from an email from Max Whipple
I think I already said that Guthrie AFS outside of Charleston, WV was my first assignment out of Tech School. When we got off of the West Virginia Turnpike I asked the toll taker where the Guthrie radar site was and I was sent to the Kanawha County Airport. I found a member of the Air National Guard and he gave me directions to the site. That was around June or July of 1955. We had huge an influx of personnel into the radar field at that time. We had 9 radar techs to a crew and 4 crews with 5 maintenance people on the day shift. We maintained an AN/FPS-3, an IFF unit and a TPS-10D (the airborne version of the AN/FPS-4). All on tempered towers and if you wanted to experience a real joyful time try heating a soldering iron on a tempered tower in the middle of night and the middle of winter with snow, rain or sleet coming down. A soldering gun would just not get hot enough so you ended up with a 250 watt soldering iron and wearing a parka you would try to shield the elements with your body enough to get the job done.
One of our techs went up on the AN/FPS-3 tower during a rain storm and forgot to close the hatch at the top of the ladder. He got a call on the tower phone which was located by the hatch. When he went to answer he slipped through the hatch and fell 35 feet to the ground. Never got a scratch or broke any bones.
Radar Maintenance personnel were also responsible for operating the deisel generators used for auxillary power. There was one Military and one Civilian in the deisel building. They both worked the day shift. In the evening and early morning, the commercial power would drop and it was our responsibilty to start the deisels and switch the site over from commercial power. We had 3 Cummings deisels (I don`t remember what size). Anyhow, We had to start the deisels, let them warm up, synchronize them and then swith them. It used to scare the heck out of all of us because we were told "when starting the deisels , their speed could run away and they would blow up". Then when the deisels were running we had to keep one guy in the deisel shack to monitor their operation.
The official game at all AC&W sites was pinochle. On a midnight or swing shift the work always got down first and then everyone settled down and played pinochle. I must emphasize that the pinochle games never interfered with the mission. I have seen as many as 2 games in maintenance, 2 games in operations and a game in the comm center all going on at the same time. The comm center was separate from the crypto center and had a manual telephone switch board and the communications main frame. The switch board had to be maintained 24 hours a day hence one game of pinochle had to be played in the comm center. Operations had an operator on a scope all the time and when operations or maintenance had to go to work the pinochle game stopped until the tasks were finished. It was like this at all of the AC&W sites.
We were in the Cold War and took alerts very seriously. When we had a squadron alert we were all called and rushed to the base (I was married). Sometimes the alert would last 2 or 3 days. I remember one alert there were no extra rooms to sleep in, when you were off duty but couldn`t go home, so my crew chief and I slept in the squadron ambulance. It was one of those old cracker box amulances. There were 2 beds. He took one and I took the other. Most of us young airman ended up atanding guard around the site perimeter during the alerts.
We had so many techs that in addition to our maintenance responsibilites some were also assigned to help Tech Supply, some were assigned to manage the Tech Order Library and some were assigned to the deisel building. We had some real good civilian Tech Reps (Philco)and they provided the on site technical training. I can remember a few days after arriving at Guthrie my crew chief asked me to go into operations and check the video. I took off, stopped and went back to the crew chief and said, " what is the video supposed to look like"? When I went through Keesler most of the sets that we trained on were not fully operational and I had never seen a radar set transmit, receive and display the results.
I guess that is about enough of my rambling for today. Until next time...you guys take care.
..........Max