When did "tarmac" start being used?
ConvairDriver880
Now I heard on TV a news announcer saying a fighter landed on "the tarmac." So
I am totally confused. We landed on the runway and used a taxiway to get to
the ramp where we shut the bird down. What's the terminology nowadays?
Tex Houston
being a person who developed the process), in other words plain old
blacktop. Word is being used for pavement, whether blacktop or concrete.
I'm a little old-fashioned, still use ramp.
Isn't English a wonderful language where "fat chance" and "slim chance" mean
about the same thing?
Regards,
Tex Houston
ConvairDriver880 <convaird...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:19991112125317...@ng-cd1.aol.com...
Arthur Perrin
mechanic in WW2 I spent many hours on "the tarmac" the paved area on the flight
lines. It's origin is from "macadam" which is the crushed stone or gravel material
the early roads were built from, and tar which was combined with macadam to make a
sealed surface. Hence the term "Tarmac". Of course modern airports are paved with
concrete because of its strength and heat resistance. Many highways in Canada still
use the same basic material for roads-a combination of crushed stone and asphalt
(asphaltic concrete) which stands up better and is more easily repaired.
Arthur Perrin
kk
>
> I mean the word. When I was in USAF we didn't use the word, we said "ramp."
> Now I heard on TV a news announcer saying a fighter landed on "the tarmac." So
> I am totally confused. We landed on the runway and used a taxiway to get to
> the ramp where we shut the bird down. What's the terminology nowadays?
First time I heard it used as a substitute for ramp was during a
airliner hijacking, the one in which the US Navy diver was shot by the
hijackers. The British commentator referred to his body being thrown
out out of the AC on to the "tarmac", which was what Americans call
asphalt. The wiz-bangs from the network news thought they heard a
technical term, and instantly adopted the word tarmac to mean ramp.
When I retired in '93, it was still called ramp in the Air Force, but
tarmac by the press.
Евгений Ожогин
first ti invent putting tar-covered concrete onto the runway. Just my
educated guesswork.:-)))
Ivan the Bear
=Nothing per-r-rsonal, just business=
ConvairDriver880 пишет в сообщении
<19991112125317...@ng-cd1.aol.com> ...
David Brower
>ConvairDriver880 wrote:
>>
>> I mean the word. When I was in USAF we didn't use the word, we said "ramp."
>> Now I heard on TV a news announcer saying a fighter landed on "the tarmac." So
>> I am totally confused. We landed on the runway and used a taxiway to get to
>> the ramp where we shut the bird down. What's the terminology nowadays?
> First time I heard it used as a substitute for ramp was during a
>airliner hijacking, the one in which the US Navy diver was shot by the
>hijackers. The British commentator referred to his body being thrown
>out out of the AC on to the "tarmac", which was what Americans call
>asphalt. The wiz-bangs from the network news thought they heard a
>technical term, and instantly adopted the word tarmac to mean ramp.
> When I retired in '93, it was still called ramp in the Air Force, but
>tarmac by the press.
I agree with the gist of this theory. My recollection is that no one
called it Tarmac until sometime in the late 70s or early 80s, when it
was used in some news reports. Then it seems like every ramp anywhere
was tarmac, for all you heard. It might be a CNN-phenomenon.
-dB
ConvairDriver880
>First time I heard it used as a substitute for ramp was during a
>airliner hijacking, the one in which the US Navy diver was shot by the
>hijackers. The British commentator referred to his body being thrown
>out out of the AC on to the "tarmac", which was what Americans call
>asphalt. The wiz-bangs from the network news thought they heard a
>technical term, and instantly adopted the word tarmac to mean ramp.
> When I retired in '93, it was still called ramp in the Air Force, but
>tarmac by the press.
>From: kk kk...@ix.netcom.com
>Date: Fri, 12 November 1999 07:52 PM EST
>Message-id: <382CB634...@ix.netcom.com>
Arthur Perrin
fifties it didn't exist. As someone who did his share of tarmac duty during WW2,
I can assure you that the word existed before American TV discovered it.
Arthur Perrin
Cub driver
>I mean the word. When I was in USAF we didn't use the word, we said "ramp."
>Now I heard on TV a news announcer saying a fighter landed on "the tarmac." So
>I am totally confused. We landed on the runway and used a taxiway to get to
>the ramp where we shut the bird down. What's the terminology nowadays?
Strictly speaking, I think tarmac simply was another name for tarvia
or macadam, which were methods for putting liquid tar and sand on a
surface to pave it. (In New Hampshire we used to say "tarvee.")
Macadam (MacAdam?) was supposedly the gent who devised the system, so
his name got stuck to it in various ways.
I was much surprised to read in a book about Vietnam that the
Americans so emptied Khe Sahn upon their withdrawal that they even
lifted up the tarmac and flew if off. I had visions of chunks of
asphalt in the helos. But no, the writer was referring to
pierced-steel planking. So sometime in the 1960s, I would judge, the
word for tar&sand pavement had morphed into a generic word for runway
OR ramp.
I think you can land on the tarmac, but what do I know? I fly out of a
grass field. And the facilities directory refers to paved runways as
"asphalt" even though many of them are obviously tarred & sanded in
the old macadam style.
all the best - Dan Ford
join the Fatbrain revolution! http://danford.net/fatbrain.htm
private emails to danford at alumni dot unh dot edu
Keith Willshaw
Евгений Ожогин wrote in message <80k0ci$1oea$1...@gavrilo.mtu.ru>...
>It has something to do with 'tar McAdam'. Must be the felow who was the
>first ti invent putting tar-covered concrete onto the runway. Just my
>educated guesswork.:-)))
>
Close.
John McAdam Invented a method of road construction that
used various grades of stone topped with gravel.
Automobiles tended to tear up the surface so it was dressed with
a layer of Tar, hence Tarmacadam or tarmac for short.
The company that came up with the idea, Tarmac PLC is of the
leading construction companies in the UK to this day.
Keith
sla...@ida.net
Tarmac: a tarmacdam road, aparon, or runway
Tarmacadam: 1: a pavement constructed by spraying or pouring a tar
binder over layers of crushed stone and then rolling 2: a material of
tar and aggregates mixed in a plant and shaped on the roadway
That's the definition, the question is if the media is using it in the
right context.
On 12 Nov 1999 17:53:17 GMT, convaird...@aol.com
D.L.
Arthur Perrin <ape...@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
news:382CEF7C...@sympatico.ca...
Hal Hanig
D.L. wrote in message ...
>I thought the question was when tarmac started to
be used by the USAF.
I thought that was the question also. In answer
to it, I have a fuzzy recollection that the term
was used in WWI aviation stories, which takes it
back a lot earlier than the 50s. I may very well
be wrong, but at my age, I'm lucky if I can find
my car keys, so please cut me some slack! (BG)
John Mazor
sla...@ida.net wrote in article <382d9298...@news.ida.net>...
> According to Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary:
>
> Tarmac: a tarmacdam road, aparon, or runway
>
> Tarmacadam: 1: a pavement constructed by spraying or pouring a tar
> binder over layers of crushed stone and then rolling 2: a material of
> tar and aggregates mixed in a plant and shaped on the roadway
>
> That's the definition, the question is if the media is using it in the
> right context.
It was a proprietary brand name that lapsed into public domain, like
"fridgidaire" did when it became the generic term for refrigerator in some
areas.
So tarmac is now a generic reference, which means that you'd have a hard
time proving that it is inappropriate under typical usages.
Dweezil Dwarftosser
wrote:
>Amazing! It appears that because the word tarmac wasn't used in the US until the
>fifties it didn't exist. As someone who did his share of tarmac duty during WW2,
>I can assure you that the word existed before American TV discovered it.
It must be one of those things between the US and UK - two nations
separated by a common language.
My Scotland-born mother used "tarmac" and "Macadam" interchangeably
when she referred to an asphalt street surface. But it seems the
story concerning American networks mistaking it as an aviation term is
entirely possible. Judging the effect which TV has on people these
days, it will soon be listed in larger American dictionaries as
"8. An expansive parking area for aircraft"... or somesuch.
- John T.
Regnirps
>My Scotland-born mother used "tarmac" and "Macadam" interchangeably
>when she referred to an asphalt street surface. But it seems the
>story concerning American networks mistaking it as an aviation term is
>entirely possible. Judging the effect which TV has on people these
>days, it will soon be listed in larger American dictionaries as
>"8. An expansive parking area for aircraft"... or somesuch.
Macadam is named after John (?) Macadam and is crushed rock. Tarmac is I think
what in the US is called oil mat, crushed rock and oil that dries to a tar like
binder.
As for the News folk, their focus is generally maximizing face time on camera.
Their ignorance of the life outside the studio is astonishing.
Charlie Springer
Cub driver
>According to Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary:
Don't you just hate it when somebody spoils a good discussion by
looking the word up in the dictionary?
>Tarmacadam: 1: a pavement constructed by spraying or pouring a tar
>binder over layers of crushed stone and then rolling 2: a material of
>tar and aggregates mixed in a plant and shaped on the roadway
When you tar a road (if anyone still does) you first lay down piles of
sand at regular intervals. Then the very hot road gang (such work is
always down in the summer months, possibly to cause the greatest
inconvenience to the tourists) shovels the sand across the tar. Then
the road is open to traffic, and globs of tar adhere to your
automobile up to the plimsol line (look that one up!), and you have to
buy a can of another petroleum-based stuff to remove it.
I always believed that the tarmac or tarvee was the tar&sand process.
Didn't know it had anything to do with the underlying gravel, which is
just commonsense road construction, esp in a freezing climate.
As for definition 2), we don't call such roads tarvee. They're
asphalt. It's the near-universal way of building roads these day, tho
the work is still done almost exclusively in the tourist season :)
>That's the definition, the question is if the media is using it in the
>right context.
And the answer seems to be "no," if Neal Sheehan can apply it to
pierced-steel planking. Tarmac seems to equal runway or taxiway,
presumably even a concrete runway.
Words change. When I was growing up, kids studied Latin, and
"decimate" meant taking out every tenth prisoner and killing him--a
Roman practice. But decimate has a nice, evil, chopping sound, so it
has come to mean something entirely different. What, I'm not sure,
since I learned Latin from the nuns and it really stuck (like the tar
:)
all the best - Dan
see Nothing New About Death at http://www.danford.net
and the Annals of Military Aviation forum at http://www.delphi.com/annals
(send private emails to danford at alumni dot unh dot edu)
Keith Willshaw
Hal Hanig wrote in message ...
>
>D.L. wrote in message ...
>>I thought the question was when tarmac started to
>be used by the USAF.
>
>I thought that was the question also. In answer
>to it, I have a fuzzy recollection that the term
>was used in WWI aviation stories, which takes it
>back a lot earlier than the 50s. I may very well
>be wrong, but at my age, I'm lucky if I can find
>my car keys, so please cut me some slack! (BG)
More likely WW2 when a lot of USAAF bombers started
using RAF bases . The local ground staff would have
referred to the black top as Tarmac.
Keith
vincent p. norris
The perfect place to find out is the _Oxford English Dictionary
According to Historical Principles_, commonly called the OED, for
obvious reasons.
As the full title indicates, it traces the meaning of words in
historical (chronological) order, from the first known use to the
present.
It is also the most complete dictionary of the English language, being
about twenty volumes, depending on the edition.
Perhaps someone in this newsgroup has it on CD ROM. If not, try
phoning your nearest library.
vince norris
Arthur Perrin
Arthur Perrin
Arthur Perrin
engineer who had some experience in road building I offer the following
definitions:
Macadam-a system of building roads using compacted layers of crushed stone or
gravel. These are commonly called gravel roads nowadays.
Tarmac-a system of applying tar (asphalt) to macadam roads. Commonly used by
the British to describe the area in front of aircraft hangers.
Tar and gravel-a system of road mixing tar and gravel or sand in place to
produce a more durable surface.
Asphaltic concrete-a system of mixing asphalt and crushed stone in a plant to
produce a more durable road. Commonly used in Canada because of its lower
cost and ease of repair.
Concrete-a mixture of cement and crushed stone to produce a rigid pavement.
Used extensively in the US particularly in milder climates. This is usually
misnamed "cement" by the news media.
There for what it is worth is a short engineering lesson!
Arthur Perrin
Tex Houston
<Snip>
>Tarmac-a system of applying tar (asphalt) to macadam roads. Commonly used
by
> the British to describe the area in front of aircraft hangers.
> There for what it is worth is a short engineering lesson!
> Arthur Perrin
>
Some colonials use tarmac to describe the area in front aircraft hangArs.
For what it is worth is a short spelling lesson.
With wide grin,
Tex Houston
Arthur Perrin
Arthur perrin
Cub driver
>I believe I've encountered the word "tarmac" in writings about WW I.
>
>The perfect place to find out is the _Oxford English Dictionary
>According to Historical Principles_, commonly called the OED, for
>obvious reasons.
Tarmac isn't in the Shorter Oxford, but Tar macadam is. It's dated
1882. Reading along we get: "Hence Tarmac, the registered trade-mark
of a kind of tar macadam consisting of iron slag impregnated with tar
and creosote."
>It is also the most complete dictionary of the English language, being
>about twenty volumes, depending on the edition.
>
>Perhaps someone in this newsgroup has it on CD ROM. If not, try
>phoning your nearest library.
I believe it's going online next year, just as the Brittanica has gone
online this year.
Indeed, there is great debate at Oxford Univ Press as to whether the
next OED will even be published in paper at all.
all the best - Dan Ford
Flying Tigers: Claire Chennault & the American Volunteer Group
http://www.danford.net/book.htm
"War history as it should be written." (The Hook)
Cub driver
>Nope, the question was when did the word tarmac start being used.
My Shorter Oxford, which is based on the Third Edition published in
1944, references Tarmac as a registered trademark of a particular mix
of tar macadam. So you can count on its being a 1930s word, perhaps
1920s.
But perhaps the question was when tarmac started being used for
aircraft hardstands, taxiways, and/or runways :)
all the best - Dan
Jhe56
>days, it will soon be listed in larger American dictionaries as
>"8. An expansive parking area for aircraft"... or somesuch.
>
>
My US Government office issue Random House College Dictionary, last revised in
1980, has two definitions. The first is the trademark for the paving material.
The second is "(Chiefly British) a road, airport runway, parking area, etc,
paved with Tarmac..."
ConvairDriver880
>
>"D.L." wrote:
>
>> I thought the question was when tarmac started to be used by the USAF.
Well actually it was but I guess I didn't phrase it right. When I was in SAC
lo these many years ago we were often based out of England, places like
Bruntingthorpe, Stansted and so forth. I don't recall the word tarmac being
used then. But ramp. And if memory serves it was called ramp back at Carlstrom
Field, Fla. during the big one. So I just wondered when ramp got changed to
tarmac. Not that ramp was such a sensible word, since "ramps" weren't angled
at a slope.
Now what about "hardstand"? Still used?
Erik Shilling
driver) writes:
>
>
>>Nope, the question was when did the word tarmac start being used.
>
>1944, references Tarmac as a registered trademark of a particular mix
>of tar macadam. So you can count on its being a 1930s word, perhaps
>1920s.
>
>But perhaps the question was when tarmac started being used for
>aircraft hardstands, taxiways, and/or runways :)
It's amazine how so many people respond or answer a question even when
they don't know the answer.
The word tarmac was used during WW one before tar or macadam was in use
on any airfield nor did they have runways. All airfiled were grass and
the airplanes, because of lack of braked and having a tail skid
instead of a tail wheel they all landed INTO the wind. In world war
one they didn't have runways nor was tar used on the ramps. Airpanes at
that time had tail skids and if tar was used, the tail skid would have
torn up the ramp. Of course the grasss was torn up but nature would
repair it in a short time.
Look at any OLD world one pulp magazine about stories of the exploits
of ww I. The title of one magazine comes to mind called Ace or Aceses.
Tarmac frequently used when refered to the ramp area in front of the
hangar area.
In word war one I don't believe any roads used tar, but I do know that
common crude oil was sprayed on roads to prevent dust. As a kid of 12
my folks drove out to Yellow Stone from Washington. At that time not
one country road was covered with tar or macadam. They were all dirt
and gravel. some had oil, not tar sprayed on them. Another substance
use looked like rodk salt which eventy=ually became a hardened surface
Erik Shilling
Donnell Miller
I agree it all goes back to John Louden Macadam. I wonder though if he
didn't dig up a roman road in England to see how they did it.
Cub driver, you can probably land you cub on any tarmac that is long
enough which is the way it should be. The problem is the Weigh Bearing
Capacity or WBC.
After i retired from the USAF, I joined the Defense Mapping Agency.
I was an aeronautical information Specialist (AIS).
DMA (now NIMA) is responsible for the publication of the DOD Flight
information publications (FLIP) and there is the rub. There must be a
jillion different ways of determining runway and ramp WBC. Each
airplane depending upon its weight and landing gear configuration has a
different foot print. The thickness of pavement and its construction;
unpaved, asphalt, concrete etc. all effect WBC. The DOD has manuals that
tell you how to build runways. As the King said "'tis a puzzlement".
The AIS is responsible for the correctness of all the information
regarding airfield published in the Enroute Supplement of the FLIP. He
gets WBC from the host nations Aeronautical Information Publication
(AIP)
Runway type and construction are listed and Pavement Classification
Numbers PCN may be in the document or reported usage i.e. C-47, F-100
etc. or the WBC may be a WAG by the airport manager. WBC can very by
the season. Waivers can usually be asked for and received. but if you
taxi on to just plain old tarmac you could get a nasty surprise. Always
remember that TARMAC is generic.
As to the rest i think the U.S. press picked it up during the
hostage shootings and continued to use to show what hip anglophiles they
are. Same same, Yank aircrews who like to out Brit the Brits. Tarmac is
a type of construction material period slang for ramp.
"you all be careful here" "Check six"
Don Miller
WGWSO/NAV Ret
Maury Markowitz
> In word war one I don't believe any roads used tar, but I do know that
> common crude oil was sprayed on roads to prevent dust. As a kid of 12
> my folks drove out to Yellow Stone from Washington. At that time not
> one country road was covered with tar or macadam. They were all dirt
> and gravel. some had oil, not tar sprayed on them. Another substance
> use looked like rodk salt which eventy=ually became a hardened surface
Someone I know once claimed they they used calcium in a lot of these cases
too. It would harden into a concrete-like substance - or so they claimed.
Another good one is slag from a mine, which crushes down into a compact
surface. Another odd term I've heard is "metalled" for paved, don't know how
they came up with that one.
As to the question at hand though, the important point to remember is that
it was TV newscast that used the term (IIRC). "Ramp" is still used all the
time, YYZ has big signs pointing to the RAMP for instance. I think the issue
here is that there's two terms, the thing, and what the thing is made of.
Maury
Mike Tighe
maury@remove_this.sympatico.ca.invalid (Maury Markowitz) wrote:
<snip>
>Another good one is slag from a mine, which crushes down into a compact
>surface. Another odd term I've heard is "metalled" for paved, don't know how
>they came up with that one.
Haven't a clue why 'metalled' has survived and is relatively widely
used to describe road surfaces - although the I think the etymology
does go back to old mining and quarrying words in French, Greek and
Latin...
FWIW, my Dictionary of Civil Engineering defines 'metal' as 'Broken
stones for making roads'.
--
Mike Tighe
Speaking from the bottom left
hand corner of the big picture.
Donnell Miller
My fellow analysts never did find a good definition for Metalized as
a runway or ramp type. At one time i was the Aero specialist for New
Zealand at defense mapping agency in St Louis. IIRC the good folks in Oz
also used metalized as a rwy description, weight bearing capacity
described by reported type usage of runway ie c-47 etc.
Jeff Noakes
(Maury Markowitz) wrote:
> In <80phlp$kup$1...@nntp9.atl.mindspring.net> Erik Shilling wrote:
> > In word war one I don't believe any roads used tar, but I do know that
> > common crude oil was sprayed on roads to prevent dust. As a kid of 12
> > my folks drove out to Yellow Stone from Washington. At that time not
> > one country road was covered with tar or macadam. They were all dirt
> > and gravel. some had oil, not tar sprayed on them. Another substance
> > use looked like rodk salt which eventy=ually became a hardened surface
>
> Someone I know once claimed they they used calcium in a lot of these cases
> too. It would harden into a concrete-like substance - or so they claimed.
It's calcium chloride, IIRC, and it's still used to control road dust in
summertime. In most cases it's dissolved in water and sprayed on "gravel"
roads. It works because it's hydrophilic, retaining moisture both from
the air and from rainfall, and this moisture helps keep the dust down. I
used to work at a farm supply store that sold the stuff in granular form
in 20kg bags which were lined with heavy plastic to protect the contents
from moisture. I used it in granular form once or twice to control dust
in the store parking lot, and on moderately humid days moisture would
quickly appear on the surface of individual grains. I'm not sure if it
would produce a hardened surface on a properly macadamized road, but on
most of the rural "gravel" roads in Ontario, the gravel is knocked off
much of the road fairly soon after it has been spread, leaving a dirt
surface. Calcium chloride certainly seems to keep the dust down in such
cases, and keep the surface much harder than it might be if it were to dry
out completely.
Calcium chloride has for all intents and purposes replaced oil for dust
control on gravel roads, even though it's more expensive and treatments
don't last as long. At least some of the oil that used to be sprayed on
roads was used transformer oil that contained PCBs and other toxic
materials. IIRC, there's at least one town in the United States (Times
Beach, MO?) that was closed down by the EPA and had its inhabitants
relocated due to toxic contaminants in oil sprayed on local roads.
Hope this helps.
--
Jeff Noakes
Cub driver
>> Someone I know once claimed they they used calcium in a lot of these cases
>> too. It would harden into a concrete-like substance - or so they claimed.
>
>It's calcium chloride, IIRC, and it's still used to control road dust in
>summertime. In most cases it's dissolved in water and sprayed on "gravel"
>roads. It works because it's hydrophilic, retaining moisture both from
>the air and from rainfall, and this moisture helps keep the dust down. I
Durham still has some gravel roads, and uses calcium chloride as you
describe to stabilize the surface between gradings and to keep down
the dust in the summer. It's no longer considered politically correct
to spray them with used crankcase drippings as was done in the 1940s
in my hometown.
Folks with dirt driveways like mine use a variant of this technique to
fix potholes. You fill the hole and sprinkle the new stuff with ice
melting crystals--calcium chloride.
The State Pier in Portsmouth NH has two humungous piles called the
Portsmouth Alps. One consists of calcium chloride inbound to spread on
the roads in winter. The other consists of rusted-out cars being
shipped to Japan to build Subarus to drive on those roads and be
rusted out in their turn--the perfect closed system.
Cub driver
In Britain, a "metalled" road was just another name for what I would
have called tar or asphalt. Thanks to the learned discussion on tar
macadam, perhaps this wasn't as strange a usage as it seemed to me at
the time.
kk
IIRC, there's at least one town in the United States (Times
> Beach, MO?) that was closed down by the EPA and had its inhabitants
> relocated due to toxic contaminants in oil sprayed on local roads.
Times Beach is correct. It's about 5 miles due west of where I am
sitting right now, and has become the Route 66 State Park, with a large
dirt tomb in the middle. The tomb is the repository for tons of ash
left after the inceneration of mega tons of contaminated dirt.
Terry Russell
the answer is, it depends who you ask
metal is also used as the general constituents of glass making
and also used as 'furnish'
a metalled road is a constructed road
from the Greek Metallon = mine
ie mined and layed material, so quarried and processed(crushed) rock
metal is the refined state of mined ores, but its association is now
reversed
we mine metalled ores
[ just as oil comes from Latin olea=olive , olive oil is the only real
oil ;-)]
Australian use is that Tarmac is almost exclusively airfield paving,
but
can be any large bituminous paved area, ie high quality finish and
little camber
the airfield Tarmac doesn't necessarily need to be sealed
'macadam' or 'asphalt' is applied to high quality profiled surfaced
roads
metalled road means unsealed, profiled and compacted but unsurfaced,
raw
crushed rock surface compacted with sand fill and perhaps a binder
bitumen means a lower quality surfacing of a metalled road
..but often applies to any quality surfaced road, or simply tar
sprayed on leveled ground without further profiling
my young impression based on use was that asphalt was ash-felt,
because
all the asphalt I had seen used fine crushed smelter-glass (ash) as
the filler
felt was carpet underlay cushioning , so ash-felt was road cushioning
the ash-felt improved metalled roads and glass was made from metal
well, it made sense to me at the time ;-)
try to be to precise about a meaning and you end up going in circles ,
by the
time you catch up its meaning will have changed again ;-)
Terry Russell
Cub driver wrote in message <382ea61e...@news.MA.ultranet.com>...
>And the answer seems to be "no," if Neal Sheehan can apply it to
>pierced-steel planking. Tarmac seems to equal runway or taxiway,
>presumably even a concrete runway.
>
>Words change. When I was growing up, kids studied Latin, and
>"decimate" meant taking out every tenth prisoner and killing him--a
>Roman practice. But decimate has a nice, evil, chopping sound, so it
>has come to mean something entirely different. What, I'm not sure,
>since I learned Latin from the nuns and it really stuck (like the tar
>:)
>
Me too, annoys me from the bottom of my Plimsol_l_s to way above the
Plimsoll Line ;-)
Media now use it in place of annihilate and exterminate and
extirpate and...
actually they use it to mean almost anything from annihilate to a
significant
sports victory.
It is the culture of superlatives, best,biggest,worst. There is no
profit in
honest reporting.
I suppose 'exterminate''exteminate' would make them sound like a bunch
of Daleks,
now...come to think of it......hmmmm
Deci-mation was the punishment for rebellion or refusing to obey
orders.
I have even heard a media reference to Tarmac-ed as the act of
landing/touchdown
probably sounded better than 'the rescue flight runwayed'
[ to keep a vague aviation/tarmac reference]
Cub driver
I was asked who wrote about rolling up the tarmac at Khe Sanh. It was
Michael Herr in Dispatches, page 173 of the paperback:
"In early June the engineers rolled up the airstrips and transported
the salvaged tarmac back to Dong Ha."
Even allowing for the military's lack of regard for
cost-effectiveness, I can't believe that a) we would have brought in
asphalt to Khe Sanh in the first place or that b) we would have
salvaged it if we had. (We left the barbed wire behind.)
Now that I re-read the sentence, I realize that Herr doesn't say that
the tarmac was taken out by air. (I previously had a vision of
helicopters carrying out bundles of broken asphalt in nets slung
beneath.) Even so...
Also, as the rest of the book makes clear, Herr smoked and otherwise
consumed a lot of strange stuff during his Vietnam tour, so his
observations may suffer from more than the usual the distortion that
we to find in retrospective war stories.
This has been a great thread. Every time I think of pulling the plug
on r.a.m., something like this comes along :)
all the best - Dan
Ed Rasimus
>
>I was asked who wrote about rolling up the tarmac at Khe Sanh. It was
>Michael Herr in Dispatches, page 173 of the paperback:
>
>"In early June the engineers rolled up the airstrips and transported
>the salvaged tarmac back to Dong Ha."
>
>Even allowing for the military's lack of regard for
>cost-effectiveness, I can't believe that a) we would have brought in
>asphalt to Khe Sanh in the first place or that b) we would have
>salvaged it if we had. (We left the barbed wire behind.)
>
airstrip" and hauling the salvaged material back to Dong Ha was to PSP
(Preforated Steel Planking). Lots of SEA short fields were built
quickly of PSP. They served theater air-lift (C-130, C-123, C-7) as
well as FAC ops and allied counter-insurgency aircraft. They weren't
generally deemed suitable for high performance jets.
A friend of mine from UPT days put a fuel-starved F-4C onto the PSP at
Dong Ha in '66. It went off the end of the short runway and broke the
gear off. No fire, however, because there wasn't anything left in the
airplane to burn.
In another incident, my flight commander tried to put his damaged
F-105 into Nakhon Phenom when it still had PSP. He'd been shot down by
his own AGM-12C which had rotated upward on launch and shot through
the leading edge of his wing taking out hydraulic lines. He nursed the
bird back over the Mekong and got to about five miles on final when
the last hydraulics went dry and he lost control. Bailed out and was
quickly recovered. The outcome probably wouldn't have been as pretty
had he put the 105 down on the matting at 180kts or so and went
sliding off the far end.
>
>This has been a great thread. Every time I think of pulling the plug
>on r.a.m., something like this comes along :)
My sentiments exactly. The ranting and ravings of the weird put me off
for weeks at a time as well as the unsolicited cross-postings of the
self-appointed flying safety experts.
Cheers, and Check 6.
Ed Rasimus
Fighter Pilot (ret)
*** Ziff-Davis Interactive
*** (http://www.zdnet.com)
Glenn Dowdy
Cub driver wrote in message <3834144b...@news.MA.ultranet.com>...
>
>I was asked who wrote about rolling up the tarmac at Khe Sanh. It was
>Michael Herr in Dispatches, page 173 of the paperback:
>
>"In early June the engineers rolled up the airstrips and transported
>the salvaged tarmac back to Dong Ha."
>
>Even allowing for the military's lack of regard for
>cost-effectiveness, I can't believe that a) we would have brought in
>asphalt to Khe Sanh in the first place or that b) we would have
>salvaged it if we had. (We left the barbed wire behind.)
>
Probably some engineer company commander who didn't want to sign a statement
of charges for the hand-receipted asphalt.
--
Glenn Dowdy
Cub driver
>I was asked who wrote about rolling up the tarmac at Khe Sanh. It was
>Michael Herr in Dispatches, page 173 of the paperback:
>
>"In early June the engineers rolled up the airstrips and transported
>the salvaged tarmac back to Dong Ha."
>
>Even allowing for the military's lack of regard for
>cost-effectiveness, I can't believe that a) we would have brought in
>asphalt to Khe Sanh in the first place or that b) we would have
>salvaged it if we had. (We left the barbed wire behind.)
Still curious about this matter, I asked the question on a Vietnam
veterans' newsgroup and got this reply:
<<On the few occasions that I was in and out of the place it was steel
matting (I think it was called Marsden Matting {sp}). When it came
time to leave the base for good the airstrip was pulled up and the
fortifications destroyed (trenches & bunkers). Since there was very
little above ground by then it wasn't a major job and to tell the
truth it didn't make things look a whole lot different.>>
So "tarmac" as a British tradename for building asphalt roads has
morphed into a term for airfield surfacing so general that it can
include pierced-steel planking. (The actual spelling is Marston Mat,
according to the AF dictionary.)
"In the Vietnam War," says the dictionary, "aluminum mats were
introduced." That would explain why they were taken up and carried
off.
Gary Watson
hangar parking lots. I can see how you would have trouble stopping and
aircraft on it as it is slippery than hell when wet. It was as Ed mentioned
the heavy steel version. I used to work for a Squadron Leader Nick-named PSP
(actual name Phil S. Perry) he was a much fun as the runway version.
Gary Watson
"Cub driver" <cubd...@eudoramail.com> wrote in message
news:38368b26...@news.MA.ultranet.com...