definer wrote:
I was there in '82-'83 working at the Cobra Dane (the replacement for
the FPS-108). The wind was a constant 25 knots or so and the high
temperature the year I was there was 55F. The low was only 7F but
with the wind it was like a least -17F. When the wind really blew we
would have to go out roped together. Trying to keep this on topic a
little bit...You could take "bad" flourescent light bulbs to the top
of the building and drop them in front of radar and they would light
up before they broke 6 stories below. Funny thing was the Russians
used to bring trawlers within 2-300 yards to gather intel even thouhgh
we vectored our aircraft far away...!

We never did see a trawler while I was there, and we were "pretty well
informed" from the stuff that went on inside the AAFJOG.

The six story drop was the Cobra Dane array? I never saw that.

I seem to remember the old array being on the edge of a cliff that was
pretty high. At the bottom of it there was an old (WW II or so?) fuel
dump and there were thousands of empty 55 gallon steel drums rusting
into oblivion down there and getting overgrown with tundra. There were
a lot of foxes living in those drums.

There was only one dog on the island in 1966. It was Boozer, a "Navy
dog" originally from Adak. He had been quite a drinker in his earlier
days but he got to be a mean drunk. It was finally forbidden in the
standing orders for anyone to give him any more booze. We Navy guys
from Adak had a soft spot in our hearts for Boozer, he was the only
"squid" sentenced to "life on the rock."

I coaxed Boozer into the Composite once or twice but he generally did
not like it indoors, it was too warm for him I think.

Remember the graves of the unknown Russian sailors? Down near the
piers? We Navy guys used to traditionally clean the the grave sites up
about once a year or so.

There were all kinds of wild stories about how and why those bodies came
to be buried there. We heard that they were fishermen and that the
Soviet Union declined to accept their bodies when they were recovered to
or washed up on Shemya. I suppose by now the story is that it was a
Spetznaz team that drowned making a covert approach from a submerged
submarine.

Yeah, that's the ticket. They jumped me while I was out boondocking and
I had to take them out! I took them all on and slashed their throats
with my guhor stick. :)

Jack

--
Jack Erbes in Ellsworth, Maine, USA (jackerbes at adelphia dot net)
(also receiving email at jacker at midmaine dot com)