Vic Socotra

15 December 2009

Atom Age

If we think of the 1950s at all these days, it is through the eyes of the Boomer generation who were children then. We remember hula-hoops and TV dinners, drive-in movies and early Rock and Roll. We recall a decade of tranquility before things began to get really strange in the 1960s, but that is not the way it was.

The new decade opened with the still-new birth of the State of Israel (1948) , the reorganization of the US Defense Establishment (1949), the titanic reverberation of the first Soviet Atomic test (JOE ONE, August 1949) the and the sound of guns on the Korean Peninsula (June 1950),

In January 1951, Rex reported for post-graduate instruction at the Naval Intelligence School, Washington, D.C. The Atomic Age was looming as a factor in everyone’s life, and no exception were the military departments, who were directed to disperse critical facilities away from the capital, where they were thought to be vulnerable to Soviet attack.

Only a last-ditch reclama to the Chief of Naval Operations by the Director of Naval Intelligence saved the schoolhouse on the old seaplane base at Anacostia.

There he learned the basics of the Intelligence business, as it had always been for the Intelligence specialists assigned to the Naval Districts. The curriculum was under great stress at the time. The conflict in Korea had demonstrated the need for personnel trained in the art of Air Intelligence, which is to say support to the cycle of carrier strike operations.

Still, the core values of the art the Rex was expected to master were covered in thirty courses, some of a highly technical nature involving operational, strategic, amphibious and air intelligence topics. Seven months of course work were followed by ten weeks of practical application afloat, under the tender ministries of CINCLANT or CINCPAC.

Concluding the course was specialized language training, which could range in duration from four months for the “easy” languages like Spanish to up to eighteen months for Chinese.

Not a single air intelligence officer remained on active duty in the Navy when the North Koreans stormed south across the military demarcation line in 1950. A frantic scramble began to recall hundreds of personnel from the reserves to fill the ranks. By the time Rex was enrolled at the college, a sufficient number of reservists had been recalled and dispatched to the Fleet, though severe deficiencies remained in photo interpreters.

When Rex reported to the Naval Intelligence School, the curriculum was still oriented to the traditional intelligence officer, assigned to Naval District Headquarters. The nine-month course was in the process of being abbreviated to wartime requirements of six months, but Rex concluded the traditional curriculum with a concentration in Arab issues, and upon graduation, was assigned as Force intelligence Officer to the staff of Commander, Middle East Force, in May of 1952.

We should remember that the British and the Royal navy were still very much the senior partner in the Persian Gulf in those days, and the role of the staff was much different than its successor, 5th Fleet, headquartered in Bahrain. When Rex arrived in the Emirate, the US Navy’s presence in the Gulf consisted of two destroyers and a small seaplane tender. Shore support was provided by buildings rented from the Royal Navy at its installation HMS Juffair, since Bahrain was still a British protectorate.

No permanent flagship was assigned to Middle East Force, so duty rotated between three former seaplane tenders: USS DUXBURY BAY, USS GREENWICH BAY, and USS VALCOUR.

Following this tour, Rex was rewarded with one of those famous Military Good Deals. He was detached to attend the American University Beirut (“AUB”) in the lovely capital of Lebanon.

I envision a gracious life on the glittering blue waters of the eastern Med in the Paris of the Near East. The graceful days of French rule did still linger; the sidewalk cafes were very much secular. Women, in fact, had been admitted as full students at AUB only the year before, and Rex may have seen something else coming as put down his Lucky Strike in an ashtray and sipped a café au lait.

In March of 1954, students rioted on the AUB campus in protest against the Baghdad Pact, an impending alliance of the now improbably line-up of Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Turkey, and the United Kingdom. Part of America’s strategy of containment against the Soviet Union, budgetary problems kept the US out of the final line-up, which was the least successful of the regional alliance systems.

Regardless. The students did not like it, and in the end, fire hoses brandished by the security forces transitioned to gunfire, and 26 students were injured.

Rex had by then completed a brief tour on the Staff of the Commander in Chief, Naval Forces, Eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean in London, England (CINCNELM).

The US Navy had established its European Headquarters at 20 Grosvenor Square in 1949, Ike’s old HQ, and added the famous entrance at No. 7 North Audley in 1951. London, in those days, was the cross-roads of Europe for the Navy, and generations of intelligence and cryptology personnel in the pubs and streets of a great city only then emerging from the privations of wartime rationing.

In August 1954, reality called. Rex was still a deck officer, and there were needs in the Fleet. Based on his skills as a deck officer, he was assigned to the heavy cruiser, USS MACON (CG-132).

When her keel was laid, Macon’s main battery consisted of nine 8* naval rifles, impressive artillery, to be sure, but hardly the guns of the fleet. By the time Rex arrived as the Combat Information Center (CIC) Officer, he was responsible for the operational deployment of the Regulus Cruise Missile.

The Regulus arrived in the Fleet just as Rex was preparing to leave, but most of his tour was spent attempting to integrate the capability of three missiles, all capable of carrying a 3,000-pound 40-kilotonW5 nuclear warhead to a range of 500 nautical miles at Mach 0.85.

Rex and his weapons were in the Med when Egypt's Nassar decided to nationalize the Suez Canal in July of 1956, after the withdrawal of an offer by Britain and the United States to fund the building of the Aswan Dam, which in turn was a response to Egypt recognizing the People's Republic of China during the height of tensions between China and Taiwan.

Grandpa Ike, as we like to remember him now, had a briefing paper on his desk recommending an atomic strike on the Red Chinese.

He angrily declined, but I think that goes a long way to dispel the idea that the 1950s were either placid or particularly sane.

Rex was detached from the Macon in September 1956. Having applied for, and being accepted as a Special Duty- Naval Intelligence Officer, he was assigned to the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, Navy Department, Washington, D.C.

That is where Rex’s real education began.

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