Some of the younger readers may not get the “little green men” digs that some of the old lags use – so I thought I would explain it.
Here is a quote from somewhere on the web:
<<Meakoning was a Vietnam war practice of using false radio homing beacons to lure helicopters off course where they could be shot down. It is a commingling (sic) of the words Mekon (river delta) Beacon, and Taccan (sic) - a pre GPS air navigation system. >>
So the concept has been sufficiently present in the US psyche for them to coin a term for it.
How does this suggest “little green men”? – well, the old lags presumably read Dan Dare comic strips in their youth wherein the arch enemy was a little green man called the Meakon (not sure about the spelling, I was more into the Beano).
And why would they be running around on the Mull? – the section of US Navy SEALS that was stationed at Macrihanish at the time, and who had PRC112 sets issued to a man, were known as a dirty tricks section.
(No offence to any of our American friends, we can get pretty dirty ourselves when the need arises.)
If you had wanted to demonstrate the new (to the RAF) personnel locator system (and they were using an appropriate tactical call sign for such an exercise) you could not have wanted for better help on the ground – very accommodating and discrete chaps, these.
So a witty riposte to the “beacon theory” – or a puerile distraction to a relevant point of circumstantial evidence?