The Gun Counter

When I was first assigned to Adak (AK) in 1980, the war-time debris was everywhere; trucks, bulldozers, chunks of misc. aircraft, even complete abandoned power-plants. The told us that the Army had just left everything in place after "demil-ing" it; vehicles had been lined up on the tundra and had their engines run to destruction after draining the oil. At the north power-plant, the mechanics just dropped their tools and left at the end of the war, leaving the building to rot and the big Diesel generators to weather and rust. Only the personnel had been taken home after the war.

Before the end of my first tour, I had collected plenty of bronze antenna hardware and many large ceramic insulators left over from the burned radio communication complex. That stuff was shipped with my personal effects and brought good money at a Ham-fest in St. Louis.

On my second tour, all of that stuff was gone; the Navy had brought in a contractor to clean up the island. All of the old vehicles and equipment had been bulldozed into a big ravine and buried. All that was left were the hundreds of depressions in the hills where the tents and Quonset huts had been.

Check Adak on Google-Earth; the modern buildings are still being used by the Alaska Fish and Wildlife Agency and a big commercial fishing company. The Navy is gone, leaving only crumbling concrete buildings and the outline of the Wullen-Webber HFDF antenna.

I'm sure there were similar situations on islands all over the Pacific, and any other location where the only reason our troops were there was to make sure the enemy couldn't go there. Places we bailed out of as soon as the shooting stopped.

Equipment burned, buried, thrown in the lake/river/lagoon/bay, or just left to rot. Hauling it home would have cost a pretty penny, and for whatever reason they didn't want to sell or give it to the locals. In places where there were locals. Not many of those in Adak.

Former neighbor, across the street, WWII vet. Army mechanic in the Pacific. Jeep would roll in for new plugs or an oil change, he would pull the engine, throw it into a pit and put in a new engine. Faster than the maintenance. At least that is what he told me.

Apparently P-40's were manufactured till the end off the war. It didn't have the altitude capability for the Northern European theater but it made a very good ground attack aircraft esp. in the Mediterranean Theatre. In its performance altitude it could out run and out turn a BF109. The BF109 could out climb it. The Germans were used to being able to out dive their opponents but that didn't work with the P-40. It turned out that due to the P-40's modular construction it was easier to work on and had a high degree of flight readiness in the Mediterranean theatre. As one Aussie pilot said, "When I got tired of messing with the Krauts, I'd just runaway from them."
When they got used to it they found out they could out turn a Zero if they kept the speed range up. At slow speed the Zero's large ailerons would let it out turn about anything. On the P40 the found out if you put the nose down when you started the turn and the Zero tried to turn at the higher closing speed the Zero pilot couldn't over come the resistance on his aileron sat the higher speed to tighten the turn. Anyway Yada, Yada, I'd like some P-40's for Christmas. They would be great for border patrol.

I believe the Russians used a bunch of them, although they preferred the P-39 due to the large cannon making it a good ground attack aircraft.

The Russians used them but they had problems with them. The engines required more refined oil and gas than the Russians had available, also Russian pilots tended to use War Emergency throttle all the time and so burned out the engines quickly. An ex Naval aviator that I new who trained on the same field they were at said they'd use war emergency even for take off and wouldn't give the engine time to warm up. Didn't know weather that was official communist party standard or just Russian character.

Russian character, or maybe Soviet Russian character. Soviet (communist) workers were never known for taking good care of equipment, of any sort. After all, it's not theirs, and it's not coming out of their paycheck if they break it. So let's meet quota as fast as possible and get back to vodka.

Not a character issue as such; just poorly trained testosterone-laden teenagers with high-horsepower hotrods. I was young once, too.

Yeah, I wasted my youth when I was young.