Mustang IRS Blog

“Park Your Car Now. Get Out, And Call Your Dealer!”

Stellantis is taking the rare step of telling some owners of Jeep, Dodge and Ram vehicles to park their cars immediately, and issued a formal “Do Not Drive” order for 225,000 vehicles with unrepaired Takata airbags. The National Highway Traffic Safety Admin. has documented 28 deaths and many gruesome and life altering injuries from exploding Takata airbags. Metal fragments and pieces of the dashboard could be blasted into your neck and face.
Hmm … sounds serious to me. For a little perspective, my friend Klaus Arning, who helped me bring the Mustang I.R.S. back to life, was working on airbags in the 60’s. To paraphrase, “Setting off a dynamite blast in a closed car full of women and children was quite a challenge.” All the auto manufactures were cooperating in the rush to develop a technology the Federal Government said it would soon be mandating.

The first bags were designed to catch a 200-pound man not wearing a seat belt. Hey, those were the guys doing the testing. After children in car seats and shorter women were reported being horribly killed, some decapitated, designers reduced the power.

When the design work was done, most of the American suppliers settled on using sodium azide (NaN3 ) as an inflator. The Japanese firm Takata chose ammonium nitrate, because it was cheap, and as we all know, CHEAP is the holy grail in automotive purchasing.

Ammonium nitrate mixed with a little water can explode spontaneously. Timothy McVeigh used a rental truck full of ammonium nitrate to blow up the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on 19 April, 1995.

Ammonia loves water and will get it anyway it can, even pulling it out of the air. Therein lies the rub. Ammonium nitrate has an explosion expansion ratio of about 1,000, while the expansion ratio of water turning to steam is roughly 1,600. You can see that a very small of water would increase the power of an airbag inflator by a lot. OUCH ! .

One of the axioms of physics is…everything leaks … so a car in a humid location will probably have a bag inflator with some moisture inside it. 100 million cars world wide, 67 million in the U.S. (or about 1 in 7 cars on the road) are Takata equipped.

The solution: Park your car until replacement parts are available. Takata is out of business, of course, but the 7 manufactures who chose their air bags are producing replacement parts using a different inflator chemical. It could take a while, but please keep making your car payment.

In the mid 80’s I was working for Morton Thiokol as a Facilities Engineer. Morton had about 65% of the airbag business using sodium azide. We were doing a transformer swap late one night when I saw lights on in the test lab. I went in to see what was up. One of our senior engineers was trying to get a batch of sodium azide samples to pass our test cycle.

Test samples were placed in a 3/4 inch thick stainless steel container about 3 feet in diameter and about 3 feet tall with a lid secured by spring loaded latches. That was inside a concrete cell with a blast proof window and a heavy duty chainlink fence ceiling. Above the chain link was the concrete of the second floor. That concrete was covered with deep gouges made by the the container lid when testing “overly energetic” samples.

I didn’t know the engineer well, but it was late at night, and in a conspiratorial voice he said, “Duane ,we don’t really know what these things will do.” I said we’ve been making and testing them for years. He said, “ I know, but we don’t know what they’ll do 10 or 20 or 30 years from now. A farmer who lives at the end of a ten mile long dirt road stands a good chance of having the wafers (the sodium azide is pressed into wafers about the size of a Ritz cracker and put in a holder to guarantee a uniform burn) turn into dust from the vibration on a rough road. Azide dust burns MANY times faster and hotter than we’ve designed for.” You mean if the bag goes off it could kill the farmer and his entire family I said. “EASILY, he said. Hopefully I’ll be retired before that happens.”

The DO NOT DRIVE order is more bad news for the Stellantis corporation, whose RAM pickup brand is sitting on a 460 day supply of trucks, while their competitor Chevy Colorado has the opposite problem, a 19 day supply …a 70 day supply is considered healthy.

A solution would be stop requiring air bags.

Some SUVs now have 10 (!) airbags that all go off at once. They decrease the chances of injury by 10% over just a 3-point seat belt. Many accidents are multiple impact events, car hits curb, airbags goes off, then car hits tree and rolls.The air bags are of no help in numbers 2 and 3. In fact they could decrease your chances. If you and your family hadn’t just been hit in the face with 10 sledge hammers and you could have possibly avoided that damn tree.

How about we make all the government required “safety” features optional. No “lane assist,” no stop/start, no electronic stability control, no cameras, no tire pressure monitoring, no anti-lock braking, no automatic emergency braking, no blind spot detection, no computers that can only be programed by the dealer. These government-mandated safety features raise the cost of a new car by thousands, and they have the power to kill you and your entire family.

Please form two orderly lines, Product Liability lawyers to my left. Personal Injury lawyers to my right.

Feeding time will commence shortly.

Thanks for listening.

Duane

It was late summer of 1995. My son Michael and his friends were dreading the start of 9th grade at Davis High School. My wife saw their suffering and made a phone call to the school principal to see if there was anything we could do to improve the classes Mike and his friends were scheduled to attend. They were separate from the normal classes and called Resource. Students with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) or any other “disorder” were sent there, and the other kids of course called the classes “Retard.”

Suzanne, in her usual polite manner asked the principal why Mike was in a room full of kids, some in wheelchairs and others just staring out the window, while the teacher loaded one video after another into the player. “He’s just wasting his time there and he deserves something better.”

The principal said, “Good we don’t want his type here at Davis.”

If you’ve ever seen a mama Grizzly protecting her cubs, you saw Suzy taking on that public servant. After much sound and fury, we knew we were through with public education. Suz and I both have teaching certificates, BYU class of ’69 thank you, and after our student teaching experience we decided, “It’s not for us.”

We met with the parents of Mike’s friends and decided to set up our basement rec room as a home school, get the best curriculum we could find (there are lots of them in Utah) and call it SOMERSET ACADEMY after the private development called Somerset Farms that we live in.

We would teach the boys the building trades in the morning and do home school in the evenings. They would learn how to build a house from the ground up, and if they liked one of the trades–carpenter, painter, roofer, etc.–they could pursue that as a lifetime skill.  I was a contractor/builder/developer in Vail in a previous life.

A friend and neighbor was building a house in a nearby development so I bought the lot next door to him, the prints for his house and a list of the sub-contractors he was using. I quit my job with an engineering company and, with a little schmoozing down at the bank, we got a construction loan. We were off and running.

It’s amazing how much I remembered from the Vail days, but also how much I’d forgotten. Fortunately, we had the house next door to use as a teaching tool. Other builders in the neighborhood, when they heard what we were doing, would stop by. “If there’s anything we can do for you, just let us know.” One old guy and a half dozen 14-year-olds gonna build that house from the ground up? Hmm.

My previous employer sent an excavation crew to dig the basement for us. When I called the concrete guy on my list of subs, he said “We can be there tomorrow.” A typical U.S. home consists of roughly 3,000 major components if you count only major construction assemblies (like roof, foundation, or walls) and over 600,000 if you count every nail, screw, and wire. Each of these has to be speced, ordered, and delivered to the right place at the right time in the right sequence. I told my crew, “If we do the right things, in the right way, in the right order, the house will build itself.” Life’s lessons are right there before you if you’ll only listen.

With the help of a few major and a lot of minor miracles (or coincidences) we managed to finish the project and actually made a little money! The bank got nervous when it took so long, over a year, but we had no trouble selling it. We built it to be handicapped accessible just because no one else was in that niche.  We printed flyers and posted them everywhere we thought handicapped people might see them.  Once we found the right buyer, it was an easy sale, saving us the 6% realtor fee. 

Suzanne handled the home school component with her usual aplomb.  She taught English and History and used some of the many private tutors available, most of them moon lighting public school teachers–“Your place or mine?“–to handle math and science. All of our students passed the General Education Development (G.E.D.) tests with ease and became high school graduates. Proving that “fools rush in,” we decided to build another house, with some modifications, in the same neighborhood. Slightly larger, again with a walk-out basement, but with an extra room built into the trusses which gave us 500 more square feet and a ½ bath. Our subs were a big help, pointing out where we could make their job easier and cost less. Since I was the owner, architect, and general contractor, changes were no problem, and the project took about half the time of the first one.

If one of our crew decided he wanted to be a painter, for instance, I let him spec the material, schedule the delivery, and coordinate with the other trades he would be interfacing with. Mr. Murphy’s lawyers paid us a few visits, but overall it went pretty well.

The housing market was still booming under Obama’s easy credit plan, so we decided to try it again. Our loan officer, whom I was becoming friends with, had a daughter about the same age as our crew, and warned us this would probably be our last dance. The housing market was due for a turn, since that is what it always does. “Be in when you should be in, and out when you should be out,” she said.

We bought the biggest lot in the neighborhood, expanded our plan to a little over 4,500 square feet, with 2 ½ baths upstairs, a big bath with a jetted tub downstairs, two kitchens, two living rooms, and a walk-out basement. A big deck out back completed the package.  We had become friends with many in the handicapped comminity and hoped to rent it out to one of the Group Home companies in that business, which we were able to do. Girls were upstairs, boys were downstairs, and the full-time manager lived in the attic room. I mowed the lawn and helped shovel the snow while keeping an eye out for any needed repairs or maintenance.

One day I saw a new teenage resident, who had been living in her stepmother’s basement for years, guide her powered wheelchair up the curved walk and into her brand new home as she burst into tears–and so did I.

As the markets got crazier and crazier, my mortgage guy would come by every few months and yell, “Hey Duane, I can get you another $30,000 on your house and lower your payment.”  “Sure,” I’d say, and a couple weeks later he’d show up with the papers and a certified check.

If you want to see what the financial world was doing at that time, find a video of THE BIG SHORT or THE WOLF OF WALLSTREET. Lenders were making huge loans to anyone with a 520 credit score or above. 520  basically means you are still breathing.  These were “bundled” into something called a Collateralized Debt Obligation (C.D.O.)  and sold worldwide to retirement plans and conservative investment funds as AAA rated bonds, backed by the reputation of the good old U.S. of A. Everyone knew the music was gonna stop eventually, but in the meantime–!

The nice lady at the bank and the Group Home company I was renting to both “suggested” I sell the house to the Group for what I owed, cash out, and go find a real job, which I did.

Then it all hit the fan.

On Friday, 15 Jan, 2010, at 4:45 P.M., federal marshalls entered our bank, which was founded in 1891, and announced, “This bank is now seized by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Everyone please stand up, keep your hands in view, do NOT touch anything, especially files or keyboards, and line up against this wall. You will be allowed to return to your desks one by one to retrieve keys and hat and coats. Nothing else. Your final checks will be available Tuesday morning at 9:00 A.M. when the bank will reopen for withdrawls only.”

The F.D.I.C. covered 277 million in losses on insured deposits. Uninsured depositors and Bank stockholders lost hundreds of millions of dollars, but that was nothing compared to what was happening worldwide. My friend was now looking for a job, along with many others.

Well, it was a good project. The three houses are still in good shape some 30+ years later. The Home is fully occupied and doing well, and we provided many young people a better shot at life than they would have had otherwise.

Duane

When we moved to Farmington, Utah, about 40 years ago, we bought a lot in a new subdivision called Somerset Farms. There was a stream on 2 sides of the lot and a hiking trail that lead directly into the mountains. We had lived in Vail for 8 years and wanted something with a mountain feel, but without the deep snow and 8 months of winter.

It was also one of the few lots in the subdivision with a nice flat spot for the house I wanted to design.

When we finished the excavation for the house, I used my high school Earth Sciences knowledge to read the geo-history of the 8 foot wall. The bottom 6 feet showed several million years of “alluvial sand and gravel” that you’d expect to find where the valley meets the mountains. About 3 feet from the top there was a thin line of compressed vegetation, some of it still green, and above that was dark rich topsoil that could only have come down from the mountains in a huge debris flow. Mixed into the top layer was a jumble of boulders and logs.

When the first settlers arrived in Farmington they found there wasn’t much that would grow in the alkaline soil that was once the bottom of Lake Bonneville.  Some say it was an act of God, others say sheep had over grazed the mountain side, but in the spring of 1850 a massive slide brought topsoil, rocks and timber down from the mountains to the bench land. That slide shaped the future of the whole area.

As we built our house, I kept finding pieces of rusty iron attached to chunks of rotted timber with crude hand-made bolts. Being interested in such things, I started a pile of mystery metal.  I found out later that flat spot our house sits on was also the spot where the original settler built his barn.

After we got the house all done (is it ever really done ?)  we had time to solve our little metal mystery.  My son Mikey and I would arrange bits of rotted wood and rusty iron into various configurations, hoping that we’d discover the long-ago craftsman’s design. The break came when we rerouted the hiking trail thru a 10 ft. diameter clump of wild roses and found 2 pieces of iron and wood that looked like sled runners buried in the roots.

It is very rare to find any metal older than 1940 around here because virtually every piece was gathered up in WWII scrap drives and sent off to war. Our “sled” probably survived because it was so hard to find.

Farmington was settled in 1847 so the runners could have been over 100 years old. We weren’t sure of the overall design, but we were pretty sure of the original dimensions of the wood pieces. They were all odd sizes (no Home Depot) and they had been cut with a rotary saw, since band saws were way into the future.

With the pieces in our hands and the design in our heads, we found a small family-owned saw mill near Jackson Hole willing to tackle the job. When we got it all assembled, we found we had a 1/2 scale front to a horse drawn sled!

The Mormons who settled here were very communal. They had to be. Rocks and timber brought down by the slide supplied building material for homes and farms and the rich top soil would grow anything. Row crops such as corn and wheat were impractical due to the number of huge  rocks everywhere, but trees, especially cherry trees, did very well. The settlers chose a variety of sweet cherry and a variety of tart cherry to plant that they hoped would do well.

Modern place names still tell the story: Cherry Hill, Cherry Lane, Fruit Heights, etc.

Once I knew the identity of our stow away, I had to know more about it. This was probably a cherry sled. A sled makes more sense than a wheel in the flood irrigated orchards, where a wheel would get stuck in the soft soil. It was small enough a horse could pull it between the trees and rocks, and low enough that children (the most important crop) could pick  cherries and place them in a box mounted to the sled. That box was then loaded onto a full-size wagon that was taken to the processing center at lunch time where long tables of food awaited the pickers.

As I write this on January 1, 2026, and I put my hands on the pieces where my likely relative placed his, I marvel at the Civil War era workmanship, and I’m reminded of this recipe for success from tennis great Arthur Ashe … “Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can.”

All the best to you in the new year. 

Duane  

Addendum

As I was researching some background for the SLED STORY, I was impressed by the names used in the horse & buggy era that were carried over into the automotive era, such as:

TIRES: Before there were steel wheels and rubber tires, wheels were made of sections of wood held together by a tight-fitting iron ring known as a “tire” …  spelled in Europe as “tyre.” Sound familiar ?

Since coil springs and leaf springs mostly didn’t exist, the passenger compartment of a coach was suspended by leather straps arranged in an X pattern and the straps suspended from 4 posts.  This dampened the worst shocks from the dirt roads. The whole arrangement is known as “the suspension” and the leather straps replaced by the “shocks.”

We now use those terms, and the whole arrangement is known as “the undercarriage.”

In the days when large logs needed to be turned into dimensional lumber, the first step was to dig a pit. One man would stand in the pit (the pit man) while another stood on the log (the sawyer) and together they sawed the log in half lengthwise. In the car world, any steering component that just goes back and forth is known as the “pitman arm.”

Words such as Brougham,  Landau, and others have made the transition from horse to horse power.  

I’m sure there are others.  Let me know

Home

The above dwelling, 1212 Sanford Avenue, Richland Washington was our government supplied home from 1944 to 1949, while the U.S. chased the plutonium bomb at nearby Hanford Atomic Works. It’s been updated a bit since then … chain link fence, sloped roof replacing the flat roof, vinyl windows and some wood siding. I wonder if insulation was ever installed along with the other updates? The structure was prefabricated plywood, with one oil fed wall heater to fight off the -20 or so winter weather. It took a crew 8 hours to assemble and set up on concrete blocks. About 550 square feet of real linoleum flooring kept the wind whistling under the floorboards from entering the living space. Cool!

 My mother said I was always a “busy boy,” so she gave me the job of dragging the steel garbage cans out to the road once a week, and I could ride my tricycle (most treasured possession) to the neighbors on either side … but no further!

Studying the photo carefully, you’ll see I’ve convinced one of the “big kids” to tie that rope to his bicycle and tow me faster than I could otherwise pedal. From the damage to the front fender and the slight misalignment of the handlebars, I may have had a crash … or two.

In 1948, I spent 6 or 8 months (nobody can remember for sure) in bed with what was diagnosed then as rheumatic fever. That tiny house became even smaller as I fought for my life in what we later found out was radiation exposure, accidental or on purpose.  https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/history/human-radiation-experiments/ 

I remember the first time I went for a ride with the family after many months of confinement. I made myself carsick by looking from one side of the road and back to the other … not wanting to miss a thing.

We’d had enough of Atomic City, so we relocated to Dad’s hometown of Fillmore, Utah. Dad traded our 6-cylinder Ford sedan for a 1939 Lincoln Zephyr 4-door V12 limo, which I thought was a rocket ship! It had electric windows, electric push button (suicide) door openers, and one of my favorites, an electric radio antenna. When Dad returned from working out of town, he often found his car’s battery dead, and he knew who to blame.

Another favorite feature was the little red light in the speedometer housing that let the Captain know that the high beams were ON … and we were now transitioning to hyper drive! 

Han Solo and The Millennium Falcon surely stole their movie plot from my 6-year-old brain.

The Zephyr was designed by John Tjaarda (1897-1962) under the direction of Edsel B. Ford (1893-1943), who chose the name. I didn’t know that at the time, but I liked John’s work. His son, Tom Tjaarda (1934-2017), designed the Ford-powered Pantera in 1970.

The Zephyr had two jump seats that folded into the back of the front bench. You could carry four grown men in relative comfort in the rear compartment, and the drive shaft tunnel was just right for me to stand on in the back seat to see the dashboard. I loved the sound and vibration of that big V-12 . Much different than a six or even an 8 cylinder, it was somehow comforting.  Dad and I were both most relaxed and happy when we were on the road.

My grandfather was the same way.   https://mustangirs.com/blog/?s=ELMER+CARLING

To paraphrase Steve McQueen’s character in Le Mans, “Everything else is just waiting.”

In those days of high crowned, narrow two-lane roads, bias ply fabric tires, 6 – volt electrics, manual steering and brakes, driving was much more of an adventure than it is today.

By 1949, the railroads were using the incredible amount of money they’d made during the War to switch from steam to diesel locomotives, starting with the long interstate runs.  The diesels required about one tenth of the manpower to operate than steam did. Dad and a friend bought an unused depot building, had it sawn in half and delivered by flat truck to Fillmore. Dad bought a lot near my grandfather and had his half set on a concrete foundation. The building was full of enough railroad stuff, especially in the attic, to keep my 6-year-old brain humming. Buried in the fine dust that that is everywhere in the West, were old telegrams, brass watch fobs and other treasures.

We were close enough to the depot and the tracks that I could hear and feel every movement on the Fillmore branch line.  I especially loved it when one of the remaining steam engines would puff, whistle, clang and chug its way back and forth to pick up and drop off the day’s freight.

The weather in Richland and Fillmore were much alike, both high deserts with wind that seemed to never stop. It was appropriate that we drove a Zephyr (Zephuros is the Greek god of the west wind). Once I was old enough to drive, I found myself drawn to those same high, windy places.

My daughter Michelle seems to have those same wandering ways.  I’ve lost track of how many countries she’s visited, both by commercial and private jet. So far the Wind River Valley in Wyoming seems to be her favorite … and you may have me to blame for that.

Until next time.

Thanks for listening.

Dad

THE WAYWARD WIND by Gogi Grant 

Hello again friends. This month’s post is a whole lot more car-centric than the last few posts. We’ll start off with a Fantasy Piece about Ford buying Harley, then finish with a couple of links to a podcast my friend John Clor, Ford Performance Enthusiast Communications Manager did recently.

The recording is yours truly, who woke up the morning of the podcast with a sore throat.

The written piece is about the Original Venice Crew ( O.V.C. ) “Getting The Band Back Together.”

A recent headline on Facebook screamed “Elon Musk purchases 51% of Harley Davidson!”  Must be true ‘cause it’s on the web … right? Wow! Great news since I just finished restoring the 1953  Harley K Model I rode in high school. Now it’ll be worth a fortune!

The headline turned out not to be true (sadly) … but what if someone with deep pockets really did purchase Harley, whose stock price and profit outlook have been in the tank for years. My favorite bar stool conversation starter is, “What do you think will become of Harley?”

The C.E.O. of Ford, Jim Farley, is on the Harley board and a true gear head. Jim owns and races a real 427 Cobra. The Board has hired Artie Starrs from Topgolf Callaway Brands, where he served as CEO of Topgolf International. He was with Pizza Hut before that. MBA schools preach “A good manager can manage anything, shoe company, bike company, don’t matter.”  Those of you with long memories will remember that scripture from when AMF owned Harley. Didn’t work.

So let’s say Ford purchases my favorite bike manufacturer . There’s some history here.

Ford marketed a Harley-themed F-150 in 2000 and has offered Harley packages on the F-150 off & on since. Some are done at the factory, some by aftermarket “up fitters.”

Now that Ford owns Harley, let’s make riders feel welcome at the local Ford dealer. A special area, we’ll call it the CORRAL, where bike parking and Harley-themed apparel and merchandise will be available. Regular folks getting their Ford serviced can also visit the CORRAL while they wait. Any service over $xx.xx warrants a free Ford/Harley mug, kept full of your favorite hot or cold drink by that wholesome looking gal in the leather trimmed pants and braided leather top.  The purchase of any new Ford will get you a one-time coupon for xx% off on all apparel and merchandise! 

There are also new bikes you can sit on, and if you think you may want to purchase one, our service shuttle will be happy to whisk you over to the Harley dealer, along with a letter of introduction from the Ford credit desk.

If you buy a bike, you will receive a free subscription to the Harley Owners Group (HOG) magazine, which lists the many rallies you can attend, Sturgis and Daytona Beach being among the most famous. Hundreds of thousands of Harley owners attend one or more events each year. Loyalty is the word here.

To get there in comfort, check out the Harley-themed Ford Transit vans on our lot. Transit vans lead their market segment by a wide margin and solve at least two problems you may have when attending a rally. When ordered with the available Camper Package, and the HARLEY/STURGIS upgrade, where to stay and how to get you and your bike(s) there in safety and comfort problem is solved. Believe me, you’ll make a statement when you pull into your reserved camping spot towing your Harley(s) on a matching trailer. It all can be purchased, financed or leased right here at your Ford dealer

Two problems car companies have today:

1) How to build brand loyalty. No one is more loyal than a Harley owner.

The typical HARLEY owner is a little different. His average age is 49 (ouch) and rising. But his income is almost 3X the national average. There have been attempts to market a lower price bike to a younger audience that have just pissed off their traditional customers.  A quote attributed to Ferdinand Porsche may be in play here. “A low-price Porsche is a used Porsche.” My local Harley dealer has started to display some pristine used bikes in his show room. No reason why a guy buying a 10-year-old bike at half the price of new, which looks just like the used one, can’t become a service customer loyal to the brand. If Harley can team with Ford, whose F-150 pickup always tops the loyalty surveys and claims “The best-selling pickup 47 years straight.” it could be a match made in heaven.

2) How to break through the advertising clutter.

Anything Harley does make headlines. 500,000 to 700,000 riders converge on Sturgis every year. Daytona and Myrtle Beach see similar numbers and “Millions watch at home.”  That’s Super Bowl and World Series territory. Does “Sturgis brought to you by the Harley Davidson Division of Ford Motor Company” sound good to you?  The slightly bad boy image amplifies whatever message the ad department is pushing this quarter. 

Ford already uses the rebel image marketing the F-150 pickup, BUILT FORD TOUGH, FORD SUPER DUTY, and don’t forget the RAPTOR and the SHELBY SUPER SNAKE.

No problem with clutter here.

The Ford-Harley tie up could help build showroom traffic for both brands, tapping in to a common emotional thread. Solid American roots. Midwest Heritage. Milwaukee ‘un-Detroit … don’t get more “’Merican” than that.

Until next time, thanks for listening.

Duane

LINKS TO FORD PODCAST & MAGAZINE ARTICLE:

https://podbay.fm/p/mustang-owners-podcast/e/1745222400

The transportation unit in the Parkersburg, WV, Army Reserve got orders for Viet Nam, and our town rallied around them. Local businesses like welding shops and muffler shops fabricated bullet proof shielding for the unit’s vehicles.

As they packed up to leave, the colonel commanding the unit came down from Pittsburg to see them off, and made fun of their “Hillbilly armor.” He assured them it would all be removed once they were in country. “Unsafe, and all units under my command will be uniform.”

Didn’t go over well with the locals.

The brain dead Commander apparently didn’t realize that American soldiers have been building armored vehicles for themselves since before WWII. Half-inch steel plate can stop most small arms fire, and if no plate was available through formal channels, soldiers just switched to informal channels.

“Sure, what ‘cha got ta’ trade.”

Thus was born the Viet Nam 5-ton Gun Truck.  Nothing can stop the American fighting man.

As you can see in these pictures, at first a single 7.62 mm machine gun was thought to be plenty, then Twin Fifties were added, and finally Quad 50s.  “That otter do’er!” There were somewhere between 300 and 400 gun trucks in Viet Nam, all built on an “informal” basis.

With about 400 Quad 50 gun trucks running around Viet Nam, it must have gone something like this, ”Gee I dun’ know Sarge, that Quad gun wus sittin’ right here on the loadin’ dock last night. But dun’ worry, a new run is ordered and on its way.”

Conceived by the Navy in the late 1940’s and still in use, the Quad 50 was the last line of defense against Japanese kamikazes intent on ramming Navy ships. The Quad can rotate 360 degrees, elevate a little past vertical, and depress a little past horizontal. A Browning M2 Quad can fire between 1600 to 2200 rounds per minute. Each 50 caliber bullet is about 1/2 inch in diameter, weighs between 660 and 750 grains (about 1.6 ounces) travels about 2,000 miles per hour and can reach out and touch someone at 3,000 feet. That’s 10 football fields. The feeling in the Navy was “Let’s throw a ton a lead out there and maybe it’ll save our ass.”

 Exactly what was needed for the Gun Trucks.

 As the U.S. got further into the Viet Nam war, a technique (doctrine in mil-speak) of establishing fire bases (FB) on the highest hill in with a view of the surrounding valleys. When a patrol encountered the enemy, howitzer fire could be called in from the FB. Close air support (CAS of course) from helicopters or fixed wing aircraft, known as fast movers, could also be called in.

The best fast mover the U.S. had at the time was the F-105 THUNDER CHIEF. It was envisioned as a  Mach 2 fighter-bomber to drop nukes on Russia, then scoot safely back home.

For Viet Nam it was re-envisioned as the TRIPLE THREAT: nuclear bomber, conventional bomber, and CAS. fighter. Of the 833 F-105’s deployed, 382 were quickly lost.

Something about always fighting the last war.

The ground pounders renamed it the THUD, for the sound it made when it hit the ground. Yes, it was a TRIPLE THREAT all right. It’ll strafe you, it’ll bomb you, or it’ll fall on you. Something had to be done.

I had friends who had friends who were there, and for now we’ll assume the following tale to be somewhat true. 

Sitting around a fire pit bitching and drinking beer as usual, somebody said, ”Man, when we find Charley (enemy troops) choppers show up, stop in midair and throw shit while Charley throws shit back. It’s a shit show to see who dies first. When the fast movers show up, they unload all kinda shit on Charley for a few seconds, then go around to do it again. What we need is a fast mover that unloads tons a shit on Charley while movin’ fast in one place.”

Long silence.

Finally someone, whose name is lost to the mists of time, took a long puff and said, ”When I lived in South America we got our mail and supplies from a guy flying a Cessna that trailed a basket on a long rope. He would show up over our clearing, fly in a circle over us, and that basket would just stay in one place. We unloaded mail and supplies, and reloaded it with whatever we wanted to send out. He didn’t slow down, the engine note never changed, didn’t attract attention, and worked perfect.”

Hmm .. let’s try something.

The next morning the fire pit guys found a rickety old DC-3 that nobody wanted, took the side door off, bolted a “borrowed” Minigun that fired 2,000 rounds a minute on slow, and 6,000 a minute on high to the floor, then  loaded a shit ton  (military term) of 7.62 ammo–every 5th round a tracer–and took off to test the jungle theory.

It was AMAZING !

After a couple of practice turns (it’s known as a pylon turn in air racing) the DC-3 was moving over 100 miles per hour. Looking out the left cockpit window and keeping the wing tip spotted on what he wanted to hit, the pilot was able to keep that Minigun within a few feet of what he was aiming for – and  pour thousands of rounds onto it! From the ground the plane seemed to be flying an ELLIPSE, accelerating to a hundred miles per hour when crossing the viewers line of vision, then slowing almost to a stop when parallel to the line of sight. Almost IMPOSSIBLE to hit.

News like that don’t keep. Soon old DC-3s and their military version C-47 were firing 2 or even 3 Miniguns out the door and windows … and the war changed forever. Somehow the plane picked up the name PUFF THE MAGIC DRAGON. Where did that name come from? Was it from a song popular at the time, from the trail of fire it spewed when firing at  night, or did it come from that puff of smoke the night it was conceived? Hard to say.

In the meantime … git yer self about a 1 inch steel nut, tie one end of a 36 inch boot lace to it, and practice “flying” that string and nut across the room. Pausing at a convenient spot, smoothly transition into a circle, being careful to keep the circle parallel to the floor, at a constant speed and as round as possible. You’ll see that nut come to a dead stop as you continue to circle.

Take your string/nut assembly to your favorite watering hole and tell your buddies you have a new magic trick. If there’s an engineer type in the room he’ll insist, “The laws of physics dictate, when you start that circle, centrifugal force make that nut hit you right in the …” 

Well OK. Care to bet a beer on that?

Great fun, and you may be able to drink for free all night long!

Many thanks to my friend of 50+ years, Rick Kopec. Search Google for:                    

                   THE REAL VIETNAM – RICHARD KOPEC

Until next time, thanks for listening.

Duane

We have a special treat this month. You-know-who was recently interviewed on the Mustang Owners podcast.

https://podbay.fm/p/mustang-owners-podcast/e/1745222400

Give it a listen and leave a comment to let us know what you think.

Duane

We’ve heard and seen a lot lately about the successful bombing by US forces of Iran’s nuclear facilities. A truly amazing feat of arms. Using 6 B-2 stealth bombers, costing 2.1 billion each, each carrying two GBU-57 Massive Ordinance Penetrators, “It looks like we bombed the s— outa ‘em,” to quote The Donald.

Each GBU-57 is a little over 20 feet long and weighs 30,000 pounds. Each one costs about 3.5 million, not factoring in the 300 to 400 million development cost. Using GPS guidance, the first bomb makes a hole for it’s sister bomb, enabling the second to reach the production facilities literally buried under a mountain.

Back in 2003 I was a contractor working at a U. S. Air Force base and I kept hearing rumors of an improvised “penetrator” bomb used against a hardened target in downtown Baghdad. While rumors are seldom 100% true–or 100% false–it’s a great story.

There was an underground bunker in Baghdad where a lot of high ranking government types were hiding during the initial run-up to the invasion of Iraq. Saddam Hussein slept in a different location every night, but he often stayed in the bunker. The U.S. had the construction drawings, courtesy of the German contractor who built it, and counting down from the surface, there was 6 feet of concrete, 10 feet of sand, then more concrete, then more sand, then the concrete ceiling of the shelter. The U.S. had plenty of Block Busters, bombs designed to flatten an entire city block left from WW II, but no so-called Bunker Busters that could touch the shelter.

A rush order was placed on the Ordinance Design Group’s desk at the Pentagon with delivery of a bomb required in 36 hours! “I won’t be home tonight honey.”

Several hours and several pots of coffee later, a plan was hatched: We’ll use the liner from a 16” naval gun, which is about 20 inches outside diameter (O.D.), 16 inches inside diameter (I.D.) of course, about 66 feet long, and weighs around 40,000 pounds. We’ll machine one end to accept the guidance kit we use to convert old “dumb bombs” into “smart bombs,” install a delayed fuse developed in WW II to let a shell to drop through 2, 3, or even 4 decks to explode in the guts of an enemy ship, and then machine the plug on the other end to accept the tail kit that steers the bomb to precisely hit a spot of laser light usually provided by a fighter escort.

For some of you not quite up to date on your battleship history, those huge guns you see blasting the bad guys actually have a super hard liner inside them that gets changed about every 100 shots. The barrel assembly is heated, which causes it to expand, while the inside is cooled which causes it to shrink–voila–take out the old and quickly slip in the new. Back in the day, the Gillette razor company bought all the old liners they could find because that steel alloy made such long lasting razor blades.

Only one tiny problem: The last battleship was commissioned in 1944, and no one knew if there were any 16-inch liners available. Computers were just starting to take over the Pentagon, and 3 X 5 cards still kept track of inventory. “Says here there are 3 liners in Naval Air Station Fallon in Fallon, Nevada.” What the Navy is doing in the middle of the Nevada desert, that’s another story.

Frantic phone calls, load it onto a C-130, mid-air refueling, and one precious liner arrived at Washington Naval Yard in Washington D.C. 24 hours gone, 16 hours remaining. In the meantime, the Naval Yard had been busy cleaning off a huge old lathe not used since the end of THE WAR, and a couple of old farts had been located who claimed to know how to run it.

Fairly simple job. Cut off a few feet to fit onto a roller pallet in a C-130 with the door closed, machine a plug with some threads in it to accept a detonator and another plug for the fancy-dancy guidance stuff, fill it with a super potent explosive which needs to be kept warm all the way to Baghdad, and we’re on our way.

This was all done by a couple of guys with huge calipers, micrometers, depth gages, thread gages and a whole buncha SKILL. Not a computer in sight.

Heaters were rigged to plug into the C-130’s electrical system, two crews were assigned, a pallet of box lunches and water bottles was stowed, a stack of sleeping bags and pillows arrived, and everyone climbed on board, including the 2 senior citizen machinists who insisted on accompanying ”Our Baby” to the drop point. Oh what the hell, we’re in a hurry, let’s go !

Made the deadline with minutes to spare.

The +/- 6,700 mile trip to Baghdad took about 18 hours, including in-flight refueling. This allowed plenty of time to tell war stories, bitch about the chow, the accommodations, question the sanity and manhood of our leaders, and in general do what warriors have done since war as invented. The Lockheed C-130 first flew in 1954, with over 2,500 built so far, it is still in production. Known affectionally as The Garbage Hauler, it can carry almost anything that will fit thru the rear door.

When they arrived over the target area, flanked by many fighter escorts, the door of that old bird was lowered, the pilot pitched her into a 30-degree climb, and “Our Baby” rolled out to take its place in legend. With everyone in the sky painting the top of that bunker with laser light, it performed flawlessly, and The Garbage Hauler turned for home.

Unfortunately Saddam was not on the guest list that night, but several hundred civilians were.

The GBU-57 Massive Ordinance Penetrator Bunker Buster is for sure a fearsome weapon, but it is not the first.

Until next time, thanks for listening.

Duane

“You canʼt just blow up the God-damned dam, Heber!”

“Oh yeah? watch this!”

One of my favorite stories as a listener, and as a teller, was the time the Esplin clan blew up the dam across Navajo Lake. It was starving their ranch of much needed water, and in 1933, in the middle of the Great Depression, in the high deserts of Utah, water was life both economically and physically.

Take Highway 14 east from Cedar City and youʼll climb to what geologists call the Colorado Plateau. Navajo Lake sits on a narrow ridge which was once the head waters of the Sevier River. Lava flows dammed off the river long ago and run-off now dead ends into Navajo Lake. The hundreds-of-feet-thick limestone base of the new lake dissolved and formed sinks, caves and under ground springs. The water then split, some flowing north into the Sevier River and some flowing south into the Virgin River, which flows into the Colorado.

The south springs are more aggressive and will eventually steal all the water and send it north. This is a process geohydrologists excitedly refer to as “underground water piracy” and is apparently quite rare. Someone thought it would be a neat idea to put a low dam across the shallow end of Navajo Lake to cut off the sinks and make a nifty reservoir for fishing and boating.

The Esplins were used to the water running dry in the fall before the snows came, but this was summer and the Cascade Springs at the base of the Vermillion Cliffs should be bubbling happily through the Esplin Ranch on their way to the Colorado.

A dayʼs ride and a 3,000-foot climb brought the Esplins to the now-dammed-off Navajo Lake which was about ¾ the size it should have been. The sinks in the east end of the lake were both high & dry! After much asking around of the people boating and sunning, “No one knew nothing about whoʼd dammed off the lake.”

A day and a half’s ride down Coal Creek brought the Esplins to Cedar City, and more asking about the new dam. The Sheriff didn’t know. The Mormon Bishop didn’t even know, and the bishop’s word was often more like law than the sheriff’s.

“Well we know how to handle this.” The Esplins went to the local Mercantile, purchased a case of dynamite, and started the long climb back up to Navajo Lake. Under cover of darkness, or maybe it was high noon–accounts vary–they borrowed a row boat, paddled to the middle of the dam, set their charges, lit the fuse and paddled madly for the shore.

When the smoke cleared, water was filling the east end of the lake, and shortly it was bubbling into the north fork of the Virgin and south into the Sevier. As you might imagine, this was pretty big news. It turns out a local group had decided that money could be made promoting recreation on Navajo Lake, and building a dam was the answer.

In order to avoid a shooting war, the Utah State Engineering Office agreed to pay a visit to Cedar City in the spring of 1934 to work out a compromise. At a meeting of all concerned parties, the solution arrived at was to increase the height of the dam, increasing the amount of impoundment, and to install a pipe with a valve that could regulate the outflow of water. This kept most of the water behind the dam in summer, but let enough out to keep the Ranch in water year round, even if the lake had to suffer a little in the fall before the snows came. This was done over the next few years.

Take Highway 41 east out of Cedar City and you’ll see the results of their handiwork.

Iʼve asked the State Engineer, and the State Historical Society, and the Kane County and Cedar City Historical Societies, if they have minutes of that meeting, but the most they could come up with was a mention in HYDROLOGY AND HYDROGEOLOGY OF NAVAJO LAKE, KANE COUNTY, UTAH. By M. T. Wilson and H.E. Thomas, 1964. It is available from your local library on an interlibrary loan from the Utah State Engineer. It is by far the best authority on the subject.

Stories tend to get cleaned up before theyʼre put into the history books, especially when they’re written by a government agency. They take out all parts that can be disputed.

What canʼt be disputed is that my ancestor, John Esplin (1828 – 1895), settled the North Fork of the Virgin River and had 13 children. When the Homestead Act became law in 1862, granting at least 160 acres to any “head of household over 21 years of age” who lived on the property, all the Esplins filed claims. Voila! They owned the whole valley. The County Clerk and Recorder were probably cousins, which helped.

By the 1980ʼs there were so many Esplins around that they formed a corporation, giving each person a share which could then be sold or traded to another family member. This resulted in a smaller number of owners and a more manageable enterprise. The Esplin Ranch, now incorporated as the North Fork ranch, is thriving on the North Fork of the Virgin.

Fun history. When my kids wanted to hear the Esplin story–again–and we got to the part about the dam, they would sit up and yell, “Donʼt blow up the dam! KA-BOOM!” They’d fall back into bed laughing as I turned out the light.

Those were good days.

Thanks for listening,

Duane

This is a copy of a letter I sent recently to President Trump:

Dear President Trump,

Back in 1983 I was on an all-night sand bagging crew trying to contain the Utah flood waters.

• 

One of my fellow workers was the head of NOAA for the western U.S. We became friends over several nights and he told me NOAA was very worried that the Colorado river could over-top the Glen Canyon dam which holds back Lake Powell. Opening the turbine inlets as well as both emergency bypass gates was not stemming the rise of the water. A crew had been sent to the town of Page to buy all the plywood they could find to bolt to the handrail at the edge of the dam to gain an extra 4 feet of height. Fortunately that was not necessary, and you can still see the high water mark just inches from the top of the dam.

One night he told me the workers at the dam were hearing and feeling low “thuds” similar to what some of them felt during artillery strikes in Viet Nam. Looking closely they saw chunks of sandstone the size of Volkswagens shooting out the bypass exits. The bypasses are tunnels cut into the sandstone walls and used to divert the river while the dam is being builtand can serve as emergency drains. If the sandstone at the base of the dam failed … the dam could collapse! Someone figured the tidal wave from the collapsed dam would be 135 feet high when it hit the Hoover Dam lower down the river.
Of course I asked him if the people who live below the dam, especially the city of Las Vegas and downstream should be warned and he said, “The decision had been made not to cause panic.”

I saw on the news recently that officials from NOAA have recently “inspected” the bypass tunnels after 40 years, and decided some repairs to the coal tar “lining” need to be made.  No mention of the “Volkswagen size chunks” missing from the tunnel walls. I’m sure all the officials from 1983 are no longer around. 

Mr. Trump, could you have some competent, unbiased, qualified engineers inspect those tunnels? If we get another wet winter and get into a similar situation we saw in 1983, it could cause an historic disaster … even though my friend said “Our computers tell us it won’t happen again.”

Duane Carling