Assignment to Killeen AFS was possibly one of the more unique radar maintenance assignments I or anyone else ever encountered. It was July 1958, I had graduated the previous month from Keesler AFB, after being retrained from my 75270 AFSC. At the time I was a newly minted SSgt and had just turned four years in service. Upon graduation from KAFB my orders assigned me to the 3568th Navigator Training Squadron at James Connally AFB, Waco, Texas.
On 5 July 1958 I checked in to my new squadron and the First Sgt. told me I was being reassigned PCS w/o PCA. He handed me another set of orders assigning me to Det. 1, 3568th NTS, Killeen AFS, Gray AFB, Texas. He then told me to go find my new assignment.
West of Killeen, Texas I found a small sign proclaiming Gray AFB and turned onto a narrow macadam road. Arriving at a guard post, I had my ID and orders closely examined and was told to continue on and not to stop my vehicle till I reached the next guard post.
It was about four miles when I came over a small rise and there was GAFB, and then the adventure began! At that time it was all hush-hush, Top Secret. Next to GAFB was Killeen Station, a Department of Defense Installation. Manned by the Army and built into a series of hillsides were special bunkers for storage of nuclear weapons. The bunker complex was surrounded by an electric fence, which was nothing like you see in the movies. First there was sterile ground with an eight-foot tall chain link fence topped with concertina wire, then an eight foot wide asphalt road way, another chain link fence and then the eight foot tall electrified fence. All the fence posts were mounted atop large insulators. Then another fence, another roadway. And still another fence. If that wasn’t enough there were always heavily armed three man patrols in jeeps roving back and forth on the roadways. Needless to say the security at this place was tight!
The 814th AC&W Sq. was located in a new two story combination administrative and barracks building. That’s where I found my unit. It seems that two other newly graduated 30332 maintenance men and myself were assigned to maintain six GPA-127 PPI scopes for the 10 or so detachment officer’s to provide intercept training. They were located on an extra third dais for the Detachments scopes. Of course on paper this looked OK, but in reality we could not obtain AFSC upgrading without working on all of the station’s radar equipment. We requested to be integrated into the unit’s maintenance work schedule. Now we were assigned to a ATC unit, seconded to an ADC Sq., located on a DOD facility, drawing part of our support from an AMC command and the rest from the US Army. Oh yes, just North of us was Fort Hood. They provided our food, pay, and medical support plus the creature comforts like PX, etc.
Now on top of everything else the station wasn’t even operational! There were no scope dopes, and only a handful of us maintenance troops. Our equipment consisted of a AN/FPS-3A Search Radar, a AN/FPS-6 Height Finder Radar and a dark room full of UPA-35 and GPA-127 PPIs. The radars were on open frame towers. The operational area was reached by driving out the back gate (through another guard post) of GAFB, four or five miles, and then up a very steep road to the top of a flat bluff. The only buildings were the operations building, supply building, the diesel power generating building and a small GATR building. The ops building was unique also. When you entered the building, immediately on your right was a break room and latrine. You then walked down a hall way a short distance and could go to your left into radar maintenance, straight ahead to the dark room or to your right down another short hall to the operations office on one side and the teletype office on the other.
While we were getting the bugs out of the new radars, enough operators became available to go on line for eight hours a day, and a month later 16 hours, and in another month around the clock operation. At the same time this was happening steel was being stacked by our brand new FPS-3A that we were so proud of getting into full scale operation. The powers that be had decided to replace our search radar with a radome covered AN/FPS-20A. Construction commenced 10 feet away from the FPS-3A tower. That’s when we found out that the AF couldn’t get money for more new radars but could get funds to modify existing ones. By taking the antenna and range mark generator from the FPS-3A, you now had a FPS-20A. But shortly operations ceased so we wouldn’t radiate the construction crews. Most of the maintenance people were shipped out TDY to operational AN/FPS-20A
sites for training on the new radar we were soon to be responsible for.
I could go on and on, with stories about the great rattlesnake hunts, locust invasions, yellow antlered deer, lousy commercial power, and who can forget about the only radome fire in ADC history. We were experimental subjects for radiation studies and took part in helping perfect the B-58 ECM equipment. And I also came to learn to hate the GPS-T2 Training equipment. And don’t even start me on stories about our Gap Filler Radars. In December 1960 I received orders for that great hell hole in Alaska, Sparrevohn AFS. But as they say, that’s another story