flak@beaver.cs.washington.edu (Dan Flak) (12/04/89)
From: mcgp1!flak@beaver.cs.washington.edu (Dan Flak)
LOW TECH WARFARE - PART II
Having determined that putting bomb craters in the middle of the
roadway was no guarantee that the road would remain cut, the Air
Force decided to try to deny the use of the Ho Chi Minh trail by
other means.
They decided to use CBU (Cluster Bomb Units). CBU came in a
number of varieties. The type used for road denial was specifically
designed to do damage to, (but not necessarily destroy) trucks.
This type CBU was golf ball in size, and delivered by the
thousands from rearward or downward ejecting bomb racks. This
laid the CBU out in a tight rectangular pattern which the
fighters attempted to place on the roadway centerline.
Many of this type of CBU was time delay. That is, some of it went
off immediately, and the rest went off at random intervals, or
when run over by a truck. This meant that there were small
explosions waiting to rip up truck tires or gas tanks, going off
at odd intervals all day long on the road.
To clear the road of such obstacles, the V.C. took two water
buffalo and walked them down either side of the road, outside the
CBU pattern, if they could. The water buffalo tailed ropes tied
to a heavy log. The heavy log would prematurely detonate the CBU
which "thought" it was being run over by truck tires.
After losing several water buffalo, the V.C. decided to use women
with long sticks of bamboo (the preverbial 10 foot pole) to flip
the CBU out of the path of the buffalo.
--
Dan Flak - McCaw Cellular Communications Inc., 201 Elliot Ave W.,
Suite 105, Seattle, Wa 98119, 206-283-2658, (usenet: thebes!mcgp1!flak)