Training
I made it through boot camp and was sent to NATTC Memphis for Aviation Electronics Class “A” School. I arrived in Memphis in December 1963 and had to wait for a new class to form so in the mean time they sent me to Aviation Fundamentals School. It was a very basic class that simply pointed out the different parts of a plane, how to block the wheels and how to direct a plane on a tarmac. That was really the fun part of the school. They had an old WWII propeller driven Grumman Hellcat that a mechanic fired up and he would go wherever the students directed him. If the student gave him an incorrect signal, he would follow, making it very uncomfortable for the plane director. Those students would be backing up to get away with that Grumman Hellcat chasing them all over the tarmac. That was the only time I ever got to direct a plane, but I could walk out on an airfield and do it today if need be. It’s not difficult and that training really stuck with me.
After the fun learning about airplanes there was still another week before electronics fundamentals school started so we were sent out on working parties. A few days before Christmas the area was hit with a giant snow storm. The normally warm Millington area had more than a foot of snow on the ground. That day I was sent out on a working party to clear snow off the parking lot at the electronics school. Snow was unheard of in that area, so there was not a snow shovel to be found anywhere. I and the others were sent out with brooms and dust pans to clear the parking lots there. It was cold and wet and not easy clearing that much snow with a broom and dust pan, but we did it. The fun just never stopped in Millington.
I slid through the 20 weeks of electronics fundamentals. I did best during the first week of vacuum tube theory, but the thing I remember most was during the week of transistor theory when our instructor told us not to worry if we didn’t understand transistors because they would never replace vacuum tubes. Lucky for me, I did well on the limited transistor theory offered. Joyce and I were married after the first week of school so my mind wasn’t really on studying electronics.
The assignments came in for more specific training and I was selected for airborne radar operator school in Glynco, Georgia. The base was in the middle of nowhere, and the school was hidden in a stand of pine trees even more remote than that. We had a several mile trip from the barracks to the school by bus. The school was mainly for officers to run Combat Information Centers in the fleet. We enlisted swabs were just stuck there in a corner of the facility. There were only six enlisted men a week sent to the school. We learned proper radio communication procedures, what planes looked like on search radar detection equipment, how to report target acquisition, how to run height finding radar, how to operate electronic countermeasures equipment, how to write backwards on a vertical situation plotter so the CIC officer could see the entire combat situation, incoming enemy air location, speed, and course at a glance. We learned how to function as a team, tracking and reporting a combat situation.
The whole purpose of the school at that time was training to be part of an airborne crew flying from Hawaii to Alaska and back or from Newfoundland across the North Atlantic and back searching for Russian bombers trying to sneak in and drop nuclear bombs on our country. There were crews in the air 24 hours a day and 7 days a week and 365 days a year during the sixties. The Canadians operated what was called the DEW line, a radar barrier across the top of the world keeping the commies from sneaking up on us and the Navy flights were extensions of that DEW line. It seems funny now that a kid from Saint Louis with roughly eight weeks of training could be a guardian of our country, protecting the US from a sneak attack by the Russians, but it was a potentially deadly business in the sixties. You may remember the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962 when President Kennedy threatened to go to nuclear war if necessary with the Russians if they didn’t remove missiles from Cuba.
Class finished in August 1964 and the Navy issued the class orders to VW-1 on Guam instead of Hawaii. You may remember that it was August 4, 1964 when the North Vietnamese patrol boats reportedly attacked the USS Maddox off of North Vietnam. President Johnson had already launched attacks against North Vietnam, starting a new 10-year phase of the war. VW-1 (based on Guam) was supporting the seventh fleet off the coast of Vietnam by providing overnight low-level radar coverage. After shore leave, we headed to further training in Hawaii and on to Guam after that.
Copyright Bill Weber 2006-2019 and beyond.
I made it through boot camp and was sent to NATTC Memphis for Aviation Electronics Class “A” School. I arrived in Memphis in December 1963 and had to wait for a new class to form so in the mean time they sent me to Aviation Fundamentals School. It was a very basic class that simply pointed out the different parts of a plane, how to block the wheels and how to direct a plane on a tarmac. That was really the fun part of the school. They had an old WWII propeller driven Grumman Hellcat that a mechanic fired up and he would go wherever the students directed him. If the student gave him an incorrect signal, he would follow, making it very uncomfortable for the plane director. Those students would be backing up to get away with that Grumman Hellcat chasing them all over the tarmac. That was the only time I ever got to direct a plane, but I could walk out on an airfield and do it today if need be. It’s not difficult and that training really stuck with me.
After the fun learning about airplanes there was still another week before electronics fundamentals school started so we were sent out on working parties. A few days before Christmas the area was hit with a giant snow storm. The normally warm Millington area had more than a foot of snow on the ground. That day I was sent out on a working party to clear snow off the parking lot at the electronics school. Snow was unheard of in that area, so there was not a snow shovel to be found anywhere. I and the others were sent out with brooms and dust pans to clear the parking lots there. It was cold and wet and not easy clearing that much snow with a broom and dust pan, but we did it. The fun just never stopped in Millington.
I slid through the 20 weeks of electronics fundamentals. I did best during the first week of vacuum tube theory, but the thing I remember most was during the week of transistor theory when our instructor told us not to worry if we didn’t understand transistors because they would never replace vacuum tubes. Lucky for me, I did well on the limited transistor theory offered. Joyce and I were married after the first week of school so my mind wasn’t really on studying electronics.
The assignments came in for more specific training and I was selected for airborne radar operator school in Glynco, Georgia. The base was in the middle of nowhere, and the school was hidden in a stand of pine trees even more remote than that. We had a several mile trip from the barracks to the school by bus. The school was mainly for officers to run Combat Information Centers in the fleet. We enlisted swabs were just stuck there in a corner of the facility. There were only six enlisted men a week sent to the school. We learned proper radio communication procedures, what planes looked like on search radar detection equipment, how to report target acquisition, how to run height finding radar, how to operate electronic countermeasures equipment, how to write backwards on a vertical situation plotter so the CIC officer could see the entire combat situation, incoming enemy air location, speed, and course at a glance. We learned how to function as a team, tracking and reporting a combat situation.
The whole purpose of the school at that time was training to be part of an airborne crew flying from Hawaii to Alaska and back or from Newfoundland across the North Atlantic and back searching for Russian bombers trying to sneak in and drop nuclear bombs on our country. There were crews in the air 24 hours a day and 7 days a week and 365 days a year during the sixties. The Canadians operated what was called the DEW line, a radar barrier across the top of the world keeping the commies from sneaking up on us and the Navy flights were extensions of that DEW line. It seems funny now that a kid from Saint Louis with roughly eight weeks of training could be a guardian of our country, protecting the US from a sneak attack by the Russians, but it was a potentially deadly business in the sixties. You may remember the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962 when President Kennedy threatened to go to nuclear war if necessary with the Russians if they didn’t remove missiles from Cuba.
Class finished in August 1964 and the Navy issued the class orders to VW-1 on Guam instead of Hawaii. You may remember that it was August 4, 1964 when the North Vietnamese patrol boats reportedly attacked the USS Maddox off of North Vietnam. President Johnson had already launched attacks against North Vietnam, starting a new 10-year phase of the war. VW-1 (based on Guam) was supporting the seventh fleet off the coast of Vietnam by providing overnight low-level radar coverage. After shore leave, we headed to further training in Hawaii and on to Guam after that.
Copyright Bill Weber 2006-2019 and beyond.
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