[USMA:53315] military channel and temperature

[Henschel Mark]

There was a show on the history channel the other night (or maybe the military channel) about the Cuba missle crisis and President Kennedy. Seems the Russians constantly talked about Celsius and the Americans continually talked Fahrenheit, and nobody seemed to understand the difference. The Russians would say the temperature in the submarine was over 40 or even 50 degrees, and then the American would come on and talk about the temperature being 110 or 120.
 
IT was so strange than no one mentioned what scale they were using, the Americans kept talking about the temperatures in the ocean in Fahrenheit and the Russians were clearly using  a chart in Celsius.
 
The Russian submariners finally gave up and surrendered to the Americans and the crisis was averted, but it makes you wonder about all the miscommuniation. The Russians were expecting three booms as a request to surface and the Americans used five.
 
Makes you wonder what we do in military training exercises when our troops should be learning to communicate with potential enemies.
 
MArk

----- Original Message -----
From: Kilopascal <kilopas...@cox.net>
Date: Thursday, October 10, 2013 9:48 pm
Subject: Design News - Made by Monkeys - Don't Talk About the Temperature Gap
To: "U.S. Metric Association" <usma@colostate.edu>

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http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1367&doc_id=268242&cid=nl.dn07&dfpPParams=ind_182,bid_240,aid_268242&dfpLayout=blog


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Is
> this a Fahrenheit versus Celsius blunder?  An American goes on and on about
> Fahrenheit expecting a Finnish engineer to understand.  When he realises
> that the minimum temperature is actually 90°C and not 70°F he goes back to the
> Finn to ask about the range in Fahrenheit and was ignored.  Seems the Finn
> was upset about this guy not using metric.


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What
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