Trent Telenko – Page 26

History Friday — MacArthur’s 7th Fleet Guerilla Support Group

February 20, 2015 by Trent Telenko

When I started writing my “History Friday” columns, one of my objectives was to explore the “military historical narratives” around General Douglas MacArthur, so I could write with a better understanding about the “cancelled by atomic bomb” November 1945 invasion of Japan. One of the least explored aspects of MacArthur’s fighting style was his highly flexible approach to logistics, which he described as “We are doing what we can with what we have.” Logistics being the ability to transport and supply military forces. In describing MacArthur’s flexibility, and poor documentation of same, I wrote previously:

“One of the maddening things about researching General Douglas MacArthur’s fighting style in WW2 was the way he created, used and discarded military institutions, both logistical and intelligence, in the course of his South West Pacific Area (SWPA) operations. Institutions that had little wartime publicity and have no direct organizational descendent to tell their stories in the modern American military.”

The importance of logistics is the reason for the adage, “Amateurs talk tactics while professionals talk logistics.”

Today’s column is the story of another of those many “throw away” logistical institutions. The Philippines was a naval theater. The “standard historical narrative” has a gap between submarines on one hand and aircraft on the other. Both of those made the history books, neither could move as much material as the Filipino guerilla’s used in support of MacArthur’s Forces in the Philippines. It stands to reason 7th Fleet Amphibious Craft and Ships would support the Filipino Guerilla’s there. So I went to the war diaries of the extinct littoral amphibious ships in “MacArthur’s Navy” on the Fold3 government document digitization service to find their work, and sure enough the following popped up.

Landing Craft Infantry, Large, 701. One of the four small landing ships to make up TASK GROUP 70.4 in February 1945 — **Landing Craft Infantry, Large, 701. One of the four small landing ships to make up TASK GROUP 70.4, the 7th Fleet’s Guerilla Support Group, in February 1945.**

The Seventh Fleet established Task Group 70.4 as a “guerilla support group” to support Filipino guerilla’s in the Southern Philippines in February 1945. This was effectively a detachment of LCI(L) Flotilla 24. TG 70.4 was made up of two Landing Craft Infantry (Large) or “LCI(L)” for transport (701 and 1024) and two Landing Craft Support (Large)(Mark 3) or “LCS(L)(3)” (No. 9 & 10) for fire support.

When Instapundit Earns a Face Palm…

February 9, 2015February 9, 2015 by Trent Telenko

And he earns them for this post:

BOLOS YES, TERMINATORS NO: We Can Now Build Autonomous Killing Machines. And That’s a Very, Very Bad Idea.
Posted at 4:10 pm by Glenn Reynolds

Silicon Valley, and the Techie crowd in general, have a hard time with any history that hasn’t happened in their own lifetime. But the Wired article Instapundit linked too is beyond the pale. Only a Silicon Valley Journalist serving a Silicon Valley cultural audience can say something as historically ignorant as this —

“…You see, we’re already at the dawn of the age of killer robots. And we’re completely unprepared for them.
.
It’s early days still. Korea’s Dodam systems, for example, builds an autonomous robotic turret called the Super aEgis II. It uses thermal cameras and laser range finders to identify and attack targets up to 3 kilometers away. And the US is reportedly experimenting with autonomous missile systems.”

…with a straight face in the earnest pursuit of eyeballs.

Sadly, Instapundit fell for WIRED writer Robert McMillan’s repetition of Silicon Valley hype about “Autonomous Killing Machines.” and sent Wired an undeserved “Insta-lanch” instead of the “Fisking” it so richly deserved for this piece of historically ignorant/arrogant Silicon Valley Marketing fluff. (Admittedly the killer robot cartoon was retro-cute).

The militaries of the world have quite literally built billions upon billions of “Autonomous Killing Machines.” for hundreds of years, at least since 1780, and in several different varieties. The first and most numerous of “Autonomous Killing Machines“ are called _LAND MINES_.

Cue in Gen Norman Schwarzkopf circa 1991 Gulf War —

History Friday — MacArthur’s High Tech Radar Commandos

December 30, 2016January 30, 2015 by Trent Telenko

One of the more frustrating things in dealing with General Douglas MacArthur’s World war 2 fighting style was how many ‘will of the wisp’ intelligence, logistical and special forces operations he created and that were buried in post-WW2 classified files in many military services of several nations, located on several different continents. Often times, when you go looking for one of these outfits, something completely different turns up. Such was the case with MacArthur’s High Tech Radar Commandos, Field Units 12 and 14 of Section 22, General Headquarters, South West Pacific Area.

The trail of MacArthur’s Australian Military Force (AMF) Radar Commandos started with the following record from the Fold3 government record digitization service —

http://www.fold3.com/image/1/300331293/

“In PT operations, on the 28/29, Alamo Scouts were put ashore on Fuga
Island and natives gave intelligence material abandoned by the
Japanese on Amboengi Idland, in the Little Paternoster Group when they
crossed to the Celebes in native canoes, on 18 July.”

And then a little later on the same page it also stated:

Balikpapan boats landed Australian scouts on Amboengi
Ialand, Little Paternoster Group, site of a reported
radar station. A radio tower was strafed end radio sets
demolished.

So, the Alamo Scout report above resulted in a Balikpapan based American PT-boat (or boats?} arriving at the reported Radar site the next day which Australian scouts photographed, damaged and then called down an 7th Fleet patrol plane air strike on to make sure nothing was salvageable afterwards?

It turns out that first passage from the 7th Fleet War Diary was badly written, splicing two different special forces operations together. As I soon discovered when I checked with the Alamo Scout Historical Foundation.

Places such as Amboengi are in the Little Paternoster Islands (today’s Balabalagan Islands, Indonesia.) are off the southeast curve of Borneo. None of the Alamo Scouts operated in Borneo. Fuga Island was off the northern shore of Luzon where the Alamo Scouts had their last big hostage rescue mission of the war. In July 1945 the Alamo Scouts rescued the President of the Bank of the Philippines and his extended family held hostage there. The banker was a personal friend of General MacArthur.

Ratel (Radar intelligence) No. 5, May 8, 1945 radar coverage map of the Dutch East Indies made with intelligence provided by General MacArthur's Section 22 Radar 'Boffins'. — **Ratel (Radar intelligence) No. 5, May 8, 1945 radar coverage map of the Dutch East Indies made with intelligence provided by General MacArthur’s Section 22 Radar ‘Boffins’.**

So there my trail went cold. If not the Alamo Scouts, Who are these guys?

The Australian Military Forces (AMF) special forces contingent doing island reconnaissance was large, not well documented by American military records, perhaps not at all, and they operated widely across the South Pacific. They were often deployed using Catalina PBY flying boats, submarines or even by canoe, distances permitting. Having no access to Australian Archives to figure this out, I dropped it.

ENTER THE CIA

Ukraine’s Viking Revival

June 30, 2019January 29, 2015 by Trent Telenko

When I wrote “The Ukraine Crisis — Some Background and Thoughts” back in February 28, 2014. I expected the Russian – Ukraine War in the Donbass to be headline news in the American media. It turned out…not so much. The NFL Patriot’s deflated footballs and bad mega-blizzard forecasts for the North East United States, among other headlines, seem far more important to the America’s media mandarin’s quest for advertising dollars.
.
Part of this lack of coverage is laziness. American broadcast networks and cable news services just don’t cover foreign news much, as it is a lot of work for low ratings. And when it comes to things that reflect poorly on Pres. Obama, other than Fox News, they are all “UK Guardian reporting on the Labour Party” regards Obama Administration foreign policy failures. Which the war in the Ukraine definitely is. Meanwhile the Russophile “fanbois” are spam-commenting on the Mil-blogs and military-themed forums I follow to the point they are useless. I had given up hope of finding anything useful on the fighting there.
.
Then I ran into the following video from a defense industry guy who is tracking the Donbass fighting…and then I snorted up my coffee…_Violently_.
.
This Ukrainian propaganda video showed not only the fighting, but Ukraine’s Viking Revival spawned by the fighting in the Donbass.
.

“100 BIYTSIV.” (100 Warriors) – New Ukrainian Propaganda Clip
(Lyrics Nehrebetskiy, Score Telezin, sung by Donchenko)
.
This is a classic piece of war music in many ways reminiscent of WW2, and the video clip is designed to produce that martial effect. It is being propagated by the Right Sector militia via their Youtube portal. The video is a huge viral phenomena in Ukrainian social media, reflected by the fact that the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense placed it on their Facebook page despite very poor relations with the Right Sector.
.
This emerging Ukrainian nationalist cultural revival has huge tactical, operational, and strategic military, plus grand strategic political, implications for the 21st Century. Implications I intend to explore in posts here on Chicago Boyz.
.
If the song sounds familiar when you play the video — it’s why I breathed coffee — it should be. The tune of this song is based on SSgt Barry Sadler’s “The Ballad of the Green Berets” —
.

.
See for background on Sadler:
.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Sadler
.
Too Sadler’s Green Berets tune, Nehrebetskiy placed the following lyrics for Ukraine’s Right Sector Militia media team:

The Coming Murder of the US Constitution

November 18, 2014 by Trent Telenko

The most important issue is missing from debate over the coming Obama administration’s “Executive Amnesty for illegal immigrants.” If such an action is taken without even an attempt at impeachment, we will mark that day as the day the U.S. Constitution was murdered.

Certainly some Constitutional forms will hold on another decade or two, but the relevance of Congress to federal policy making, Constitutional branch separation of powers generally, and ultimately the rule of law will be gone. Future generations of Americans will mark the Constitution as a dead letter from that day. Our American birth right to the rule of law and ordered liberty under the Constitution will have been traded for a blatant pursuit of power by any means necessary. Ultimately such power only comes from the barrel of a gun, and here only one side has guns.

That President Obama is dissolving the Constitution for a faster influx of non-white voters so he can dissolve the current declining white majority polity shows a deep love of power, and a deep hatred of any past or current American cultural institutions, that gets in the way of his power.

This isn’t new. Leftists in America have been heading down this road since before the Cold War between America and the Soviet Union started in the 1940’s.

What is new, and the real test here, is acquiescence of the opposition party (Republican) elected elites to this turn of events. They have preemptively surrendered the only real counter to this Executive usurpation of the Legislative power, impeachment of the President, for purported fear of a voter backlash and loss of their new majority in Congress.

The coming failure of the Republican Congress to do their Constitutional duty means the Republican Party is led by the same sort of narrow partisans who lead the Democratic Party, i.e., men more concerned with their fleeting power than their duty, America or freedom. Why should any of the American people obey the law when their elected officials openly defy it and their Constitutional obligations? Their elected representatives in Congress would replace the rule of law with the rule of men for the sake of their own power.

It may be that impeachment of President Obama for his proposed unconstitutional mass amnesty of illegal immigrants costs the Republican Party its new majority in Congress. Not even trying is simply the short road to hell. “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing” John Stuart Mill. Failure by the GOP Congressional majority to even try to impeach President Obama here would be a clear and overwhelmingly powerful message to the Tea Party and others on the Right that only violence, and not the ballot box, is the answer to Executive tyranny.

For while Democrats and current Republican leaders may not remember, the following words are the cultural DNA of the American people, and it only took 1/3 of them to win the Revolution and drive out a Superpower:

“…And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”