added. Please check back
frequently.
Update
1 September 2015 – Max Holt, the Association's Chaplain sent us a link
to a fascinating website. It pinpoints on a map of
Vietnam all of the firebases and U.S. war facilities
of the Vietnam War. The site claims: "THIS
IS A FULL Collection of 4 pages of FIRE BASES, AIR
FORCE BASES, Naval and Medical, BROWN WATER Naval,
and any and all bases DOD during the Vietnam War
1963 to 1975". You may want to check it out... but
be forewarned that it's still a work in progress,
and so clicking on some of the bases will send you
to a dead link. Be patient, the webmaster for this
interesting site is still working on it. Click here to the website.
Update
1 September 2015– Our Chaplain Max Holt recently completed his latest book, as well as a
website to promote his writing. Called
MaxHoltMedia.com, you can learn and read more about his
latest novel on it. The book is titled Neverlasting Paradise. It's an excellent read...
take the time to visit Max's site and buy a copy for
yourself. Click here toMax's website.
Update
4 July 2015 –Get your copy of the 2015 Association
Reunion package TODAY! Click here toa hard copy, or click here
to go to the Official 2015 Reunion Website to see a
list of current attendees, and complete your
registration there.
How 10 Army Signal Corps OCS Graduates Built The DoD's First Ever Cinematography
And Still Image Film Production Command
As you may have noticed, the video below left was credited
to a Signal Officer assigned to DASPO. For many Vietnam era
Signal Corps personnel, DASPO (1962 – 1974), being so
prevalently staffed with Signal Corps Officers that
graduated from Army Signal OCS in Fort Gordon, not to
mention Enlisted Men from Fort Monmouth’s Signal Schools,
must have been some offshoot of the Signal Corps, no? That’s
what one would have thought, anyway.
But it wasn’t. Surprisingly, DASPO had little to nothing to
do with the Signal Corps. Instead, it was part of an effort
the Joint Chiefs of Staff made to gain a little publicity
for themselves, and the Army in particular. More
particularly, DASPO was created to work outside of local
Army command control in a way that would serve the publicity
needs of the Joint Chiefs, in promoting Army work in the
host countries the Army operated in. Simply put, DASPO was
designed and intended to work solely for the Department of
Defense in the Pentagon, with the mission of portraying the
Army's war activities in a positive light.
As
for what DASPO stands for, it means Department of the Army
Special Photography Office, and it was created in 1962. As
the story goes, General George Decker, Chief of Staff of the
Army at that time, exclaimed as he left a White House
briefing given to President John F. Kennedy, “I am fed up
with looking at LeMay’s documentary films showing how great
the Air Force is!”[1]
Apparently, in the weekly briefings the Joint Chiefs gave to
the President, General Curtis LeMay took the opportunity to
laud it over his fellow service branches by displaying
professionally prepared videos of Air Force activities. His
intent was to portray his branch in the best light possible,
so that when it came time for military budget cutting
President Kennedy would take his ax to the Army, Navy,
Marines and Coast Guard first, before looking towards the
Air Force. General Decker noticed LeMay’s nefarious scheme,
and after exploding to his staff, determined to do something
about it.
On this particular day, after returning to his office in the
Pentagon, Gen. Decker wrote out a directive commanding that
the Army, at the Department of Defense level, stand up a
film group able to compose, shoot and produce documentary
films that showed the Army’s operations world-wide… in the
best light possible, of course.
To
get things started, Colonel Arthur A. Jones, who was at that
time the Plans Officer of the Army Pictorial Agency, was
directed to form this unit, and assure that it was able to
achieve the outlined mission. A graduate of Army Signal OCS
Class 43-20, his task was to create a special DoD level unit
with the singular mission of providing documentary films of
a type that would assuage Decker’s pique at LeMay’s self
focused Air Force marketing efforts, while at the same time
carrying out a useful and valuable role with respect to the
archiving of important military events. To achieve this
goal, Colonel Jones would end up creating the U.S. Army’s
first ever DoD level pictorial center, a unique unit that
would answer, via the Pentagon, only to the Joint Chiefs of
Staff and the U.S. Army Chief in particular.
Looking at the depth and breadth of the work to be done,
Colonel Jones determined that what he needed were three
separate photo detachments; one for Europe, one for South
America and another for Asia. He also needed to name his new
unit. As we now know, the name he came up with was the
Department of the Army Special Photography Office, or DASPO,
for short.
Since
the unit would spend most of its time shooting film footage
of Army activities, which in turn had to be edited and
turned into finished film, Jones determined to locate
DASPO’s Headquarters at the Army Pictorial Agency, in Long
Island, New York. There DASPO people would receive and
process the film from the various field detachments that
shot it, and forwarded it on for processing.
As Commander of DASPO, once his Headquarters were set up in
Long Island, Col. Jones set about organizing his three units
and shipping then into the field. All worked well with South
America and Asia, but when it came to Europe Colonel. Jones
ran up against a road block. Apparently, the European
commander of U.S. Army operations in Europe at that time
refused to have a stateside command stationing people from
their unit in his region, unless that unit
fell under his direct command. Since DASPO wanted
to retain direct control over the assignments that were
given to the unit, and weren’t prepared to give in on this
point, the European DASPO command never got off the ground.
To get around this inconvenience, Colonel Jones converted
the European DASPO unit from a European detachment into a
CONUS (Continental United States) detachment, capable of
being dispatched anywhere in the world, on an instant’s
notice. In terms of meeting DASPO’s mission, this expedient
made sense. However, as to how it affected the men of the
CONUS Detachment, it meant they were in for a lot of travel,
as in order to stay on the good side of the U.S. Army’s
European commander the men would have to reside in the U.S.,
jump on an airplane and head off to Europe when an
assignment came up, spend as little time there as possible
doing the “shoot,” before promptly returning to their US
station when the photo shoot was over.
In the end, while more work was required for the men manning
the European–CONUS
detachment, everything worked itself out and in July, 1962,
DASPO was activated. When it came on line, it had a South
American detachment stationed in Panama, a Pacific
detachment headed for Hawaii and a European detachment
stationed in Long Island.
The Pacific Detachment
Not
surprisingly, with the war heating up in Vietnam, the
Pacific detachment ended up with the most photo teams.
Captain Claude Bache was assigned as its first commander. An
Army Signal Corps OCS Headquarters Company commander (OIC OCS
HHC during the Korean War) he found himself with a mission to not only cover the
war in Vietnam, but also all other U.S. Army activities
throughout the entirety of the Pacific Rim. To effectively
cover the immense area involved, Captain Bache set up three
duty stations and assigned men to them. Intended for all
practical purposes to be permanent “foreign” operations,
these detachments had all they needed to perform their
mission without returning to the Pacific Detachment’s HQ at
Fort Schafter, in Hawaii.
The foreign operation detachments were set up in 1968, and
included Team Alpha, stationed in Seoul, South Korea, Team
Bravo, stationed in Bangkok, Thailand, and Team Charlie,
stationed in Saigon, South Vietnam. d in Seoul, South Korea, Team
Bravo, stationed in Bangkok, Thailand, and Team Charlie,
stationed in Saigon, South Vietnam.
Interestingly, Team Alpha… the Korean detachment… was the
first to be set up. It was established in response to the
U.S.S. Pueblo incident, where on January 23rd, 1968, North
Korean forces captured the ship. Seeing the necessity of
filming the events in South Korea relating to this incident,
Captain Bache rushed his team to Seoul, and from there all
along the zone of activity, from as far north as the
demilitarized zone located along the 38th parallel, to the
Port of Pusan, located at the southern tip of the country.
And true to their mission, as negotiations took place over
the release of the crew, Team Alpha busily documented every
step in the process, especially those steps that involved
the U.S. Army.
Hint:
Join 2, 3 and 4 word answers together
as one complete word.
For
answer key to this month's puzzle,
see icon at bottom of page
Curtis Emerson LeMay was a
General in the United States Air Force and the Vice Presidential
running mate of American Independent Party candidate George Wallace in the 1968
presidential election. - To return to your place above,
click here. te George Wallace in the 1968
presidential election. - To return to your place above,
click here.
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