Hello!
A lot of the planes that survived were largely parked in the Arizona
desert near a still working airbase. The military planned on turning
them back into scrap metal. Some were kept in case they were needed as
in the case of Korea, but were not. These days the Boneyard there is
still at work storing aircraft. The air museum even runs tours through
the Boneyard there.

I also remember reading about those "cargo cults".
----
Gregg C Levine xxxxxx@gmail.com
"This signature was once found posting rude messages in English in the
Moscow subway."

On Wed, Feb 18, 2026 at 4:08 PM Terrence Fugate <xxxxxx@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> Several points...
> Even if the people on Poictesme told their political/civilian masters, is there any reason to accept they'd be believed?
>
> I worked for a land grant university and then a PBS affiliate for my professional life. In 30 years, I never saw a politician who could face something as minor as predicted budget shortfalls. The blighted Commonwealth of Kentucky was "blindsided" by the 2008 economic contraction, in spite the Legislative Research Committee all but screaming warnings as early as mid 2005.  I recorded their presentation. I've yet to see a politician who can objectively face reality. I accept the Federation leaders were warned and decided "Well you know the military mind, they are paranoid and looking for problem where there aren't any."
>
> Consider the end of the British Empire. Does anyone think if their military commander had told the King, "You know our empire's days are limited...." Do you think he would have listened?
>
> And...
>
> If Merlin was so secret if was "burn before reading", then a constant convoy of ships between Terra and Poictesme would make someone ask "What is on Poictesme that is so important?" Sort of defeats the idea of secrecy.
>
> And
> At the end of WWII the US military flew perfectly good Consolidated B-24 Liberator bombers to the middle of the ?Algerian? Desert and abandoned them "in place." They'd removed the machine guns and dumped them in the Mediterranean "in route."
>
> My father been the top gunner in a B-24 until he was transferred to the Rome cryptography office. He kept up with his former aviators and actually flew on one plane as it made it last flight.
>
> When my father told me about this I thought it was insane until my father explained to a 9-year-old, "Terry what possible use were bombers in America? And that much aluminum would destroy the aluminum foundries."
>
> Most of the tanks, jeeps, transportation trucks were also abandoned. The tanks were destroyed but the jeeps and trucks helped bootstrap the European economy.
>
> If no one else herein has ridden a WWII era jeep, they have no idea how unsafe they were.
> Very high center of gravity, very prone to rolling. What is acceptable in a combat environment is not so good in peacetime.
>
> [Look up "Million Dollar Point at Espírito Santo" for an idea of how things worked.]
>
> Consider the tools of war as described by Con that were left on Poictesme....what use would they be on Terra, or anywhere else in the 'civilized' planets?
>
> While I think personal weapons are a good idea, most governments get sort of twitchy at the thought of large numbers of their populations having anything more lethal than a pea shooter.
> Consider how many weapons had to be left in Europe at the end of WWII and how few there are today....I found the bit "except for personal weapons... everything else was abandoned" to be a bit optimistic. Perhaps the senior officers might have been allowed to take a pistol home... I doubt if they let every 'grunt' take a weapon.
>
> As to there being two Merlins... The technical breakthrough that led to Merlin, call it a positronic brain for convenance, there'd be no reason to build a full working Merlin on Terra.
> A Merlin on Terra would have had zero military utility, Merlin needed to be as close to the battle front as possible to be useful. Merlin would have been obscenely expensive. Could the Federation have afforded to build two when it only needed one? Instead of WWII, use the American War of Independence for an idea on communication time frame, the political leaders had to leave all the details to their field commanders.
>
>
> As an idea of how 'wasteful' war spending can be, WWII surplus electronics was still being sold surplus as late as 1980. Trust me, I know because I bought more than my body weight every year. That gives you an idea of just how much stuff was made for the war, and almost all of it came from warehouses in the USA.
>
> I was a 10 (1961) when the military cleared out a warehouse less than a mile from where I grew up. They gave us kids all the K and C rations we could haul off over a week. My little red wagon got a heck of a work out that week! They removed enough 'riffles' to give everyone in my grade school at least 2, and enough 55 gallon drums filled with (I guess) .45 pistols to fill 2 trucks.
>
> 'Wasteful' as viewed after the war, during the war...for want of a nail....
>
>
>
> From: xxxxxx@simplelists.com <xxxxxx@simplelists.com> on behalf of David Sooby <xxxxxx@gmail.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, February 17, 2026 11:52 PM
> To: xxxxxx@simplelists.com <xxxxxx@simplelists.com>; David Sooby <xxxxxx@gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [HBP] Incubus?
>
> On Tue, Feb 17, 2026 at 8:57 PM Tom Rogers <xxxxxx@juno.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Feb 17, 2026, at 4:46 PM, Mike Robertson <xxxxxx@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> <snip>
>
> Piper makes it quite clear that the few people that knew of Merlin's prediction were sworn to secrecy to keep it quiet so I don't think there were any reports. If  they thought another Merlin would somehow prevent the Federation's collapse, they wouldn't need to build another one they'd just use the one on Poictesme.
>
>
> Mike, that last point is the clincher, I think. The original was there and ready to go - what need for another?
>
>
> Indeed.  The whole premise of /Junkyard Planet/ (the original title of Piper's novel) was that it was a retelling of the history of the U.S. armed forces pulling out of the South Seas islands at the end of WW II, and the natives developing a "cargo cult" based on all the supplies ("cargo") left behind by the U.S. forces; a retelling in a science-fictional setting.  Cargo left behind because (a) it was cheaper to abandon it rather than salvage it and ship it back home, and (b) the U.S. leaders didn't want to depress the domestic price for manufactured goods by dumping all of that surplus onto the market at once.  Well, also the fact that a lot or perhaps most of the war matériel was no longer needed, as the war was over.
>
> But why in the world would the Federation leaders have left something as valuable as Merlin on Poictesme, once they abandoned the planet as a military base?  Sure, Merlin was large and quite heavy, but not so massively large and heavy that it couldn't have been picked up and carried aboard a large starship.
>
> Logically, I see only two options:
>
> 1. Merlin wasn't even remotely as unique as the story of /The Cosmic Computer/ states.  It simply wasn't valuable enough to be salvaged.  (Hopefully I've made it clear in my posts in this thread that I think that is the wrong answer.)
>
> 2. Merlin's analyses were not nearly as effective at making predictions or giving useful advice as Merlin's designers thought they would be.
>
> And if (2) is the case, then that answers the unanswered question which has been raised repeatedly on this forum: Why is it that Poictesme is never even mentioned in stories set later in the THFH?  If (2) is the case, then I think it likely the reason Merlin was left in place was that the Federation leaders who knew about it, also considered the Merlin project to be at best only marginally effective, or at worst an utter failure at justifying all the resources spent on developing and building it.  They may have considered the project to be an embarrassment that was best forgotten.  At the very least, it appears they didn't want to go to the effort of bringing it back to the core worlds and trying to make use of it.
>
> At the end of WW II, if there had been anything in the ballpark of being as unique and valuable as the leaders on Poictesme thought Merlin was, anything that valuable at the U.S. military bases on the South Seas islands, then you can bet your bottom dollar that the U.S. forces would have salvaged it and brought it back stateside.  (And in fact, altho it's well-known that massive amounts were dumped into the sea or simply abandoned in place, at least *some* of the equipment was salvaged.)  So that is one way in which the story of /The Cosmic Computer/ is *very* different than the history which inspired Piper's story.
>
> It's sad to think that the hopes the leaders of Poictesme pinned on Merlin's predictions and advice turned out to be unrealized.  That Merlin wasn't actually the god-like "cosmic" computer they thought it was.  But as has been pointed out multiple times on this forum, the optimistic ending of some of the THFH novels seems to have been for naught, based on events (or lack thereof) in THFH stories set in later eras.
>
> Based on the utter lack of even a passing mention stories set later, it appears that Poicesme did *not* become the center of new economic growth in that sector of the galaxy.  If it had, if it had become a sort of "new capital", something like Constantinople was after the Roman Empire disintegrated, then it seems it would have been mentioned in /Space Viking/.
>
> Of course this may be jumping to a conclusion.  As Carl Sagan said: "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."  We can't be *sure* that Poictesme didn't become a center for interstellar trade in a newly resurgent sector of the galaxy.  But given the multiple mentions of Odin and other "core worlds" in /Space Viking/, coupled with the utter lack of any mention of Poictesme — or any mention of a section of the former Federation which was growing economically while the Federation of a whole collapsed — that certainly *appears* to be the case!
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Piper fandom forever! (...or at least until the XXXI century AE)
> David Sooby
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