[jingram058]

Originally Posted by tedzan

James and Tony.....Thanks for your service to our Country.

I was a Radar Specialist in the Air Force in the early 1960's....stationed at a Strategic Air Command (SAC) base in Maine. We had a squadron of B52 Bombers and F102 Fighter planes.
Oct 1962, when Russia threatened us with the "Cuban Missle Crisis", our Bombers and Fighter planes all went South (Florida and So. Carolina). It was an amazing site to watch all our
Aircraft leave the base.
The B52 bomber is an amazing piece of machinery. The first group of B52 bombers were built in 1952. Over 700 B52 bombers were originally built. I think about 80 are still in service.
I will never forget the excitement of being in the cockpit of one of these "big birds". I felt like Slim Pickens in the movie "Dr. Strangelove"

This is me when I was in Radar school (in Illinois, 1960). The last year of my 4-year service, I was re-assigned back to this Technical School to teach Electronics & Radar fundamentals.


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Take care, guys.


TED Z

T206 Reference
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Ted, did you go to radar school at Chanute AFB, Rantoul, Illinois? That is where I went to Weather Observer, Rawinsonde (upper air, weather balloons) and Weather Forecasting schools. The Air Force and the Navy go to weather schools together, to this day. Now they go to Keesler AFB, Biloxi, Mississippi since Chanute closed.

And I am guessing you were stationed at Loring AFB in Maine? I went to forecasting school at Chanute with an Air Force sergeant named Dennis Flanagan, who was at Loring before coming to school at Chanute. He and I went to White Sox games at old Comiskey Park on weekends when we could. It was only 100 miles or so to Chicago from Rantoul up I-57.

The photo of me in the "Cracker Jacks" dress blues was taken at Chanute AFB in 1983. It is a real WW2 uniform, and I still have it. It is very dark blue wool, not black like today. The reason I am wearing my white hat like that is because that is how they wore them in WW2. The photo of me as an officer was made in San Diego not long before I retired in 2007.

Thank you for YOUR service.