Category Archives: Scribbles

I grew up in the Air Force, and one of the places we were assigned was Ankara, Turkey, when I was a senior in high school in 1961-62. We’d often ask our fathers what the headquarters (called TUSLOG, for The United States Logistics Group) was there for, just what logistics they were doing and supporting, other than the dependents’ schools, the headquarters itself, and the officers’ and NCO clubs. But we’d never get an answer. Since the Cold War ended, some of it has dribbled out. This official version, for instance, and this not-so-official one. My father died refusing to speak of it except in very general terms. What I’ve ever learned, I learned from the news media, and who knows how much of that is really true? Hard to say. Probably impossible to know for sure.

UPDATE  I’ll add, for those who don’t care to wade through all the links and other material that what’s been reported to have been TUSLOG’s mission was supporting electronic listening stations aimed at the Soviet Union, aerial photo recon of the SU’s naval and other military bases around the Black Sea–from the humble L 10A to the U2 and the vaunted SR 71–and, finally, supposedly, siloed nuclear missiles in southern Turkey aimed at the SU. Kennedy is supposed to have traded some of them in 1962 for the Sov’s keeping theirs out of Cuba. Although I have read that we both cheated on that. Some stayed in Turkey and some stayed in Cuba. Is any of this true? Some of it, sure. But which parts? Beats me.