| WINTER AT PEPPERRELL AFB 1953-1954 |
| When I was sent to Narsarssuak, Greenland in May, 1953 on TDY, we made a stop at Pepperrell AFB for a couple of days to wait for a flight out of Torbay airfield. I took these two photos from the roof of the barracks we were staying in. The photo on the left is of the base with Quidi Vidi lake on the right. The photo on the right is a view towards St. Johns proper. |
| It is a foggy morning in this view of 1st. Comm's vehicles parked behind the barracks at Pepperrell AFB. From the left we have a pole trailer, 6x6 truck, two 3/4ton utility trucks, two line trucks and a carry-all for crew transportation to the job site west of St. Johns. I remember when it could be foggy for a whole week in St. Johns and driving west of the city to the job site the sun would be shinning all day.Drive back towards St. Johns in the late afternoon and be right back into the fog. All photos on these pages by Jerome Young unless other wise stated. |
| Early morning and the airmen are warming up the vehicles for the trip to the job site west of St. Johns. |
| Facing the camera is S/Sgt. Cronk. In the background is S/Sgt. Alfonso Aranda "Pancho." |
| Here Jerome captured the carry-all headed west of St. Johns to the job site. If I remember right, this black top was only about twenty miles long and then the road changed to gravel. |
| Under the watchful eye of a young Newfoundlander, Norm Simons crew is filling a rock crib. Newfoundland was stony and swampy and if we couldn't set a pole at the required depth we had to build a rock crib. There were no shortage of stones in Newfoundland. |
| From left: Pitman, Braswell,Young,Mangold, and Merritt standing next to the line truck. They are taken in by one of Newfoundland's many snow falls. |
| Howard Mangold on the left. George Merritt on the right standing next to the two line trucks. The line trucks had A-frame booms that hooked to the rear for lifting and setting poles. The booms came apart and could be stored in a side bin on the truck. Mounted on top of the cab on the drivers side is a mirror for the driver to look in that would show the top of the boom when deployed. You had to remember that the image you saw was backwards. |
| In the two views shown here, Jerome is raising the cable to its new suspension bolt on the new pole. The photo on the left shows him using a coffin hoist to raise with and on the ground airmen are manning the blocks to pull the cable in or out. Just next to the hoist hook you can see the new bolt. In the photo on the right the cable is attached and Jerome is tightening the bolt. Note that Jerome is staying on the back side of the pole in case something fails to let the cable fly into the pole. |
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