Tag Archives: Ice Station Zebra

Solo Before Solo was Cool

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Happy first day of winter!

Dig these great 1960 Cold War (see what I did there?) Kodachromes from the LIFE Archive of the SAC Alert strip for the 436th BS (Heavy), 4238th Strategic Wing, at Barksdale AFB in Louisiana. We see blue N3A parka-clad Air Force Air Police ready with their trusty M1 Carbines to keep persons unwanted away from the KC-135 tanker bird behind them.

It looks very Ice Station Zebra. 

Of course, the cigar-chomping Curtis LeMay would switch out the M1 for the new-fangled AR-15 in 1962, the Air Police were redesignated the Security Police in 1966, and the more sedate OD/gray-colored N-3B cold weather parka replaced the bright blue N-3As, so the above aesthetic was long lost by the time intergalactic smuggler turned Rebel scum Han Solo rode a Tauntaun out into the Hoth night against all advice.

Vale, Capt. Brown

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Besides a long and distinguished career as a Hall of Fame running back for the Cleveland Browns, the recently departed James Nathaniel “Jim” Brown was commissioned as a second lieutenant through Army ROTC in 1955 from Syracuse University.

Jim Brown in his ROTC uniform in 1955 with Archbold Stadium in the background

He served his military training commitment at Ft. Benning, continued his reserve service for four more years, and was eventually honorably discharged from the Army Reserve in 1959 with the rank of captain. He was selected for induction into the inaugural class of the U.S. Army ROTC National Hall of Fame in 2016.

He also had one heck of a screen presence in some of the best war movies of the 1960s including as Jefferson in The Dirty Dozen, Capt. Anders in Ice Station Zebra, Sgt. Ruffo in the Congo merc-sploitation film Dark of the Sun, and in the tremendously underrated heist flick, The Split (in which he carried a Registered Magnum).

Plus, let us not forget that great 1996 documentary, Mars Attacks.

Ivan don’t HALO…or maybe they do

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Deputy Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation, Lt. Gen Evkurov Yunus-Bek , an Ossetian who graduated from the Ryazan Airborne Command school back in 1989– back when it was Soviet– was in the drop zone over the weekend watching a VDV recon unit somewhere in the Arctic hit the silk from a reported 33,000 feet, which is about the upper practical edge of a HALO/HAHO insertion.

About as Red Dawn meets Ice Station Zebra as you can get…

Those AK-12s do look good in an arctic scheme, though

The Russians say it is the first time in their history that they have jumped from that height. Once on the ground, they carried out a simulated direct-action against an “intelligence target.”

Roll that beautiful propaganda footage. Yunus-Bek appears at about the 2:27 mark of the first video.