The Code: A declassified hostage rescue story (2015) | Hacker News Reader

The Code: A declassified hostage rescue story (2015)

theverge.com

62 pointswglb8 comments

An interesting corollary to this story is the rescue of 'Bat 21' [1] - where a downed high ranking aviator in the Vietnam war was guided out of a danger spot and to eventual rescue using various golf course holes as his map paths.

The pilot (Lt. Col. Hambleton) was a very keen golfer, and had played hundreds of courses and knew the direction, bends and distances to holes from memory. The O2 controller aircraft overhead would relay instructions such as "Pebble Beach 7th hole..." etc. to him and Hambleton knew the direction, range and turns he had to make to get to his next waypoint. I doubt any Viet Cong out there could second guess the radio transmissions which they could easily intercept.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rescue_of_Bat_21_Bravo

With search engines and GPS-mapped courses, this might work a lot less well these days.

I'm pretty good with Morse code, or at least used to be - I could copy 30-35 words per minute back in the day. But I had a heck of a time "reading" the code in this song, even at the 20 words per minute the article mentioned.

Maybe it threw me off seeing the English translation of the coded message in the article: "19 people rescued. You are next. Don’t lose hope." Would have been nice if they had included the original Spanish as well!

Must confess I even had trouble copying the "19" at the beginning. Maybe that was spelled out in Spanish?

Yeah, combined with what are surely some of the least favorable listening conditions ever... Never underestimate your hostages or prisoners (or their time), I guess.

From 2 years ago...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8852772

I personally really dislike when online stories lack a date of publishing.

I'm glad it was reposted, missed it the first time. I know Morse code (old school ham operator), and it seemed really obvious to me especially after reading the article, but I can also see how it wouldn't be obvious if you didn't know Morse.

It says 2015 in the article URL.

This isn't a dupe by HN's standards because it's been well over a year since the article was discussed.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

...Read the comments in that link. Informative and well worth it.

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