|
|||||||
|
|
|
|||||
|
|
|||||||
This is Veniks translation of an article published in Yugoslav "AEROMAGAZIN"
Serb Dummies Fool NATO Dummies
"LONDON, June 24 - Hundreds of Serb dummies managed to fool the NATO brass dummies into believing they were bombing hundreds of Serbian tanks and artillery. Close to the war's end, NATO claimed that it had destroyed about 60% of the Yugoslav Army's artillery and about 40% of its main battle tanks.
Yet when the armistice took effect after June 10, "NATO dropped thousands of bombs on dummy roads, bridges and soldiers... and hit only 13 real Serb tanks," the London Times, no friend of the Serbs, reported in a front page story today (see http://www.the-times.co.uk/news/pages/Times/frontpage.html?1175281).
"NATO'S 79-day bombing campaign against Yugoslavia, which involved thousands of sorties and some of the most sophisticated precision weapons, succeeded in damaging only 13 of the Serbs' 300 battle tanks in Kosovo, despite alliance claims of large-scale destruction of Belgrade's heavy armor," the Times defense editor, Michael Evans, reported from Pristina.
With Nato's Kosovo Force (KFOR) now spread out into every area of the province, troops from all the different nationalities taking part in the peacekeeping operation have been searching for destroyed or damaged tanks and artillery. They have, so far, found just three damaged T55 tanks left behind in Kosovo. "What we have found is a huge number of dummy tanks and artillery," one KFOR source told the London Times.
The Yugoslav Army used well-practiced Russian camouflage techniques which involved placing dummies around the countryside, some of them next to dummy bridges with strips of black plastic sheeting across fields as fake roads to delude NATO bombers into thinking they had a prime target to hit. "When you're travelling at 500mph at 15,000ft, it is easy to be fooled," another KFOR source told the Times. --- TiM Ed.: Funny how the chief "lie and deny" NATO spokesmen, Jamie Shea and Gen. Walter Jertz, neglected to tell us that during the air campaign!? --- When the Serbs finally withdrew from the province, at least 250 tanks were counted out, as well as 450 armored personnel carriers and 600 artillery and mortar pieces.
Which is why some NATO officials, the Times said, are baffled about why Slobodan Milosevic did surrender, given that his army was practically intact. --- TiM Ed.: Wrong question. Why did he bother to fight? That's what informed people should have wondered.
The writing had been on the wall for several years that Milosevic would give up Kosovo. We first wrote about it in 1995, and twice last year (see the "Green Interstate," http://www.truthinmedia.org/Bulletins/tim95-11.html, and this writer's two Washington Times columns - http://www.truthinmedia.org/Columns/wt10-25.htm and http://www.truthinmedia.org/Columns/wt7-05(Kosovo).htm.
(source: Truth in Media, 1999)
This is Veniks translation of an article published in Yugoslav "AEROMAGAZIN"
“M-18” - the Serb “Trojan Horse”
According to the western reports at the time (e.g., the London Times, June 24), the Serb military deployed various decoys and camouflage techniques supposedly learned from the Soviets. But a recent article by a Serb engineer, Mato Siladic in the Yugoslav “Aeromagazine,” a magazine published by and for the flying enthusiasts and aeronautical modelers, revealed additional details of how the Serb civilians, not the Yugoslav Air Force, came with the idea which preserved the Serb military’s most valuable flying assets - the MiG 29s. And how these Serb patriots built them while NATO bombs were raining all around them.
You can check out at our Web site a special album of photographs by Djordje Ivanov, which illustrate the various phases of construction and deployment of the MiG-29 decoys, which the Serb aeronautical enthusiasts jokingly dubbed the “M-18” - http://www.truthinmedia.org/Kosovo/War/PhotoAlbum/photos-war-10.html.
But the proof is in the pudding, as they say. The ultimate success of this enterprising Serb civilian contribution to their country’s defense had to be proven in combat. And it was. About 90% of all the decoys built by the “M-18” team were destroyed by NATO’s bombs.
“Under normal circumstances, every designer-modeler would have loved to nurture and protect his babies,” said Radoje Glagojevic, one of the “M-18” designers. “(But in this case), we wanted the NATO aggressors to destroy as many of them as possible.” Blagojevic is a modeler from Nova Pazova, a small town about 20 miles northwest of Belgrade, close to the Batajnica military airport, which was practically a nightly target of NATO bombs during its 11-week air campaign.
Here are some excerpts from the article “Aeromagazine,” in our translation from Serbian:
“It is widely known that… the most advanced aircraft of the Yugoslav Air Force are the MiG-29 fighters which were procured 12 years ago. It is also no secret, and the NATO planners in Brussels knew it very well, that we bought only one squadron of MiG-29s - 14 one-seaters, and two two-seaters. At the time of the NATO alliance’s aggression on our country, these MiGs were our only aircraft which could have realistically confronted the most advanced attacking airplanes.
But considering that even on the first night, the NATO aggressors engaged 400-450 fighter aircraft vs. a dozen or so Yugoslav MiGs, the realistic advantage was about 30-to-1 in favor of the enemy. As the air campaign continued, with every passing day such a ratio was becoming less favorable for us. […]
So given such an imbalance in air power, we were forced to create our own ‘Trojan Horse”…
Djordje Ivanov, a pilot, painter and cartoonist, was actually the first to come up with the idea of building MiG-29 decoys. ‘We had to find a way to preserve our aircraft,’ he says. ‘Our solution was - moving constantly both the decoys and the real airplanes, so that the decoys become true shadows of real aircraft. We made the decoys ‘come to life’ mechanically and electronically. We imitated the its engines; we artificially created smoke from burning kerosene in ‘smoke boxes;’ the metal skin created an appropriate radar image… Our team was named ‘M-18,’ as the(alphabetical) follow-on to the L-18 designation which the Yugoslav MiG-29s have’.”
Eventually, members of the ‘Nova Pazova’ aeronautical modeling club, such as Blagojevic, pitched in with their own ideas and ‘labor of love’ to try to help their country’s war effort. Their ultimate gratification came on June 12. That’s when 11 Yugoslav MiG-29s sprouted their wings and took off from Pristina’s Slatina airport, to the utter shock and amazement of the NATO brass and the western media. Here’s how Col. David Hackworth put it in his June 15 nationally syndicated column (see S99-111, "Peace" 5, Item 5, June 18):
“After all those bombs and missiles and all of NATO's glowing reports about battle damage inflicted on the non-white-flag-waving Serbian Army, 11 MiG fighters rose from an air base in Kosovo on the day the peace deal was final. They wagged their perfect, unruffled wings and headed north. After such a pummeling, how could 11 jet fighters, almost more than Great Britain used in the war, remain unscathed?
Eventually, the analysts will tell us the final score.”
Well, now we know how it was done. A bunch of Serb MiG-29 dummies fooled a bunch of NATO brass dummies with an “M-18,” a Serb “Trojan Horse,” created by a pilot-painter and cartoonist, and a bunch of Nova Pazova aeronautical enthusiasts and modelers. Homo Sapiens wins. Technology loses. A great victory of human spirit; a sad day for the “death merchants.”
(source: Truth in Media, by Bob Djurjevic et ed., Issue S99-131, "Peace" 25, July 31, 1999, photos by Djordje Ivanov)
 |
 |
 |
Last Modified: 20.02.03 12:52
© Copyright: Dragan Kostadinov