Armstrong, ON

During the late summer of 1952, several new USAF Aircraft Control and Warning (AC&W) Squadrons were formed with existing AC&W personnel drawn from the 30, the 32 and other Air Divisions, Continental Air Defense Command (ADC). These new squadrons became the initial units who staffed the Canadian "Pine Tree Line" Early Warning Radar sites. Each USAF airman would be paid $7.00/month foreign duty pay and earn foreign service credit for each of the twelve months of this rotational assignment.

The 914 AC&W Squadron was organized at Grenier AFB, Manchester, New Hampshire under the command of Captain William K. Reed. As the Korean "Police Action" heated up in 1950 and 1951, many WW2 types who were in state Air National Guard Units were recalled to active duty. Captain Reed, a qualified flying officer, was on active duty from the Pennsylvania Air National Guard.

In November 1952, a small advance party of Supply, Food Services and other personnel entrained at Manchester and headed for Armstrong Station, Ontario. Their assignment was to unload all the supplies needed to run the facility and to prepare the base for occupancy. No roads in/out of Armstrong existed at that time. Therefore, everything including fresh food rations was brought in via the Canadian National Railway.

The civilian contractors had completed the basic facility; administration, barracks, mess hall, motor pool buildings, the power/heating plant and water/septic waste systems. Only the shells of the radar operations and the communications receiver/transmitter buildings had been completed.

The initial Table Of Organization (TO&E) of the 914 consisted of two officers (Captain Reed and Chief Warrant Officer William P. Ryan) and about 35 enlisted men. The squadron would not be brought up to "full" strength until the radar and communications installations were completed in 1954.

The remainder of the 914 personnel, including your author, entrained at Manchester in December 1952 and arrived there on a typically subzero night.

As an A/3C with a duty AFSC of 29331 (point-to-point ground radio operator) and no radio equipment to work, guess who pulled KP every third day and shoveled snow the two days in between.

Spring 1953 – a brand new DeHavilland L-20 "Beaver" was assigned to the 914. It was kept at the Armstrong airport. Captain Reed was his own crew chief and maintained the bird. He flew to Sioux Lookout regularly to get his proficiency flying time in. Lucky airmen would occasionally be allowed to fly along with Captain Reed. Your author was never one of those asked to be included.

Spring 1953 (continued) – down to the CN yards to unload a brand new American-LaFrance fire engine. Your author volunteered to be on the fire crew. Although two men (CWO Ryan and an airman) had "gone to fire engine school" in the States, several others of us were given the basics of the fire engine; priming, drafting out of the lake (I don't remember what we were supposed to do in mid winter if there was a fire and it was -35 F) and the rudiments of handling a hose and nozzle. The truck came to Armstrong with no markings. I never understood why it didn't have all the standard USAF nomenclature all over it. When I rotated back to the States in December 1953, there was still "official" discussion in progress as to whether base personnel would be allowed to take the fire truck into Armstrong to fight a fire in the village. Maybe someone out there knows how that turned out.

Because the demands for electrical power were minimal at this time, the generators were constantly surging all over the place which raised havoc with all things electrical. We went through light bulbs like a good airman goes through beers. Some electrical types were brought in see what could be done. They figured out a way to "ground" some of the generator power output by laying a huge steel cable down the hill from the power plant to a creek. It did the trick as the power output was now stabilized.

The power plant raised another issue – the village of Armstrong had electrical service to most of its buildings provided by what was probably one of the first generators ever built. It was owned and maintained by the CN and was so overloaded I remember all lights in the village burned a dim yellow. Obviously, it didn't take long for more "official" discussion to occur about how the village might get in on the "surplus" of watts floating down that creek out at the 914. Again, your author left in December of 1953 before that one was resolved too.

The spring of 1953 also saw the 914 communications section "go on the air". A commercial model transmitter and receiver were set up in what had been a contractor's shed up on the hill next to the unfinished radar ops building We worked the nearby stations of Pagwa, Sioux Lookout and two or three down in Michigan.

During the summer of 1953, the first radar unit was set up on the hill next to our radio "shack". I remember it was an early "portable" TPS-1D. The radar types called it a "tipsy one dee". The scope was located in our little radio shack. This made for tight quarters as we already had the transmitter, the receiver table and an oil burning stove for heat jammed in the 12 X 12 space. Believe it or not, the radar types "burned out" the engine of the gasoline powered generator on a regular basis. They could never figure out how to get the radar unit to function without running the generator literally wide open. The engines would seize after only a few hours of use. When I rotated out, they were still trying to meet their mandated schedule of "one hour a day of surveillance".

I see by reading other messages that Armstrong eventually had a radio station. Your author would like it to be known that the first "radio station" at the 914 was in my room in the barracks. The "transmitter" consisted of my RCA Victor 45 RPM record player plugged into a little oscillator kit I purchased by mail from the old Allied Radio catalog out of Chicago, Illinois. The oscillator was connected to a long wire antenna strung to the next barracks building. Only a couple of airmen had radios then, but we all listened to my somewhat limited library of 45's during the daytime. That little oscillator had a range of probably no more than a couple of city blocks, but, I know that it carried as far as the main gate. At night, as most of you know, the "skip" would bring stateside radio stations in clear as a bell. Of course, nighttime good reception knocked my "station" off the air.

In the fall of 1953, as personnel were added to the squadron, a Lieutenant Campbell (?) and a radio maintenance type rigged a transmitter/receiver setup and went on the air with a ham radio station. It was located in one of the civilian contractor buildings which were all still intact.

I see by reading other web site messages that everyone found out about the great fishing at Armstrong. Does anyone out there know that to this day there is a "brand new" Model D-6 Caterpillar tractor sunk out-of-sight in the creek near where the Lake McKenzie "fishing camp" was built? That's right ....... when the troops were given permission to cut a road into the shore area where the camp was originally built, the airman driving the cat ran it into the creek where it commenced to wave "bye bye". Within three days all that could be seen of it was the exhaust stack. With no other heavy equipment available, the cat was "abandoned". The cat was originally to have been our base "snow plow". To this day I don't know how that one was written up.

Does anyone out there know what the disposition was of the 1929 Studebaker coupe that was parked next to the motor pool building? One of the guys bought it from a man in Armstrong and had it towed out to the base. He never did get it running the whole year I was there.

One could go on and on about time spent in Armstrong; the depot watching the trains come in, the hotel, the Canadian Legion, the home where 16 MM Hollywood movies were shown on Saturday night, the little cafe run by a very nice older immigrant lady who made Polish dishes for us to try, going out behind the base in the spring and picking pails of wild blueberries, having the mess sergeant demand that we bring no more fish to the mess hall as he was tired of cooking them – the cook who was courts martialed for trading canned goods from the mess hall for craft goods made by the locals, "no seeums" and deer flies, the log cabin that my friend from North Dakota and I started and only got the walls up just north of the base next to the CN tracks, feeding the "husky" puppy one of the guys got from a local lady trapper, yes a woman trapper, beer in the room we called the "NCO club" and watching him stumble around the room until he fell asleep – the cold, the daily snow, summer daylight at 2300 hours.

As for all of us who were there – a time to remember.

If you've read down this far – t hank you.

Bob Davisson
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
16 July 2001