It was a chilly 21 Feb 1960 when I reported in to Mt. Hebo AFS, Oregon, having made a successful journey up the 8 ½ mile access road from the little town of Hebo at the intersection of U.S. Highway 101 and Oregon Highway 22. My first impression of the site was not very positive: most of the buildings were semi-Quonset huts (humped roofs with vertical sides) that were apparently tied down to the ground with cables every 10 feet or so and everything was more or less strung out along a single main street that eventually wound its way through a security gate and down to the Operations Area. It was mid-afternoon and not many souls were astir in the Cantonment Area, but I parked my 1960 Ford Falcon near the hut labeled "Orderly Room" and made my way to it. I had thoroughly briefed myself the previous evening on the proper method of reporting for duty from my treasured copy of "The Air Officers` Guide" and felt ready to present a proper appearance. The Guide said I was to locate the clerk and perform my Sign-in, ask for an audience with the Administrative Officer to request an appointment to formally report in to the Commander, then do that, placing oneself precisely 5 feet from the edge of his desk, smartly saluting and stating: "Lt. Casteel reporting for duty, Sir". You probably know what happened.

First of all, as I approached the vestibule of the Orderly Room (all the buildings had double doors like airlocks-I was to find out why later), a tall one-striper came out, saw I was an officer, and saluted. I returned his salute and promptly gave him a silver dollar. He wanted to know what it was for, and I told him he had been the first enlisted man to salute me since I had been commissioned. Apparently, that tradition was unknown to him, but he seemed grateful for the gift and then assisted me in doing the Sign-in: it seems that there was a book to do it in right inside the vestibule, so I didn`t need to see a clerk at all. (Getting the picture, now?)

I went inside and saw that the room was long with the offices for the Admin Officer and Commander at the far end, on either side of the central aisle/hall. Both office doors were open, so I approached the Admin Officer`s door and was about to knock, when the Commander called from his opposite office, "You must be Lt. Casteel-come in!" (So much for protocol, I guessed.)

I entered his office and tried to position myself the prescribed 5 feet from his desk, but the office was too small for that; then, before I could salute and make my little report, he said "Sit down!" Totally unraveled because all my preparation had been for naught, we then had a good chat and he introduced me to the Admin Officer and all the little details about getting settled were put in motion.

As a bachelor, I had the option of staying in the BOQ or living "down the mountain" (at my own expense, since there was a room in the BOQ available). I elected to stay in the BOQ, and I discovered that my quarters consisted of a medium-sized room (about 13 feet square) in one of the tied-down buildings next to the Orderly Room, with a shared latrine down the hall (shower, no tub); the access hall was on one of the outside walls, and ended at a larger, full-width room at one end that served as an Officers` Lounge: it had a wet bar, some couches, and a TV set; it was large enough for a small party. The bar had a fair assortment of beverages and drinks were on the honor system, money being put into a small metal box. My room did have a refrigerator, so I did not have to depend on the one in the lounge; I also had a telephone connected to the site switchboard, since I would be "on call" virtually all the time I was on-site. There was only one other officer then living in the BOQ, a Captain who turned out to be my boss, and he spent very little time there so I pretty much had the lounge and TV to myself, as it happened.

I was given the rest of the day to unpack my car and get settled in, to report for duty the next morning. Of course, I did not have a security clearance, yet, so I would have to be escorted most places I went inside the Operations Area.

The next day I was taken to the Security Gate and was signed in by the Admin Officer, who accompanied me down to the Ops Building. We rang the bell for entrance and were then taken inside, where I met my new boss. I had an opportunity then to fill him in on my background and when I had finished, he exclaimed "I need a Chemical Engineer like I need a hole in the head!"

A little background here. I was, indeed, a Chemical Engineering graduate, and had had the minimum training in electricity the ROTC curriculum deemed necessary to equip me for an assignment as a Ground Electronics Officer; of course, that belief was based on the normal plan whereby a new Ground Electronics Officer was sent to Keesler AFB for 51 weeks to receive comprehensive training to be a 3041 (Electrical Engineers only had to take a 19-week course). As it happens, I was ordered directly out of college to an operating site, without the benefit of the Keesler training-something I was told should not have happened. In addition, the site already had a Radar Maintenance Officer, who was a properly trained Electrical Engineer and had been there for a number of months. What we eventually decided was that Hq, USAF had goofed and sent me directly to Mt. Hebo instead of to the 51-week course at Keesler that began the same week I reported in, probably to be subsequently assigned to Mt. Hebo as the replacement for the man already filling the RMO position. So I was an overage the day I signed in, and would be for a year; not only that, I had not been properly trained and knew virtually nothing about Ground Electronics in general and radar in particular. Finally, my Captain boss had just been notified that he was being RIFed for failure to make Major and he was not in a particularly good mood.

My training consisted of my boss drawing up a list of all the AN-nomenclatured equipment assigned to the radar maintenance and associated areas, with the instruction that I was to locate each item physically, learn generally what it was for and what it did, and be prepared to give back what I had learned in 2 weeks when he would interrogate me about them. I was allowed to look at any of the unclassified TOs and talk to any of the other personnel (except him). I set about doing that and I guess I was successful at it. A couple of weeks later, in the Officers` Lounge at Friday Happy Hour, he quizzed me about a few of the items in the presence of the Commander to show off how much I had learned. (Fortunately, I had done my homework.)

Another situation came about because of my missing out on the Keesler experience: as you know, a "green" Second Lieutenant is not really an officer yet, and needs a lot of guidance by both other officers and NCOs to equip him for his job as a middle manager. This task is usually at least begun at the formal training site and is polished up at the operational location, generally by the NCOs in the new officer`s area of work. As it happened, there was a very small staff in the Radar Maintenance section and only one NCO, a SSgt, who was not blessed with an overage of spare time to coddle and mold a new 2LT. The 689th was then an AC&W Squadron with an abundance of Operations officers and NCOs, and it fell to them to do most of the molding of this newbie. This probably explains why I later related well with Operations personnel and I considered it a beneficial thing. We did have a MSgt trainee in the new section for AN/FST-2 maintenance-the 689th was becoming a Radar Squadron-and I was assigned to be his boss, leaving the other electronic equipment under the existing RMO. The Burroughs tech reps were then holding classes on AN/FST-2 maintenance, and I attended them right along with the enlisted troops (which explains why I have retained so much knowledge about how it worked). Later in the year, I was sent to Eufaula AFS, Alabama for training as an Anti-jam Officer on the new AN/FPS-24 radar being installed at Mt. Hebo. That was an interesting place, but this document is about Mt. Hebo.

One interesting feature of Mt. Hebo is its weather: winters are extreme there, with lots of snow and very high winds. Gusts have been estimated at 150 knots or more, and a fairly steady 50-kt wind exists most days from October to March. Mt. Hebo is reputed to be the "wettest" place in the Lower 48, having several hundred inches of rain and snow annually. The winds are especially memorable. I can recall having walked down to the Ops Area when the wind was 100 kts and I understood why some of the troops said the security fence was not to keep people out but to keep us in-the other side was a declivity of about 70 degrees and would have been very dangerous. I have seen 3-foot icicles hanging from parts of the buildings-not unusual, you say?-have you seen them hanging at 60 degrees from the vertical?

The new AN/FPS-24 tower was 64 feet square and 85 feet high. Before the antenna and equipment were installed, the contractor personally saw to the sweeping of all debris from the roof and then secured the only hatchway to the roof with a padlock. A few days later, following a storm with high winds, he went up to inspect the top of the building for possible damage and found the roof littered with hundreds of small stones. He figured that some of the younger troops were messing with him by throwing stones up on his clean roof, but when he tried to perform that trick he was unable to do so; he could not do it even from the catwalks around the other nearby radar towers. Many of us who lived there believed that the wind actually blew the stones up there.

After the AN/FPS-24 antenna was installed, on one occasion it had been heavily iced up from a storm and high winds were predicted. The Commander personally obtained shotguns (most of them his own) and he and several maintenance troops went up the tower and blasted some of the ice off the "sail" (120 feet wide and 50 feet high) with birdshot. Although the outcome did not appear to me to have much effect, the antenna survived the winds so it may have helped.

I have a lot of memories from my 2 ½ years on "The Hill" but one actually was called to mind a number of years later when I was studying at USC for my Masters` degree in Industrial Engineering under AFIT. One of the graduate students heard me mention that I had been assigned at Mt. Hebo and he asked me if I knew a friend of his named Eddie V---, who he thought had been in Radar Maintenance. I thought about it and remembered a tall, lanky kid who I saw outside in 20-degree weather (no wind, though) and 3 feet of snow walking around wearing cutoff jeans, a t-shirt, and shower clogs; when I mentioned this, he said "That`s Eddie!"

With that, I think I`ll close this string of reminiscences.

David E. Casteel
Captain, USAF (ret)