Monday, January 24, 2005
Where on Earth?
I was looking at the referral log for this site recently and noticed someone had found my blog after searching for Cape Romanzof. There's probably a pretty small number of folks who'd ever heard of Cape Romanzof, let alone search for it. For the %99.999+ of those reading this who have no idea what or where it is, let me inform you that it's an old Air Force site about midway up the west coast of Alaska near Hooper and Scammon Bays. It was built in the 50s as one the many, many DEW sites during the cold war. And for those of you too young to understand DEW, it stands for Distant Early Warning and was the name of a ring of radar sites that circled the US watching out for a Soviet air attack.
Cape Romanzof was built in the cone of a thankfully, extinct volcano. The radar units were on the crest of the cone, the main camp was nestled inside the cone, and a road followed an old lava flow down to the beach where the airstrip and weather station were located. There was probably less than 100 guys there at any one time (and it was guys up until the time I left in 1976). Now most of those sites are either gone or in some cases, automated, or in even rarer cases upgraded and still around. I was a heavy equipment operator at the time - plowed snow in the winter and graded roads in the summer. Since the place changed to civilian contractors before my year was up, I never had a chance to learn how to operate the cable car that connected the lower and upper camps together. I finished my one year tour on Shemya - yet another strange Alaska air site, this time in the Aleutian islands.
Anyway, since this hit brought up some old USAF memories, I thought I'd list where I'd been stationed over my 22 years, which in turn will probably bring even more folks here looking for old military memories. Lackland AFB TX, Dover AFB DE, Cape Romanzof AK, Shemya AFS AK, McConnell AFB KS, RAF Upper Heyford UK, Lowry AFB CO, Rimini AFS IT, Keesler AFB MS, Clear AFS AK, Peterson AFB CO, Dhaharan SA, Osan AB ROK, Castle AFB CA. I'm not listing all TDYs, but some are Thule AFS GL, Cape Cod AFS MA, NATO Shape School GE, RAF Croughton UK, Randolf AFB TX, Cavalier AFS ND, Eielson AFB AK, Eglin AFS FL and others.
2fers: NATO Shape School and DEW Line
