Who is this?

December 24, 2024 6:53 PM

During the Cold War, Air Force Col. Harry Shoup was one of the commanders in charge of an early warning radar system based in Colorado. It had been set up to detect a possible soviet missile attack on the United States. In this animated conversation from our colleagues at StoryCorps, three of Shoup's children recall a surprising phone call their dad received back in 1955...
posted by jim in austin (5 comments total)

thus,
"A misprint by the newspaper meant that the number that appeared in the ad was not the correct number to call Santa; instead, it was the unlisted number for the CONAD operations center."
posted by clavdivs at 7:12 PM on December 24, 2024 [4 favorites]

I grew up in the shadow — in its several senses — of that awful thing, the NORAD air defense command headquarters delved into Cheyenne mountain, and I had never heard that story.

Talk about a blast from the past (that never quite happened, thank God!).
posted by jamjam at 8:01 PM on December 24, 2024 [4 favorites]

On the other side of the pond In the mid 1950s, my father, serving since the age of 14 in the Royal Navy was working in Whitehall on a joint defense staff committee. It was at height of the Cold War and things could get a little jittery. Some politico would point to a map of the world and ask, innocently enough, what would happen if the Russians turned up here. The committee would turn to and find out what was available in the way of Vulcan bombers in Cyprus, associated army units on the same island, surface ships and submarines in the Eastern Med and work out how quickly they could get enough oil-tankers to Malta to fuel up the rag-tag armada that would keep the world safe for democracy. Nobody wanted to get caught with their pants down, so they put in the hours; frequently working late into the night. No overtime.

One night, after a few weeks of this rigmarole had worn everyone to a frazzle, my mother was jangled awake by the phone at 0130 hrs.
"I'm really sorry, but could you pick me up from Elmer's End? I caught the last train south from Charing Cross."
"Okay," she replied, "where is Elmer's End?"
"I don't know."
In the middle of the night, in a strange metropolis, my mother abandoned her sleeping children (you could do that in those days) and set off in the Austin to find her bloke and bring him home.
posted by BobTheScientist at 6:00 AM on December 25, 2024 [4 favorites]

I coded a version of santa tracker back in the oughts! fun project. high pressure.
posted by j_curiouser at 8:23 AM on December 25, 2024 [1 favorite]

Decades later, it's still a better story than Red One.
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:48 PM on December 26, 2024