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Archive for the ‘Cold War’ Category

Saturday Night Doomsday Double Feature – An Examination of “The Day After” (1983) and “By Dawn’s Early Light” (1990)

Sunday, May 18th, 2025

I ran across this look at two great Cold War movies on Youtube and wanted to share. I watched both of these movies when they debuted and in the case of “By Dawn’s Early Light” multiple times.

I’ve long been fascinated by nuclear war fiction, likely as a response to growing up in the 60s through 80s and then serving in Germany during the waning days of the Cold War. I don’t know if enjoy is the proper word for appreciating this genre, but I hope you get something out of this examination of these nuclear fiction dramas.

Saturday Night Movie: Nuclear Effects During SAC Delivery Missions

Sunday, May 11th, 2025

Via AtomCentral we bring you a Cold War-era Strategic Air Command training film about nuclear effects concerns of combat aircrew conducting Emergency War Order Single Integrated Operation Plan missions. Produced by Lookout Mountain Labs for the Air Force.

“Soviet Weapons of the Atomic Age”

Monday, April 14th, 2025

Live on Kickstarter now, “Soviet Weapons of the Atomic Age” is an upcoming photo book depicting history of the Soviet Weapons of the early post-WW2 period.

Written by Vlad Besedovskyy, who also authored “Soviet Weapons of the Afghan War” and published by Safar Publishing, this volume will boast 400 pages covering Pistols, Sniper Rifles, Automatic Rifles, Machine Guns and Grenade Launchers.

They will offer historical context for each featured weapon, exploring their design, development, and deployment including exclusive content from private collections and archives.

Back the project here.

“Le Combat de L’Infaterie”

Sunday, December 22nd, 2024

“Le Combat de L’Infaterie” or Infantry Combat, is a 1972 Swiss documentary in French which details how Swiss Infantry forces would would have fought at the time in the event of an invasion. No dount, much of the tactics would remain the same based upon Switzerland’s terrain. This version has English subtitles.

Special Operations Forces (1984)

Sunday, November 3rd, 2024

This Army training video produced in 1984 was intended for Army Captains and Majors in the Special Forces branch and depict SOF’s role in defense at that time.

The evolving nations with political and economic power struggles have created a constant stream of worldwide special situations and these are the missions of SOF:

1. Foreign internal defense
2. Unconventional warfare
3. Strategic and tactical reconnaissance
4. Strike
5. Strategic and tactical psychological operations (PSYOPS)
6. Civil administration
7. Rescue and evacuation
8. Collection security
9. Humanitarian operations
10. Terrorism counteraction
11. Civil affairs
12. Safeguarding of U.S. citizens abroad
13. Deception operations
14. Security assistance
15. Special Operations Aviation
16. Sabotage

US Military Liaison Mission Ends October 3, 1990

Sunday, October 6th, 2024

There were never more than fourteen at one time. They were licensed spies who were uniformed members of the United States military but who also held Soviet credentials or passes allowing nearly unrestricted access into and within the Soviet sector of East Germany. They were backed up by another 50 “off pass” personnel – drivers, equipment recognition specialists, analysts – all of whom were hand-picked experts in their fields. All were members of the US Military Liaison Mission (USMLM), a unique and elite joint service organization that was founded in 1947 and formalized in a bilateral agreement between the American and Soviet Chiefs of Staff. They answered only to the Commander-in-Chief, US Army Europe. The British and French had similar agreements – and the Soviets had liaison teams of their own, who patrolled throughout the Allied sectors of West Germany.


Mission Restricted Sign, in English, French, Russian, and German. These signs were nailed to seemingly every tree in East Germany, and consequently routinely ignored by the Allied Liaison Missions.

They traveled in teams (called tours) of two: an Army or Air Force officer who was a Russian linguist and Soviet specialist, paired with a noncommissioned officer driver who was fluent in German. They traveled in a standard four-wheel drive, non-descript vehicle, and were equipped with notebooks, binoculars, night vision goggles, tape recorders, cameras, compasses, maps, rations, and personal items, but no weapons. No espionage gear or other spy paraphernalia was ever carried. These “spies” never met with agents, conducted dead drops, intercepted messages, or participated in any clandestine activities. According to Major General Roland La Joie, a former commander of the USMLM, “the tours were really nothing more than overt mobile observation platforms crisscrossing the GDR [German Democratic Republic], seeking militarily useful information. The search, of course, was not entirely random.”


Potsdam House, the headquarters of the US Military Liaison Mission in East Germany.

Tours were assigned targets based on intelligence collection requirements from national and theater intelligence agencies. The targets included Soviet or East German garrisons, temporary deployment areas, field training areas, air-ground gunnery ranges, communications sites, river crossing areas, railroad sidings, and virtually anything else of military value in the country. Newly introduced or modified military equipment, especially combat vehicles and aircraft were always at the top of the target list. By virtue of the bilateral agreement, the only locations off-limits to the USMLM were “places of disposition of military units,” so the tours had to be exceedingly careful of where they stationed themselves to observe things such as military movements or tactical exercises. Tour members duly pursued, observed, recorded, and photographed whatever they encountered.


Members of the US Military Liaison Mission on a tour observing Soviet ground forces in East Germany.

The enemy’s capabilities were only part of the problem; the MLM was also tasked to look for indications of intent to use those capabilities. La Joie writes: “On every single day throughout the Cold War, eight or more Allied tours were roaming the countryside of East Germany. Every day, all night, each tour looking exactly for signs of imminence of hostilities.” Because of their unique and expansive access to Soviet military forces in Germany, the USMLM was included in all discussions about the Soviet threat, at both military and diplomatic levels. Their perspective from within the Soviet sector was exceptionally clear, even if incomplete.

Despite the official agreement, the Cold War had heated up over the decades, and the danger was genuine: On March 22, 1984, a member of the French Mission lost his life in a staged traffic “accident.” Almost exactly one year later, on March 24, 1985, Major Arthur D. Nicholson of the USMLM was shot and killed by a Soviet sentry while on a routine liaison mission. However, despite the dangers, the Missions persevered. Dutiful to the end, MLM members monitored the withdrawal of Soviet forces out of Germany and across the Polish border. They remained at their posts until the day the two sides of Germany were reunited, on October 3, 1990, at which time the Military Liaison Mission declared: Mission Accomplished.

By Ruth Quinn, Staff Historian, USAICoE Command History Office

Blast From The Past – “Shoot, A Fella Could Have A Pretty Good Weekend In Vegas With All That Stuff”

Sunday, August 25th, 2024

This never gets old. Is it wrong for me to miss the Cold War?

In my best Slim Pickens voice…

“Survival kit contents check. In them you’ll find:
– One forty-five caliber automatic
– Two boxes of ammunition
– Four days’ concentrated emergency rations
– One drug issue containing antibiotics, morphine, vitamin pills, pep pills, sleeping pills, tranquilizer pills
– One miniature combination Russian phrase book and Bible
– One hundred dollars in rubles
– One hundred dollars in gold
– Nine packs of chewing gum
– One issue of prophylactics
– Three lipsticks
– Three pair of nylon stockings.

Shoot, a fella could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff.”

-Major TJ “King” Kong

843rd Bomb Wing

Strategic Air Command

Visit an ICBM Launch Facility

Monday, May 6th, 2024

The link below is a virtual visit to an ICBM launch capsule. Turn on the audio and listen to Emergency Action Messages, “Klaxon! Klaxon! Klaxon!”

www.aerospaceutah.org/virtual-tours/ICBM