Many times in life we must just go ahead and live our life; one day at a time...

Date:   10/25/2007 7:00:57 PM ( 17 y ago)

Another thing that  happened upon on my unusual road of life...

The rendition below is from a book by one of the foreign officers stationed on Zanzibar at that time,  we met under these unusual cerconstances... This is from a book on the Zanzibar rebellion, 1964; and I was there...  Served aboard a US Navy Destroyer which sent a landing force ashore to negotiate then rescue almost a hundred Western White people trapped in the riot torn Zanzibar...

** Lets start by saying that the USA  NASA had established a ring of stations around the world in the 1950's to track space flights and Zanzibar was one of the key sites:

Planning for this second trial of the Mercury worldwide tracking network was elaborate. Supporting the MA-5 mission were 18 stations, plus the Goddard Space Flight Center and the Mercury Control Center. Goddard and the Control Center furnished computer support and management of the overall operation, respectively.

Station	Type
Mercury Control Center	Launch
Cape Canaveral (AMR)	Launch
Grand Bahama Island (AMR)	Downrange tracking
Grand Turk	Downrange tracking
Bermuda	Computer
Atlantic Ocean Ship	Remote tracking
Canary Islands	Remote tracking
Kano, Nigeria	Remote tracking
Zanzibar, Africa	Remote tracking
Indian Ocean Ship	Remote tracking
Muchea, Australia	Command
Woomera, Australia	Remote tracking
Canton Island	Command
Kauai, Hawaii	Command
Point Arguello, California	Command
Guaymas, Mexico	Command
White Sands, New Mexico	Remote tracking
Corpus Christi, Texas	Remote tracking
Eglin Air Force Base, Florida	Remote tracking
Goddard Space Flight Center, Maryland	Computing and communications

With the exception of White Sands, all stations would receive "real time" telemetry data, consisting of magnetic tape recordings, Sanborn recorder displays, meter displays, and clock displays. The overall operation of this network was a vast cooperative undertaking of the Department of Defense, NASA, and industry.⁴⁸

[402] Seventy-three key people assigned to the various stations received their final mission briefing on October 23. Once again the tracking teams included several Mercury astronauts. Shepard was assigned to Bermuda, Schirra to Australia, Slayton to Guaymas, and Cooper to Point Arguello, while at the Cape, Carpenter had a station in the blockhouse, Grissom was the capsule communicator in the Mercury Control Center, and Glenn served as backup capsule communicator in the center.⁴⁹

Where I fit in !!

Now we fast forward to 1964; The US Navy destroyer I served on was dispatched through the Suez Canal or "Big Ditch" as we called it; to operate with the Mid-East Force out of Bahrain, Persian Gulf...  We had came down in November 1963 Stopping at Jidda, Aden, Bahrain, Ra's Tanura, Kuwait; then back to Aden...   Then the first of 1964 we proceeded down the coast of East Africa, stopping at Mogadishu, Somalia...  {Where we had an unusual occurrence with a Soviet Ship; more on that later}  We then went down to Mombasa; crossing the Equator @ 44.50.0 East Lat which makes me a Shellback... HUH!! 

It was here that our plans changed, but life is about change, so on we went into the jaws of death...

From Library Journal
Now a seasoned Foreign Service officer, Petterson (Inside Sudan) began his career in Zanzibar from 1963 to 1965. During this extremely tumultuous time the island became independent of Great Britain, experienced a coup d'etat, undertook a Marxist path, switched to the nonaligned movement, expelled two U.S. Chiefs of Mission, agreed to unite with Tanganyika, and worked to find its proper place in the balance of world powers. Recent memories of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Kennedy assassination made Washington officials very worried about rumors of Cuba-trained agents behind the revolution and new government. During part of the early 1964 revolution, the author was the only American diplomat to remain on post, representing the concerns of Washington to the competing factions and looking after property, including a NASA tracking station, left empty when Americans were evacuated. The literature on this revolution is quite sparse; this eyewitness account will add to understanding it. The lively and engaging writing style holds the reader's interest throughout and conveys much of the uncertain nature of diplomacy at a remote post during turbulent times. Recommended for most collections. Marcia L. Sprules, Council on Foreign Relations Lib., New York
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Petterson, a U.S. career service officer, takes the reader on a journey of cold war conflict, independence struggle, and revolution. His initial foreign post assignment was Zanzibar, an island nation off the east coast of Africa, in the period from 1964-1966, when the nation was transforming itself from British colonial status. Yet for the majority of Zanzibar is of black African descent, independence apparently had little significance. The ruling elite was predominantly Arab, with East Asians playing a substantial if not dominant commercial role. The resulting revolution, bloody and efficient, manifested without anticipation by Britain or the U.S. Petterson's baptism in the U.S. diplomatic corps initially thrust him into the temporary role of sole representative at the American consulate during the revolutionary period and once again some three years later when his supervisor was forced off the island, suspected of espionage. It was the interim period that proves a rich insight into the super power cold war conflict and the tensions associated with maintaining a posture of non alliance during a period of rising African nationalism. Vernon Ford
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Revolution in Zanzibar: An American's Cold War Tale ... by Donald Petterson

You may want to get a copy of the book or research it for more details...  But I can say this was a day of reckoning, and if you have ever heard the wiz of bullets passing over your head then maybe you understand just what I mean... 

 And you thought I lived a dull life or just made up all the stuff posted on these blogs...  HUH!! 

See Ya... Kermit

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