John Bordne; secret squirrel and World War III
C B sends us links to stories about this John Bordne fellow who was a missile mechanic on Okinawa on October 28, 1962. You might remember that was during the “Cuba Missile Crisis”. Bordne claimed earlier this year his unit received orders to launch their nuclear missiles that day, but that now-deceased Captain William Bassett received those orders, but held his launch officers at gun point to prevent them from entering launch codes.
The men with their fingers on the trigger were ready to launch the nukes, but by Bordne’s recollection, the Captain stalled again and ordered two armed airmen to “shoot the [lieutenant] if he tries to launch without [either] verbal authorization from the ‘senior officer in the field’ or the upgrade to DEFCON 1 by Missile Operations Center.”
[…]
After the crisis had passed Bassett reportedly told his men: “None of us will discuss anything that happened here tonight, and I mean anything. No discussions at the barracks, in a bar, or even here at the launch site. You do not even write home about this. Am I making myself perfectly clear on this subject?”
Despite the fact that no one can verify Bordne’s story, the Japanese media published it anyway. From Stars & Stripes;
“I’m as sure as I am of my name that this never happened,” said Gene Stirewalt, 74, of Salisbury, N.C.
In interviews with Stars and Stripes, six other airmen who were assigned to the Okinawa missile sites with Bordne during the Cuban Missile Crisis disputed the truth of his account. Meanwhile, the Air Force said its historians have looked into the alleged incident but have been unable to find any record of it.
Bordne claims that the reason no one else will talk about it is because none of the others have been cleared to talk about the episode;
“I’m the only one who has been cleared to talk about it,” Bordne told Stars and Stripes.
Other missileers who dispute him are either lying about being on duty during the Cuban Missile Crisis or are jealous of not receiving Air Force approval to discuss the near-launch, he said.
Now at the center of a Cold War controversy, the former enlisted airman has a thick manuscript, a memoir of the near-launch and his time in the Air Force, which he hopes to have published.
Bordne said he first envisioned writing about the alleged incident while coming out of the missile bunker on Okinawa in 1962.
Of course, as the articles point out, the Japanese don’t like nukes on their soil, so naturally they want to paint the US as a war mongering hegemonic power, so there’s always some fame-seeking phony looking to cash in on it.
Category: Air Force
I was an E-4 Air Policeman at the McGuire AFB BOMARC missile site situated in woods in the middle of New Jersey. We worked 12 hour shifts during the entire Cuban Crisis and NEVER once did our silo’s open and missiles erect. The BOMARC was a nuclear tipped air defense missile and I believe our site was responsible for the air defense of probably Philly and New Yawk City. Don’t know what they had on Okinawa but you have to figure if something like this guy claimed happened, word would have gotten out. The other thing is at the BOMARC site, only the Air Police had weapons and I suspect it was the same throughout the Air Force.
Okinawa had a number of MGM-13 (originally TM-76) “Mace” missile systems in Oct 1962. The Mace was developed from the MGM-1 “Matador”. Both were early cruise missiles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MGM-13_Mace
The Mace used both conventional warheads and Mark 28 nuclear warheads. The latter had yield between 350kT and 1.45MT depending on which warhead mod (1,2,3,or 5) was used. Range for the B model of the missile is given as approx 1400mi.
The fact that this guy is claiming to have been the “only one who has been cleared to talk about it” and can find no one willing to publicly back his claim is sufficient to regard the claim as bullsh!t.
Just another sad old man looking for a way to cash in before he cashes in his chips permanently.
Annnnnnndddd there’s the rub.
” the former enlisted airman has a thick manuscript, a memoir of the near-launch and his time in the Air Force, which he hopes to have published. ”
I can’t seem to put my finger on it on search here at TAH but didn’t we also have another phony author here a few weeks/months ago pushing his story of fiction that got tore up on Amazon as crap??
Chip, there have been a few… mostly those “sekrit skwirrl rice paddy daddy combat ops” types who have written books on their “experiences” to help them combat “the PTSD” they caught in the ‘Nam slurping down that Cream of Sum Yung Guy soup made by Ho Li Phuque in Phuc Mi provence…
BTW, their records are classified “Top Sekrit – Honey Badger” and kept in the preezy’s desk in the Oval Office.
Chip, that was Robert Boyd, the CIA Trained C-130 Mechanic that got tore up on Amazon.
You remember him: Codename Lightfoot?
DING DING DING…Winnar Winnar Chicken Dinnar
Yep that was it only two weeks ago…
http://valorguardians.com/blog/?p=63320
Don’t forget J. Max “Iceman” Taylor and Leo J. Maloney. Iceman got tore up on Amazon…didn’t know his SE Asia geography. Claimed he worked out of a secret base in Laos lol…turned out it was Thailand. Hard to know those things when your only overseas duty was Germany.
I forgot about that turd.
And if you hit the serious Way Back Machine, you’ll find Spooky 8, the Anal Emission.
Rubbish. And you’re a stupid old idiot, because while most Americans will roll their eyes and wait for the movie to come out, the people who would possibly have been on the receiving end of said nuke might not be amused, and might possibly take you at your word. Do you really want to start an international incident, you senile old fart?
Only if it would help his book sales, PN.
Wasn’t that the opening scene to the movie “War Games”?
Quite the opposite, with one silo officer holding his firearm on the other to force him to turn the launch key.
” Shall We Play A Game ? “
Just another old, gnarly fake-ass turd.
Maybe he fell asleep while watching Crimson Tide and thinks this happened to him?
In flight missile mechanic.
ok….I seriously guffawed at that.
With a magnetic tool box and a thruster equipped jet pack.
I recently have been cleared to discuss his training status here on recently declassified video shot somewhere over the Middle East where he was training to combat the Global War on Terror.
/or not.
Bergdahl misspoke he thought he was John Bordne and not Jason Bourne.
There’s some truth to the story, but it’s not his story – it belongs to an Officer of the Soviet Navy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Arkhipov
FW&FS VADM Arkhipov.
Fair winds and following seas, indeed.
FWIW: Arkhipov also survived the K-19 near-meltdown incident. He was apparently deputy CO of that boat at the time the incident occurred.
Then there was this guy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov
Crap Twist I accidentally reported your comment trying to hit the link sorry
I report him all the time. If Jonn sobers up before spring he might notice.
I’d probably be faded to dealing with all of us miscretes to
BHWHAHAHAHAHAHAHA ! ! ! ! !
K-19 was a Hotel-class ballistic missile submarine. An interesting book about the nuclear crisis which occurred within her hulls while underway is: “K-19: The Widowmaker”. Harrison Ford starred in a movie about that tense situation.
“Bordne claims that the reason no one else will talk about it is because none of the others have been cleared to talk about the episode;”
Yes, because 50 years after they hold a random drawing to see which particular guy can flap his cock-holster and write a fucking book.
“I’m the only one who has been cleared to talk about it,” Bordne told Stars and Stripes.
Really? Who “cleared” you? Why were you the only one “cleared to talk about it”?
My bullshit meter pegged when I read this.
Come on guys, all branches clear a lowly enlisted guy to talk about such events. You wouldn’t want just anybody, like the PAO breaking this news to the public.
He’s totes legit.
If BULLSHIT were music his tale would be a weeklong symphony concert!
The Japanese “…want to paint the Americans as hegemonic war mongers”. Pot, I would like to introduce you to kettle…
For a second there I thought I had lost a few months then I realized it wasn’t April 1st.
Well I e been cleared to talk about this… So
I just dropped a huge crap in the toilet and now it’s plugged up…
My wife doesn’t know about it yet !!!!!!
But oddly she will find out and she’ll be pissed because
I didn’t plunged it
THATS ALL
TOP SECRET CRAPPER
The above report doesn’t pass the smell test.
One would think that more than a single missile battery would have been given orders to fire. Beyond that, if he were telling the truth, why would a single tech be given authorization to talk about the incident? Finally, if the officer did violate his orders and hold fellow service members at gunpoint, why was he allowed to continue in the military?
Okay, help me out here. If this did happen, why would one guy be cleared to talk about it, but nobody else? If its declassified, everybody involved should be “cleared,” right?
This is failing the common sense test b
Because he was the first one to write a book about it.
John Bordne just needs Degrata Tactical, Brad Thor, or Brian Williams to claim he’s the “real deal”
https://thetruthaboutsocnetlies.wordpress.com/2013/08/27/degrata-tactical-swears-that-john-giduck-is-the-real-deal/
Degrata and Brad Thor vetted me so I’m officially the Fake Real American Hero(tm) now.
sincerely
John “Faker 6” Giduck
Yeah, this guy is totally legit. I remember talking to him about this very subject. It was at the Top Secret Sakahachi Alley Outpost, just outside Kadena Air Base in 1977. What a relief to finally be able to talk about it publicly…eye roll.
This dude looks like his parents were brother and sister. Yikes. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say this guy probably reads a lot of Info Wars. Reading his worthless dribble makes me think he should be fitted for a happy jacket and given an extended stay at the looney bin.
I was stationed on and off in Okinawa for 5 years. I can’t say I can verify whether or not there were ever any nuclear weapons, but while working in a force protection billet, I can verify the Japanese media (especially the local Oki papers) was VERY left-leaning, anti-military, and often went out of their way to straight-up invent information. For example, the Hands Around Futenma protest in 2010 featured a couple thousand people, give or take. The media was more than happy to blow that number up to 10,000+ and that’s the number that was touted all over the world. Combine a faker who regrets that his time in the Air Force was rather uneventful and a media that will publish anything it wants to believe, and you’ll get a whole lotta bullshit.
Oh, dear. The old ‘Cuban Missile Crisis’ thingy excuses again. If there is anything still held secret about that episode of history, it’s how many times Fidel Castro and Nikita Krushchev butted heads over where to put the missile silos and the bunkers.
Seriously, the real story of what he did and where he was is probably more interesting, but he’s gotta get in that last bit of unearned glory, doesn’t he?
There was not much about it that was actually secret then, and none of it is secret squirrel stuff now.
Whew! Good, I feel so much safer now that this is out. I read about him last week, posted a question about his ability to listen in on highly classified commo in the first place. Did find out a few things, though. A missile tech (E6) present in the control room but wasn’t him. This ass hat is backed by Mayors for Peace (communist front group)and gave his “testimony” to the UN via Skype, arranged for by the MfP crew’s Aaron Tovis (Belgium) who leads their 2020 Vision Campaign. His drivel is captured at the link below:
http://thebulletin.org/okinawa-missiles-october8826
that should read “Tovish”
Nice to see the posers are giving Beirut and Grenada a break and giving some of the older posers and embellishes the recognition they crave. Not too many Cuban Missile Crisis posers out there. The only one I recall is the Navy recruit that was flown down to Cuba to hang of a cliff in order to draw caricatures of those Soviet missile technicians, or maybe photograph the launch vehicles, I forget.
That was Ron White, the Ninja Seal.
That story was funnier than “Call Me Tater Salad”. He even got the opportunity to personally brief President Kennedy.
Have we even had ONE Haiti poser? As a veteran of OUD I demand some affirmative action here.
…Oh dear, dear me….where to begin?
“While the captain consulted by phone with some of the other launch officers, the crew wondered whether the DEFCON1 order had been jammed by the enemy, while the weather report and coded launch order had somehow managed to get through.”
Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm…..no. Jamming ain’t that selective – either all the information gets through or none of it does. And if the other crews are preparing to launch, they aren’t going to be taking any orders from someone claiming to be Major Bassett.
“To the whole crew’s consternation, after the time-check and weather update, the coded launch instruction was repeated, unaltered. The other seven crews, of course, heard the repetition of the instruction as well.”
Not only no, but F#@k NO. WHY IN THE NAME OF CURTIS LE MAY WOULD YOU READ A WEATHER REPORT AND TIME CHECK IF YOU WERE GIVING A GO CODE?
“Bassett immediately ordered the other launch officer, as Bordne remembers it, “to send two airmen over with weapons and shoot the [lieutenant] if he tries to launch without [either] verbal authorization from the ‘senior officer in the field’ or the upgrade to DEFCON 1 by Missile Operations Center.” About 30 yards of underground tunnel separated the two Launch Control Centers.”
And of course, the guys in the other LCCs – which are locked down because they got the go code – will happily let the Armed Airmen in.
““None of us will discuss anything that happened here tonight, and I mean anything. No discussions at the barracks, in a bar, or even here at the launch site. You do not even write home about this. Am I making myself perfectly clear on this subject?”
For more than 50 years, silence was observed.”
Bullshit. There were several other almosts during the Cuban Missile Crisis – on both sides – and we know about them. For some reason, THIS one has somehow stayed secret?
I’m sorry…if I ever came face to face with Mr. Bordne I would be so up in his face it wouldn’t be funny.
Mike
I think we all agree this story is about as truthful as an Obama promise, but I don’t necessarily have a problem with the weather report and time check.
If this was a Mace, that was an early cruise-type missile, essentially an unmanned aircraft. It is possible that launch weather conditions, weather enroute and at the target was important info for configuring the missile for launch. The time check also fits to avoid weapon conflict at target impact points. Atomic clocks were years in the future so a common timing start point would be important.
I know nothing about Mace launch requirements and procedures, so this is all speculation, but I did spend a lot of years on missile crew (Titan, Minuteman, & ALCS), so I’m not unfamiliar with the concepts.
But there’s no doubt the story itself is horses**t.