Military Memories
by Lyle StoufferBALDY HUGHES AIR FORCE STATION, PRINCE GEORGE B.C.
After we left Madera in October 1958, we drove to McChord AFB near Seattle, Washington. Since there was limited medical and dental care available to us at our new assignment about 600 road miles north of Seattle, I had to have a complete physical and dental examination prior to continuing north. The primary medical and dental responsibility for personnel assigned to Baldy Hugh AFS rested with the AF hospital at McChord. The dental people decided that I would be better off without my four wisdom teeth since there could be complications arise while near Prince George B.C. All four were pulled during a single appointment there.
After a couple of days in the officers’ family guest quarters to recovery from that surgery, we headed north in the 1957 Oldsmobile that had replaced the ’54 Buick convertible before we left Hamilton AFB in 1957.
We crossed the international border near Vancouver B.C. We spent our first night in Canada at Hope B.C., which is located on the Frazer River about 50 miles directly east of Vancouver. We found a nice motel on a little noisy white water creek that fed into the Frazer and the tumbling water over the rocky bottom was really nice for restful sleeping. We didn’t require much space yet since our family was just two year old Tim and two monht old Anne.
The Frazer River was significant because it originated in the mountains east of Prince George and came by Hope on its way to empty into the Strait of Georgia at Vancouver. The drive from Hope to Prince George was primarily in the Frazer River canyon through such towns as Boston Bar, Cache Creek, 100 Mile House, Williams Lake, Quesnel and through Prince George and finally leave the Frazer to go 28 miles southwest to Baldy Hughes.
The duties for me at the site were primarily the same as at Madera but everything else was a big change. We were housed in half of one of two converted Quonset buildings that had housed the workers that had built the radar site years before. These two quonsets housed four officers that had accompanying families. The commander and admin officers were housed in a couple of framed buildings. Any other officers that had accompanied families found housing in Prince George and commuted. The unaccompanied officers lived in a two story BOQ.
Heating was provided by steam heat in overhead insulated distribution pipes and the electic power for the station was provided by a diesel power generator of great capacity that was backed up by a duplicated generator in case of failure. We had an occasion when both generators were inop due to a -52F temperature and the diesel fuel coagulated. After some heating we were back in operation and preheated diesel was developed so no more problems.
We did get some very cold conditions and all autos on station were fitted with head bolt heaters or we would have been short of transport.
We didn’t have the benefit of great social and recreation functions available unless we created our own. Fishing was great and we had boats and fishing gear provided by the Air Force through non appropriated fund activities. We had an officer’s club but never more than 15 qualified members and 8 or 10 wives. Always had gatherings there for hail and farewell parties and entertaining dignitaries.
One instance of a Canadian Air Commador (later they took on ranks like the USAF. He would have been a general officer) losing half of his handlebar mustache when he desired to learn the art of drinking a flaming glass of Drambuie (called a “hot start”) He was clean shaven and grumpy the next morning but a great sport about it.
We rated officers still had to get our flying time for pay. The program that made this possible was the use of three L-20 aircraft (Dehaviland Beaver) assigned to McChord AFB and managed by an AF Captain Barnes, assigned there but responsible for any check outs, proficiency checks, annual instrument checks etc. In addition to those officers assigned at Prince George (Baldy Hughes), there were similar radar sites at Puntzi Mountain BC, (about 128 miles west of Williams Lake in desolate territory), Kamloops BC and Grand Prairie Alberta. All of these sites were under Capt Barnes programs. (We called him Mother Barnes because he was so protective of his planes and programs.) He would check out one or two pilots at each site as IPs (instructor pilots) and usually each site would have an aircraft at the nearby airport for at least one week out of every month.
The landfill for the site attracted lots of birds and animals. Most were just nuisances but the black bears would take to invading the site to find anything even before it went to the “dump” by raiding trash cans, sometimes pretty noisy at night. One was shot and killed right outside our front door by a teenage boy next door.
We did get acquainted with some of the Canadian neighbors in Prince George. We had some good times at a cabin on a lake. I was a member of a ten pin (duck pins) bowling team from the site and we had a curling team, which consisted of a “skip” (our Canadian site civil engineer) and some of our officers.
I get kidded about have been at the bowling alley and competing on the same evening that Paul Joseph was born in the Prince George Hospital about noon on Sunday, October 25, 1959.
The road from Baldy Hughes Air Force Station to Prince George was a very narrow gravel road except for the last couple of miles when it intercepted the Prince Rupert/Prince George black top highway. Until 1937, a stagecoach had operated down that same roadway and the gravel that was added to the trail to make it a roadbed was mainly river rock of about baseball size. We had to make sure that we were at the Prince George hospital in good time for Paul’s arrival.
Paul’s birth in Canada offered new opportunities for him. We registered his US citizenship with the US Foreign Service office in Victoria BC but Canadian law gave Paul Canadian citizenship eligibility for the rest of his life.
Another important occurrence for me was the promotion to captain in the spring of 1959.
Our two summer vacations away from the site were to Qualicum Beach on Vancouver Island where we met Mary Jo’s parents who had driven there in their 1956 Ford Thunderbird convertible. A second vacation was at Lake Kalamalka in the Okanagan Valley, south of Kamloops.
We cherished our time in Canada but it was two years of roughing it out of my Air Force career.
T received an assignment to go to Phoenix, Arizona, to the Phoenix Air Defense Sector as a controller. I was supposedly completing my three year tour as a weapons controller under Project Turnabout so I contact ADC personnel (Lou LaSalle was in rated officer assignments there) and got my assignment changed to the 84th Fighter Interceptor Squadron at Hamilton AFB.
They were into FI01s and the commander was Joe Guynes who had been the executive officer of the 83rd FIS when I was there and commander of the 774th AC&W Squadron at Madera when I was there. Like going home.
Mary Jo and I were a little nervous as we crossed the border headed back to the US in October 1960 because we had decided that the NATO whiskey (absolutely no tax) prices were going to be missed so we tucked a great deal of it (especially Crown Royal in purple bags) into nooks and crannies of the Olds. We needn’t have worried since the border people welcomed us with open arms and probably sympathized that we were traveling with a four year old, a two year old and a one year old.
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