Lynn Coffelt wrote:
What Island was that? I spent a year at Shemya (aka "The Rock")
Ken
That was it. I worked out at the AAFJOG on Shemya for about 8 months in
1966, we were a small detachment from NAVCOMMSTA Adak.
Jack
We sent a reserve crew from Travis to Shemya one weekend in the early
1970's, flying a C-141, carrying rebar for...... what was it? Cobra Dane
maybe?
Anyway, the reserve pilot debriefed back at Travis that he landed, did
an "engine running" offload, and departed without ever seeing the ground.
The snow was blowing sideways in a virtual whiteout, and all he could see
was the tail-lights of the "follow-me" vehicle, and the wands of the
"marshaller"
I heard the debrief.... was it really like that at times?
Yeah, on a nice day. :)
Like many places in the chain, most of the snow blew by and was blown
off before it accumulated much. But the winds and chill factors were
not to be taken lightly in any season. But we spent a lot of time out
boondocking and roaming the island when we could, there wasn't much else
to do there.
Actually Shemya was pretty small island, about 4 miles by 2 miles,
fairly flat with most of it about 200 feet ASL.
The runway was about 12,000 feet. There was an another abandoned/unused
runway that featured the remains of a B-17 that was used for crash crew
training.
In the mid 60's Shemya was the home of a joint Air Force Security
Service/Army Security Agency element, I was in a co-located Naval
Security Group Detachment. The over dramatic people used to say we were
"DIPs". Our job was to die in place with ears and eyes open.
Shemya was also home to a big fixed array radar (AN/FPS-17? AN/FPS-80?)
that would occasionally cause birds that few through the "sweet spot"
too close to the array to fall out of the air dead. The little arctic
foxes were grateful for that, a lot of them lived in the area below the
dead bird drop zone. Some of the foxes would take food out of your hand.
Some interesting and not often seen aircraft used to visit and operate
out of Shemya, it was a "spooky" place to say the least. The runway was
at a right angle to the prevailing winds, when the VQ-1 EA3B "Whales"
landed they sometimes used the arresting gear because of their narrow
landing gear and the cross winds.
I helped the VQ-1 Det guys reset the arresting gear once. It was two
lengths of huge chain and they had to be dragged back into place with a
big font end loader. The catch wire was rigged across the runway,
shackled to the end links, on the approach end. The catch wire was
tensioned with two "come alongs" and held up off the ground with some
tires cut in half. The come alongs exploded with each use and were
replaced. Seeing the EA3B take the arresting gear was pretty spectacular.
The base there is now called Eareckson Air Station:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/space/facility/shemya.htm
Like all my sea stories, this one is a no ****ter. Here is a little bit
more of the story:
http://www.navycthistory.com/shemya_1.html
Jack
--
Jack Erbes in Ellsworth, Maine, USA (jackerbes at adelphia dot net)
(also receiving email at jacker at midmaine dot com)