listening devices during Vietnam

[hazmat]

Tracy, I understand that you guys would place listening devices along " the Ho Chi Men trail " that aircraft would monitor. Is this true and if so, did they work very well?

[Tracy]

True. Acoustic, Magnetic, Sniffers, etc. were placed along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Didn't work as well as they wanted. They used to air drop them along the trail. Then the monkeys would pick them up and play with them, and generate a "false-positive" signal. I believe Major Plaster wrote about the sensors in ihs book "SOG". They sent in recon teams where the Intel folks were getting spurious readings, but SOG KNEW there was no activity. The teams lay in the jungle for about 15 minutes and that's when they caught the monkey business.

[hazmat]

I'm not sure which devices my uncle invented, but now that I read this I seem to remember him telling me about air drop sensors and the monkeys. Maybe they should have spent more time in that smoke filled bug proof room working on that, instead of working on fuel injection system for their car to run on the Bonneville salt flats. Set a land speed record in '61 with it, its still in the museum in Wenover. Not bad for a guy that went to night school to get his high school diploma. I'll have to ask him about it and give him a hard time about inventing monkey toys.