Part II-U. S. Air Force, Chapter 15-Warren AFB

CHAPTER 15
Warren AFB
1959-1962

Warren AFB had just been transferred from Air Training Command to SAC and they were in the process of installing Atlas missiles. These were large liquid fueled intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). The missiles were not located on Warren but were dispersed around in about a 75 mile radius to make them more survivable. There was a lot of pressure to get the missiles operational as soon as possible because of the relations between the United States and the Soviet Union. General Curtis LeMay of World War II fame was a no-nonsense officer and was commander of SAC at this time. If he felt someone wasn’t pulling their load he transferred them to a job he thought they could handle. That attitude was transferred on down the chain of command. The movie “Strategic Air Command” displayed the mind set in SAC pretty accurately.
When we got to Cheyenne, Nell’s mother (she became Ninny when Randy started talking) kept Randy in the motel while Nell and I went to look for a house. They were pretty scarce because of all the missile facility construction in the area. We found a one bedroom basement apartment at 3315 Dillon, just a few blocks from the main gate to the base. It was owned by a widow lady, and we rented an upstairs bedroom from her for Ninny until Pawpaw (also later named by Randy) came up from San Antonio to take her home. We lived in this apartment for a while then bought a two bedroom house with a full (unfinished) basement located at 1609 Fremont Avenue in Cheyenne. We lived about three miles east of the base.
The primary job I was given was OIC of the base communications center and crypto center. We also had a small teletype maintenance shop. There were about 20 men assigned to cover these jobs. It was a routine operation but once in a while headquarters would try to sneak someone into the communications center to test our security.
During this time I was offered a regular commission which I accepted. This meant I would not be put in the inactive reserves and taken off active duty unless I resigned.
In August of 1960 I was transferred from the communications center to OIC of telephone maintenance. This was a bigger responsibility; at least it had a bigger work force. One section maintained the telephone switching equipment (inside plant), another section maintained the cables and installed telephone instruments (outside plant) and the third section was the six position switchboard that handled long distant calls.
Warren AFB had one of the few government owned telephone exchanges on Air Force bases within the continental United States. Usually they were leased from commercial companies. Most of the exchanges overseas were government owned. This caused a problem because when it was time for telephone repairmen to rotate from overseas there were very few jobs for them in the U. S.
One of the outside plant sergeants came in my office one day to tell of a trouble call he went out to fix. A lady in base housing had reported her phone was not working. A repairman was scheduled to look at it the next day. Standard procedures were to call the number just before going out to make sure there was still a problem. The next day the repairman called; she answered the phone and the repairman asked if everything was working okay now. She said it still wasn’t working. When asked just what the problem was, she said when anyone called her the phone didn’t ring. He asked how she knew to answer the phone when he called her. She said, “Oh, when someone calls, my dog barks.” When he went to the house to investigate, he found she had her dog chained to the telephone ground rod. The wire connected to the rod had become corroded; the system is designed such that a ring signal sends about 90 volts through the ground rod while the voice signal is very low voltage. Anyway, every time anyone called that number, the poor dog was getting a good shock through his chain. I’m sure the dog was happier than the customer to have the problem fixed.
In April of 1961 I was chosen to go to Squadron Officers School (SOS). This was a 14 week school conducted at Maxwell AFB, Alabama. Nell went there with me and we left Randy with Ninny and Pawpaw. There were a lot of rentals in the area set up just for students in this school. We found a big two story pre-civil war house that had been divided up into about four apartments; the apartments were rented to other students but Nell and I were in a little building right behind it that used to be the slave quarters. It was just a bedroom and kitchenette but quite adequate for our temporary stay. One night we were lying in bed reading when, out of the corner of her eye Nell saw a roach just a little smaller than a mouse run under the bed; she screamed. I got up and looked under the bed. The roach was lying there on his back with his feet in the air. I figured her scream had given the roach a heart attack; I know it was so loud it almost gave me one. I told her I would get it out the next morning. Well, the next morning I looked under the bed and he was gone. I don’t know if his family had a funeral for him during the night and took him off for burial. Or maybe he was just playing possum, hoping I would leave him alone. Or maybe he did have a heart attack and recovered during the night. In any event I expect he lived to scare the next tenant.
The SOS was a first class operation. The faculty were all good instructors and they brought in many first class lecturers from across the country. One of the guest speakers, the famous economist, Milton Friedman, changed the political outlook I had on life. He spoke of several things, but the one thing that caught my attention was his view on labor unions. He got everyone’s attention when he said there is no such thing as a “right to strike”. He went on to explain that every one has the right to quit his job if he wants to and in fact, everyone has the right to quit their jobs in unison if they want but if one man wants to keep working, the rest of them don’t have the right to beat him over the head with a 2”x4”. That seemed to make sense to me. I signed up for a monthly news letter he was associated with and during the next few months became a political conservative. Before that, I had been under the influence of Mom’s cousin, Lloyd Cunningham who was a very avid Democratic Party supporter in Moses Lake. The news letter was well written and logical and gave me reasons for my political views rather than just following someone I admired.
In August of 1961 my boss was reassigned, and I was moved up to his job: Chief Communications Division. This job involved a lot of budgeting and planning for future facilities and was supposed to be filled by a major. With the help of some good NCOs, and a warrant officer named Smith I was able to muddle through. Due to the nature of our work, SAC tried to give all the officers a chance to see a missile launched. When my turn came, they sent us to Vandenberg AFB, California. When the day for the launch came there was an overcast sky with a ceiling of about 1000 feet. They went ahead with the launch and it was a beautiful sight; as the missile disappeared in the clouds the fire from the engine lit them up and they had a bright red glow for several seconds. We were out in the open field watching and a few seconds later a frantic voice came over the loud speaker, “Take cover, take cover, take cover.” About that time there was a tremendous explosion and the clouds lit up again. Since we were out in the open the only thing to take cover under was the bus that brought us out to the beach. The bus looked like an old mother hen that had too many chicks when it starts to rain; it just wasn’t big enough. Fortunately no pieces fell near us. We found out later the missile started off course and had to be destroyed before it could do some real damage.
The job often required travel to the missile sites and in order to get on site we had to go by the security office and get a password to be allowed entry. One day I had to go to one of the sites near Boulder, Colorado; I got my password and took off. I was preoccupied with what I had to do after getting there and about half way to the site it occurred to me that I couldn’t remember the password. Of course you couldn’t give passwords over the telephone and I couldn’t decide if I should turn around and go back or hope that I would remember by the time I got there. Either choice left a sick feeling in my stomach. I decided to keep going; if nothing else maybe I could get the people I was supposed to meet with to come out and we would do our business in the parking lot. Fortunately, just as I pulled up to the site, my memory kicked back in. If that would have happened today I would have never come up with the word; now I have trouble remembering a friend’s name, let alone some random word. Although I didn’t work on the missiles themselves, the direct support provided by the 389th Communications Squadron qualified many of us to wear the Air Force Missile Badge.
A few other things come to mind when I think of Cheyenne. We went to see the big rodeo they have there every year at Frontier Days. For Christmas 1960 Nell, Randy, and I took the train to see Mom and Dad in Othello. Our commander, Major Cole, decided that since the 389th Communications Squadron didn’t have a unit patch, we would have a contest in the squadron to select the best design. My entry won.
On December 18th, 1961 Ronda was born. She was born in the base hospital there at Warren AFB. In those days the father wasn’t allowed in the labor or delivery room. Since my office was just two blocks from the hospital and I had a mountain of work on my desk, I told the nurse I would wait there and she could call me when I could see Nell. At least it was better than sitting in the hospital twiddling my thumbs. They kept Nell and Ronda in the hospital several days as was common then. In the meantime Ninny and Pawpaw came up to watch Randy and help Nell until she got back on her feet.
All during the time they were constructing missile sites there was a lot of concrete being poured. For each batch they poured, they took samples and put them in a cardboard tube about four inches in diameter and one foot long. After the samples cured the required number of days they put them in a press to see if their compression strength was sufficient to pass specifications. If the block didn’t crumble, it passed. Most of them passed and I got permission to take the discarded samples home. Many nights I would leave the base with the rear end of the car almost dragging the ground because of the extra weight. Our house was on the side of a hill and I would stack the blocks like cord wood to build terraces and a fence in the back yard. (See figure 19.)
In April 1962 I got orders to go back to Pullman and get a degree in Electrical Engineering. This would be a little more in line with my Air Force work than my agriculture major. The school in Pullman was now Washington State University (WSU) instead of Washington State College. We took about 30 days leave, went to San Antonio to see Nell’s folks, went to Othello to see mine, and reported to Pullman for school.