Stephenville, NF

1953 – Memories of Stephenville – Samuel Van Sandt

I believe I am correct in saying that I was one of the early assignee's to the Pinetree Line radar station located on Table Mountain. This unit was known as the 105th AC&W Squadron when I arrived there in May of 1953. It was, subsequently re-designated as the 640th AC&W Squadron.

I completed Airborne Radio Operators school at Keesler AFB in Biloxi Mississippi in April 1953. Every other class was being assigned to Korea upon graduation. I felt fortunate to be going to Newfoundland, even though I knew it would be as a "ground" operator instead of airborne. I was only 20 years of age at the time and as I recall, I was quite naive, with an awful lot to learn about life.

When I first arrived, we operated out of what we called the old "Newf Shacks". As I recall, they were one story buildings aligned parallel to each other, and our station was at the far end of one of the two buildings. We utilized Morse Code, both transmitting and receiving; passing radar plots from the Radar towers, (as we called them) down to Ernest Harmon AFB in Stephenville.

I remember we were assigned to cleaning the "grease" out of what we called "squirrel cage" antenna's, which were tubular metal of some sort, probably aluminum. Each antenna was about 18 inches in diameter, and about four feet long. The reason we cleaned them was that the "grease" had been placed to protect them from the snow and elements, but it hindered their transmitting/receiving, so someone thought we should clean them. I don't remember whether it did any good, nor whether we continued to use them.

In the spring of 1954 we moved into separate transmitter/receiver sites. It may have been mid winter, but I remember being knocked down by the wind onto a solid sheet of ice. This occurred one night when I left the "Newf Shack" at midnight, the end of my twelve hour shift. I stepped onto the ice as I rounded the corner of the adjacent shack, and into the wind. I was wearing the big heavy Parka's we were issued, and it acted as a sail. I've often told the story, that I would still be sliding down the hill, had it not been for the barbed wire fence which surround the site at that time. I literally had to crawl more than a mile back up the hill to where I could grab on to the rope we had strung between buildings to hang on to while we navigated our way between them. I finally made it to the mess hall and was glad the coffee was hot!

Eventually, we did operate separate transmitter and receiver sites; and I think those are depicted in the pictures I sent. We really didn't do much actual radio operations after we went into separate buildings. We did have both a transmitter and a receiver site from early or mid 1954 to May 1955 when I left. I recall that most of my communications was with Ernest Harmon tower, and the pilots on their way to and from "bogey" sightings. Occasionally, I would talk with Goose Bay Labrador, but not often.