Listening

[39mto39g]

This guy came to vist us one time and he brought a show-N-tell item. It was a thing that looked kinda like a 81 mortar shell except it had a wire about 2 feet comming from the powder end, The wire was stiff and about 1/8 inch dia. He said they were to listen in on what was in the area, He had a Amarical patch on his sholder, (we helped him anyway) He said we were to take about 15 or twentry of these things and plant them along a trail he had marked on a map.
So we got on a chopper and road off into the sunset, As we were walking back we would dig a hole and plant this thing all except the wire.
I would assume that the wire was an antenna , but where did it transmit to and what would they do with the information from the antenna?
The guy didn't explane a lot about what, who, why ect , tipical Army thing, Just do it.
Im not real sure where we were even, I think around Kontum.

Ron

[Arrow]

[Desdichado]

We had a mortar ship in our company. It was a standard H model Huey fitted with a crude, but effective, wooden chute system to saturate an area with 81s. Sort of a carpet bombing with mortars idea. It got commandeered a few times by some mysterious people in sunglasses to drop those listening thingies. Never got to see one up close myself though.

[MORTARDUDE]

a mortar chopper ? Who woulda thunk it ! Thanks.

Larry

[DMZ-LT]

Any body get a 1/4 size handgernade with a 10 second adjustable timer on it ?

[colmurph]

Those things were seismic sensors which could pick up vibrations from people walking nearby or vehicles passing. They were used to direct the fast movers into sections of the Ho Chi Minh Trail that had activity. There were others that were air dropped from several thousand feet and would bury themselves leaving the antenna wire above ground. When I was going through the SFOC course we were shown these things and shown a transcript of a voice pick-up that had been taped and translated. It went something like this.

Nguyn. What the heck is that thing in the tree?

Cau-lam- I don't know. It looks like a bomb!

Nguyn - We'd better take it back to headquarters and show it to them!

Lots of movement noises and finally someone says What did you bring here? You fools! Do you know what this is! Then the sound of aricraft, bombs and then silence.

They were dropped all around Ke-Sanh during the seige and pinpointed areas which were heavily infested with NVA. The co-ordinates were known for individual sensors so artillery could be adjusted to hit in the areas of activity.

After coming back from Vietnam and getting into the Customs Patrol, we used similar seisemic and audio sensors along the Mexican Border to track drug smugglers. They work GR-8!

[colmurph]

DMZ-LT ....you talking about the Dutch Hand Grenades? We had a bunch of them but not with timers, just conventional 4 1/2 second delays. The Grenade body was the same as the one inside the 40 mm "Blooper" round with a small spoon and pull ring. You could throw them about 4 times as far as a conventional grenade without tearing your rotator cuff in the process.

[DMZ-LT]

Not sure Murph. Seems once in awhile we got stuff to try out. These had timers on them though. Got sensors like above but small ones , like a foot long. Seem to remember they came 8 or so to a set and each one made a different sound so you could tell which one was going off. Pain in the ass.

[exlrrp]

I was reading about some of the countermeasures the enemy took toward these things. They'd hang buckets of urine in trees to foil the Sniffers. They'd drive cattle and all down the trails to foil the motion sensors.
And after they figured these out they probabbly played them the same.
VC A: Hey Poncho, there's a Beeeeeeeeg VC Meeting tonight at Seex (can't do the accents right) right where the trail to the cowpens meets the trail to the paddy
VC B: Oh Si SI Pedro right at the My Dong Village #16, oh yes, eets ALL bad VC there. My Dong village#16, oh Si, don't forget.
The next thing you know My Dong #16 is wiped out but--Suurprise!!-- the bad ones were all in My Dong #17. Don't worry, its nothing but Collateral Damage.Think about how good it was for My Dong

They should have planted something useful, like toe poppers and other party favors.

James

[Desdichado]

Originally posted by MORTARDUDE a mortar chopper ? Who woulda thunk it ! Thanks.

Larry

Don't thank me, thank the guy who thunk it up. That thing rocked. Never got used much, but what a show when it did. A nicer carpet of instant on-call damn-damn you never saw laid.