Great Falls Redux

 

Ken Harrison, the departing base commander, and I had come to Udorn on the same airplane and we were leaving on the same airplane. Ken was waiting for the Super Klong in the passenger terminal the same morning I was being sent off by my troops in a sad but wonderful cloud of champagne and leis.

Ken and I sat next to each other on the way to Clark, and though there'd been plenty of friction between us, especially after my Article 32 investigation showed how dumb it was to keep the package liquor store in the back of the officers' club, on the flight home we became reasonably good friends. Both of us were leaving behind a year of difficulties, but also a year of interesting experiences. At Clark we had dinner together with a colonel who turned out to be the 13th Air Force Staff Judge Advocate. The following morning we were off on a civilian contract flight to "the world." On the ground at Travis AFB I got a military car to drive me to San Francisco International, and took the first flight to Denver and Colorado Springs.

After a happy reunion with the family I went over to Ent AFB, sat down with a lieutenant colonel in personnel who'd been a personal friend before I left for Thailand, and explained that I'd volunteered for an unaccompanied overseas tour at General Tyler's request because he didn't want to lose my experience with the 427M. I'd stopped by ops plans on my way to his office, and I knew my successor was struggling with the almost incomprehensible problems surrounding the new system.

I reminded my friend about the history of software design for the new system. After 425L, the 427M's predecessor, was up and running, the colonel who'd been in charge of the system's software development, and the others in his office were scattered around the world on long-delayed overseas tours. When 427M appeared on the drafting board NORAD discovered they had nobody in the headquarters with enough background to deal with the new software system. In the end they called the colonel back to NORAD. He was ready to retire, but he told them he'd come back if he got his star, and if he could reconstitute his old shop. The Air Force gave in. The colonel became a brigadier general, and his scattered people all came back to Colorado Springs.

My friend told me that the new commander in chief of NORAD (CINCNORAD), who'd come in while I was in Thailand, had an absolute "no homesteader" policy. His position was that nobody who'd been stationed at Colorado Springs was ever coming back. Unfortunately CINCNORAD's attitude problem led eventually to the kind of thing that happened in 1979, when somebody started a training tape in Cheyenne Mountain and forgot to switch the system to "test." We appeared to be under attack, and SAC was ready to launch bombers and missiles. Forgot to switch the system to "test?" I'll never be able to understand why the tape didn't have a leader that automatically switched the system to "test."

You can find information on the Semi Automatic Ground Environment System (SAGE) in "Correspondence with Ben." My objection to being assigned to a NORAD SAGE center wasn't based entirely on my desire to continue work on the 427M system. I'd been around long enough to know the history of the SAGE centers. When I was learning to fly, and even when I was in Korea, it was "settled science" that an intercontinental missile was an impossibility. The SAGE system was based on the idea that an attack on the United States would be made with bombers. On the basis of that assumption, SAGE made sense, but by the time SAGE blockhouse construction started, ICBM's were a fact. I was in ops plans at Great Falls then, and I couldn't believe we were going forward with the immensely expensive SAGE system, knowing how vulnerable it was.

By 1974 there were enough nuclear-tipped ICBM's in the Soviet inventory to take out all the SAGE blockhouses several times over in the first few minutes of an attack. Even if bombers were a problem, the SAGE centers wouldn't be there to help shoot them down, and once SAGE was out of the picture, bombers would be even more effective than they'd been before the advent of SAGE, since there no longer were controllers at individual radar sites. We'd have been better off keeping controllers at the radar sites, some of which might have survived. Now it seemed we were playing a political game to keep the government from having to admit that SAGE was an expensive mistake. And by the time I headed back to Great Falls for the second time, the Airborne Early Warning and Control System (AWACS) was coming into existence, a much more survivable system that would make control from the ground obsolete.

While I'd been at Udorn, Autumn had started Meadowfound. The business was just getting under way, and our finances were tight. Bob had had an accident with my Corvair, and I wasn't going to be able to drive it to Great Falls. Autumn had found another car for me: a Corvair Corsa (four carburetors), that was in questionable shape to say the least, but if I were to be in Great Falls by myself I'd need a car.

After a month's leave I tossed my stuff into the Corvair and took off for Great Falls. At Malmstrom AFB I was fortunate enough to get a suite in the Bachelor Officers Quarters (BOQ). I had a bedroom and a living room with a bathroom in between. The building was old, but it was comfortable enough, although in the winter the antique steam radiators ran continuously and kept the place much too warm.

Most of my new job was routine administration. I had some really bright people working for me, and one or two duds. The command post, known as the Blue Room, was bossed around the clock by lieutenant colonels who had very specific scripts they were required to follow in various situations. Instead of thinking, they were required to memorize.

At one point we got a directive from Washington requiring Air Force offices to be kept at 65 degrees in the winter since the world was running out of energy. We explained that SAGE uses first-generation computers that produce so much heat we have giant cooling towers running year-round to keep the computers from self-destructing. Didn't matter. We had to crank up the cooling to a higher level and waste a lot more of the world's rapidly disappearing energy so we could wear our Jimmy Carter-style cardigan sweaters.

One evening we had a "dining in" at the officers' club. Everybody was in mess dress uniform and fairly well sloshed by the time we came to the tables. To top it off we had wine with dinner. After dinner the general stood up and gave a short speech. He talked about some "niggardly" funding for something. A sharp black kid with a quick wit and a great sense of humor who lived down the hall from me in the BOQ, and worked on one of the Blue Room crews popped up and said, "I resemble that remark." The general just about collapsed. He mumbled on for another minute and sat down. Next morning I got a call to go see the general. He asked me if I thought the kid was going to make trouble. I suggested he was pulling the general's leg. I was sure the kid knew what the word meant. (Actually it's a Scandinavian word that refers to fussing over small matters.)

About ten months after I arrived we were evaluated. We passed with flying colors, though we missed an outstanding rating by a hair because one of the controllers managing the targets made a relatively minor mistake. But as 1975 rolled around I was becoming more and more unhappy with the whole situation. After a lot of thought on the subject I decided I'd had enough. I had two more years to go before I'd reach my maximum retirement pay point as a colonel. When I'd made colonel I'd received a letter from the Pentagon listing a series of boxes I'd need to check if I wanted a chance to make brigadier general. When I read that letter I decided the game wasn't worth the candle. Now I decided I'd hang on until April 1977 and retire.

Ellington AFB, Texas

During his time at the Pentagon as Air Force Disaster Preparedness Chief, my old friend, Ray Blake had created three disaster preparedness regions in the United States. The geography of the three regions was defined by the three United States Air Force Reserve regions. Each reserve region headquarters had two active duty air force colonels: the deputy commander and the disaster preparedness region chief. The job of the disaster preparedness chief was to coordinate Air Force contributions to civilian disaster assistance and disaster relief, and to train Air Force Reserve disaster preparedness officers. The Central Disaster Preparedness Region chief at Ellington AFB, south of Houston, was retiring on short notice, and at that point I probably was the only remaining full colonel in the Air Force with an extensive background in disaster preparedness. So, on very short notice, after fourteen months at Great Falls I was on my way to Ellington.

Going to Ellington had one big advantage. My uncle and aunt, Barton and Margaret Bishop, lived in Texas City, which was a short drive from Ellington. When I was growing up the Bishops had lived in Cassopolis, Michigan, and when I was a teenager, Barton had been sort of a second dad to me. I loved spending time with them in Cassopolis because Barton always was doing interesting things. He was a geophysicist who did oil exploration, and he'd take me along on visits to the drilling sites. One fall he took me on a pheasant hunt with several of his friends. In Texas City, Barton was more or less retired, though occasionally he took on temporary jobs with local oil companies. Margaret, a geology PhD, was head of the geology department at University of Houston. Being able to visit the Bishops on weekends was wonderful, because I was living in a pretty cramped BOQ room.

At Ellington I had three people working for me. Dan Hitch was the reserve officers' training records guy. Dan was a retired Air Force pilot who had a fairly high government service (GS) rating. I also had a young captain named Peter, who helped with training and filled in for me when I was away, and a master sergeant who took care of the paperwork. During reserve training sessions the place was full of people, but the rest of the time it was just the four of us. I, Dan, or Peter had to be on call 'round the clock. But mostly we were just waiting, and in the year and nine months I was in the job the only disaster we had to deal with was a forest fire in northern Michigan. I released some mobile kitchens from K.I. Sawyer AFB to help feed the firefighters, but happily, that was it.

One of my concerns was Galveston Island. I was familiar with the 1900 hurricane that wiped out the city of Galveston. Structures built since that catastrophe were a lot more solid than their predecessors, but a hurricane would be a serious problem even now, and the bridge to the island couldn't possibly handle a mass evacuation. I was happy that the hurricane didn't come during my tenure at Central Region. Hurricane Alicia came in 1983, after I was long gone. Autumn's brother, Ross, had built a lovely vacation house on Galveston Island. Not only did Alicia wipe out the house, it removed the ground upon which the house had been built.

Bergstrom AFB, Texas

In March, 1976, Central Reserve Region moved its headquarters from Ellington AFB, which was to be inactivated, to Bergstrom AFB, just outside Austin. BOQ space wasn't available on the base, so I had to go house hunting. The force was with me. I found a great furnished apartment on the southeast side of Austin — living room, bedroom, bathroom, kitchen — and the rent was $75 a month. It's number 2015, the one on the second floor in this picture. I locked it in for a year. Later on I found that the guy in the office who rented it to me was just filling in for somebody else, and he blew it. There was supposed to be a monthly rental charge of $35 for the furniture in addition to the basic rent. $75 in 1975 is the equivalent of about $333 today. Even at $110, the equivalent of just under $500 today, it was a bargain. Best of all, there were two racquetball courts in the building next to my apartment. I'd gotten into racquetball in a big way in Great Falls, and now I could play every day after work, plus Saturday and Sunday. The apartment complex was loaded with students at University of Texas. Some of them played racquetball, and I could beat 'em all. The only guy who could beat me consistently was Peter, my captain. I don't think I ever won a game against him.

After another boring year, in March 1977 I put in my retirement papers. My original date of enlistment was April 21, 1951, so I elected to retire on May first, which gave me a solid 26 years for retirement pay. I had a month's leave coming, and I could either take it and leave early or wait until May first and be paid for the month's leave. I elected to take the leave. I declined a retirement ceremony. On March 31st I said goodbye to my office guys, threw my stuff into the Corvair, and headed for home.