Base Layout

“You had wing headquarters up by the flagpole. The hospital area was up in the southeast corner.  Then the shops were down at the north end of Grayson Drive on the west side. The commissary was down in that area. The sewage disposal plan was down there. The refueling for the airplanes. Base supply.” Overton E. Jay (1951-1971)

“The barracks were two story. They were open bays. The bottom, as you went in from the back end, to the right was the latrine and to the left was the heating area where they had the furnace.  When you went past those, that was about twenty feet in, then it became all open. Everyone slept in a bunk with a footlocker at the bottom and a small locker where you’d hang your clothes. It had wood floors.” Ken Hayes (1953-1971)

“There were two rows of bunks separated by a middle aisle, and there were probably twenty bunks on each side of the aisle.  They were wooden barracks with staggered beds. One head was one way and the other head was the next way, and that was about it. Certainly nothing fancy. We had our footlocker at the foot of the bed. We had a tiny place to hang our uniforms. They were not enclosed in a locker. They were just a rod along the side of the windows.” Bill Teague (1942-1945)

“The brick barracks was air-conditioned. The other wood barracks buildings, you opened the windows and hoped for a breeze.  The brick barracks had metal wall lockers, solid bunks, tile floors. It was pretty nice.” Ralph Waterloo (1963-66)

“The Post Exchange was a converted building in World War II style. It had two wings to it. You could buy mostly military type clothing and cosmetics, toothbrushes, that sort of thing. You could buy just about anything in there that you could buy at some of the local clothing stores, drug stores, all kind of combined.” Col. B. J. Long (1950-1962).

“As you go in on the Boulevard, at the end there was a water tower, and headquarters was just below that and the chapel was right behind it.  My daughter was married in that chapel, when I came back from Vietnam.”  Col. B. J. Long (1950-1962)

“Of course, we only had one building, but we had different configurations of the building for each of the three major religions, and it was—not only mine, but the other Chaplain’s Assistants, also—our responsibility to see that the building was ready for whatever service we had coming up.” Bill Teague (1942-1945)

“The hangars are on the west side of Grayson Drive. Out in front of the hangars to the west was . . . I think they call it a tarmac now; we called it an apron then, where they parked the airplanes. I was working on survey, and we laid out the apron; we laid out the hangars; we laid out the taxiways and the runways and the streets. All that. The power poles, buildings, and all.”  Overton E. Jay (1951-1971)

“Down at the north end, there’s a hangar building sitting up there on the runway.  That was the alert hangar. We had pilots up there like a fire station, 24 hours a day. We had F-86s and 102s, later, in those hangars, and just like a fire, if they called an alert, they’d send those airplanes up.”  James McCall (1951, 1956-1971)

“We had a big operation here for the size of the base. Basically, it was the equivalent of several squadrons. We were a wing, but we had more equipment, more airplanes and more pilots than the average base.” Col. B. J. Long (1950-1962)

Perrin Aircraft