Friday, May 10, 2019

BE BRIEF

It was the code I was initiated into when I joined the Navy. One of the many things I used to have was a book about American submarine operations in WWII and as I recall from it, the order from CINCPAC to his submarines was to "Get astride the Bunda Strait immediately" in order to complete the destruction of the retreating Japanese Navy. It was about a paragraph long of less than this length.

If done now it would be a 200 page FRAGO.

It was done in the days when every message like that had to be hand encrypted and decrypted and sometimes those could pile up for days because the one or two people on the ships doing the decryption had to sleep. I was taught to keep the damned things brief, terse, as few words as possible, no negligent embellishment, nothing extraneous. The watchword was BRIEF. Pity we lost sight of that today.

I kind of miss the Exile of Portales. He was always first to say,
I know what you did there.
Just an annual random tribute to him and Lex and Villainous Company.

9 comments:

OldAFSarge said...

Brief is good, clarity in all things.

We've lost sight of that. Cheers to the memory of Buck and Lex.

HMS Defiant said...

Don't tell them but I would put them in the same room with the Inklings and spend hours just listening.

If they let me in.

SCOTTtheBADGER said...

Is the Bunda Strait, the Bungo Strait or the Sunda Strait? You have confused the Badger!

(not necessarily your) Uncle Skip said...

It all depends upon who's decrypting.

HMS Defiant said...

To be honest, I know it is so but I really miss the reference works I used to have. I looked on google and that was worthless so looked on Yandex. I will look around some more and get back to you.

HMS Defiant said...

Here in metroparkcentralis we have the USS Cod. It still has a device in the radio room that they say is a sigaba. I find that a little odd because I was ordered to destroy the old KY 28 and KY 38s when they were superceded by the 58s. They are all far harder to destroy than most people can imagine. I'm really glad I didn't have to destroy any KW 7s.

Brig said...

Brief, yes!

Larry said...

There's nothing tough enough that multiple thermite grenades can't handle. Otherwise, if you can plausibly "lose" a key card and pin iy on a well-deserving someone, that's good, too. If you're ruthless, and the other choice is to shoot them and feed them to the "Ramadan bacon" factory pigs, that is.

HMS Defiant said...

I kind of miss the brevity of old naval communications.