OLD ALASKA MILITARY PICTURES

As most of you know, Connie and I were stationed in Alaska for 12 of our 20 years in the military.  Some of the best flying in the world.  I was lucky to fly the HC-130 in Elmendorf and the HH-3 and the CH-3 helicopter at Eielson. All were Air Force Rescue aircraft although the CH-3 did mostly range support for the gunnery/bombing ranges, Poker Flat Research Facility, Arctic Survival School, and Air Force Technical Application Center (AFTAC).  I got to see a lot of that state from the air as well as the ground and sea.

The tradition of getting hosed down by the fire department when you had your last flight in an aircraft is what you are looking at here.  This is the HC-130 and was a great airplane.  I landed on many dirt runways with it as well as hard surfaced ones.  I loved the original paint job of the Alaskan Air Command aircraft.

These are a couple of pictures when they closed my helicopter unit at Eielson AFB.  A bunch of the pilots gave me some funny awards and we topped it off with a volleyball game.

Here we are supporting the AFTAC,s remote seismic monitoring station up by Ft. Yukon.

This was our hanger with the official name of Nose Dock 2.

And this was one of my favorite missions.  Taking Christmas presents to some of the remote native villages along with a Santa Clause always brought some smiles to your face.

These two pictures are when we were supporting Poker Flat by recovering rockets that they had launched out of the facility near Fairbanks.  The one above is me talking with one of their folks figuring out how we were going to get the rocket that is over the hill from where we are talking.  Below we had managed to land close and they were out picking up the payload while we pilots were having tea and coffee.

And below are a few pictures of other aircraft.

This is the T-38 and in the front seat is Bob Stroup who was the best man at our wedding.  Bob was one of the best pilots I ever flew with.  He also flew helicopters and fixed wing.  His last aircraft was the F-15.

This is the first aircraft I ever flew.  The Th-55 was an Army trainer that was pretty fun to fly.  I am on the left and that is John Sfier who was killed in a rescue mission off the coast of New York in the late 1970's.

And this is a picture of Connie in front of an A-10.