Project Glynco

Project Glynco
A History of NAS Glynco Brunswick, Georgia

By Leslie Faulkenberry
Official U.S. Navy photo courtesy of Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.
By the 1950s, the need for more sophisticated Anti-Submarine Warfare tools paved the way for improvements in the design of the Navy airship. Enhanced radar capacity was offered by an additional radome, the small protruding capsule located on the underside of the blimp between the control car and the nose. US Navy photo courtesy of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.
Foreword
Foreword
The Glynn County Airport

Commission, in the development of the new airline terminal project, realized the former Navy Air Station Headquarters history of the Base was quickly being erased. The Commission determined the need to formalize the history of the Naval Air Station (NAS) Glynco and its transformation to a civil airport was vital to the mission of the Commission and the communitys history. In 2004, the Airport Commission asked a local marketing and advertising firm, Faulkenberry Certain Advertising, Inc., to assist with the solicitation, documentation, and presentation of a history display in the new terminal building. During the process, a multitude of requests were made to the public to gather the lingering
history elements of the Base and its transformation. Much to the surprise of the Airport Commission, an abundance of information poured in from a variety of resources which was documented by Faulkenberry Certain, and prepared for an outstanding presentation to be unveiled at the New Terminal Dedication Ceremony. The Airport Commission extends sincere appreciation to the military personnel that contributed to the history and shared their recollections, the local residents who stepped forward with historical artifacts, the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center for generous contributions from their archives, and past and present Airport Commissioners and personnel for their assistance in developing this project.
The Commission also owes a debt of gratitude to Faulkenberry Certain, particularly Leslie Faulkenberry, for the outstanding effort and world-class historic presentation of the Base from its inception through its current use as a civilian airfield. The records accumulated through the process of developing this history project have been preserved digitally on CD for presentation to all interested parties and for use in public education. The Airport Commission takes great pride in making this small contribution to the preservation of the history of Brunswick and the Golden Isles for future generations.
STEVEN V. BRIAN
Executive Director On behalf of the Glynn County Airport Commission
Charles Tillerys shipmates gleefully find him guilty of a number of humorous crimes at the celebration of his promotion to Chief Petty Officer at NAS Glynco in the 1950s. Photo courtesy of Charles Tillery.
Welcome Aboard
Welcome Aboard
In January 2004, a press release

was sent to the media searching for anyone who had been stationed at Naval Air Station (NAS) Glynco, Brunswick, Georgia, their family members and civilian employees. These individuals were invited to contribute to the development of a permanent display that traced the history of the base for the new Brunswick Golden Isles Airport passenger terminal. The facility occupies the site of the former Operations Building for NAS Glynco, near the location where gigantic blimp hangars were hastily built in World War II to protect the coast from marauding U-boats. Veterans organizations were kind enough to include the information in their newsletters and membership correspondence.
Friends forwarded emails to former shipmates and their families. An initial trickle of response turned into a flood of calls, emails, bulky envelopes arriving in the mail and visits from veterans and their loved ones. Many people simply called to wish us well. Some called or wrote to share stories; others sent photographs, artifacts and uniforms. Over the year and a half of work and research on this project, the veterans of NAS Glynco and their families, local citizens and community leaders were lavishly generous with their memories and their time. Although the display space in the terminal was generous and well-placed, the complete collection was too large to fit behind the sleek glass doors.
We searched for a way to preserve these priceless memories, letters and images that told the saga of NAS Glynco in greater depth. This CD-ROM book was developed to share these treasures with anyone who loves history and the Georgia coast. The natural title emerged in the form of the original email address that became the lifeline with our benefactors: Project Glynco. These are the stories of the people who made NAS Glynco a vital part of the nations defense in times of war and peace. The stories of young people coming of age in a strange place, of learning new cultures and acceptance of great responsibility. Of commands and transitions, brilliant careers and humorous detours. Of lifelong friends,
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danger and romance, emerging technology and opportunity. And of the community that gained and lost and eventually triumphed. Project Glynco does not claim to be a total, complete history of military procedure or every personal experience. But it does open the door to understanding the importance of the place, its accomplishments and the proud legacy of service
Welcome Aboard
offered by the many outstanding individuals who spent time there. Being asked to participate in Project Glynco has brought many blessings. I am deeply honored to be a part of this inspiring project. I commend the Glynn County Airport Commission and their commitment to historic preservation as well as their vision for the communitys future. To the Commissioners, Executive Director Steven Brian and his staff and all the wonderful people who contributed to this effort: I thank you for the opportunity to time travel and make so many enduring friendships.
A letter from a long-time friend found its way past Navy censors to aviation mechanic J.H. Browning, Brownie, at NAS Glynco in January 1945. Courtesy of Michael F. Browning
LESLIE FAULKENBERRY
August, 2005
Acknowledgments
Aviation mechanic J.H. Browning kept this precise log of every one of his flights out of NAS Glynco in 1944. Courtesy of Michael F. Browning
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Project Glynco has benefited from the generosity of authors whose published works go into greater depth on military and regional history. If you want to learn more about how the coastal Georgia area has impacted the history of our nation, you will enjoy reading the following books: Memories from the Marshes of Glynn: World War II, by Thora Olsen Kimsey and Sonja Olsen Kinard. Available for sale locally, or via website. www.marshesofglynn.com Wasnt I the Lucky One, by Commander John A. Fahey USN (Ret.) Available from B&J Books, 901 Pillow Drive, Virginia Beach, VA 23454. www.electrinpins.com/ faheycollection/ Special thanks are in order to Jane Hildebrand at the Brunswick- Glynn County Public Library and Colletta Harper at the Coastal Georgia Regional Development Center, for their enthusiasm, professionalism and extreme donation of valuable time. Ms. Hildebrand
Acknowledgments
and Ms. Harper provided invaluable resources in assembling images and information for Project Glynco and the history display at the Brunswick Golden Isles Airport passenger terminal.
Table Table of Contents of contents

Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Welcome Aboard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4 Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7 Chapter 1: Vulnerability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10 Chapter 2: The War Begins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15 Chapter 3: Building the Base . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23 Chapter 4: Giant Warriors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .36 Chapter 5: The Bold Mission of LTA . . . . . . . . . . . . . .43 Chapter 6: POWs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .52 Chapter 7: Life and Opportunity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .55 Chapter 8: Golden Isles Gold Coast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .61 Chapter 9: The Cold War Heats Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .66 Chapter 10: Dangers and Demands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .72 Chapter 11: Tarzan and the Martians . . . . . . . . . . . . .78 Chapter 12: The Legend of Blackdog . . . . . . . . . . . . . .85 Chapter 13: Brownie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .88 Chapter 14: Airborne Early Warning . . . . . . . . . . . . . .91 Chapter 15: NATTC- State of the Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . .99 Chapter 16: Marines at Glynco . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .110 Chapter 17: The Navy from a Womans Perspective . .115 Chapter 18: Changes at Glynco . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .126 Chapter 19: The Best-Kept Secret in the Navy . . . . . .133 Chapter 20: Wings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .144 Chapter 21: Wild Things . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .150 Chapter 22: Heartbreak . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .157 Chapter 23: Searching for Answers . . . . . . . . . . . . . .162 Chapter 24: Reality 101 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .169 Chapter 25: A Ray of Hope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .175 Chapter 26: Triumph! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .182 Epilogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .190
At ADMAT inspections, like this one in 1970, sailors at NAS Glynco had an opportunity to display military form and readiness in every detail. Photo courtesy of Commander Al Ufer.
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Vulnerability
Chapter
Fire crews on the USS West Virginia fight a frantic battle against overwhelming odds at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Photo courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration.
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C H A P T E R
Vulnerability
The crew of Coast Guard Cutter Spence watches on deck as a direct hit sinks U-175. In the distance, 10 Naval combat vessels have boxed in the Rat Pack submarine to meet its fate. Blimps were used to identify locations of the marauding submarines that terrorized the Eastern seaboard. Photo courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration.
The Early Days

After the stunning losses at Pearl Harbor in 1941, and the declaration of war by
Germany just four days later, the United States barely had time to catch its breath before another
menace emerged in the form of vicious naval aggression. On January 15, 1942, the German submarine campaign against America was formally initiated. In just two weeks, fourteen ships, including nine desperately needed tankers, were sent to the bottom of the sea by a force of only five U-boats. The future of Britain looked bleak, as the beleaguered nation relied heavily upon American supply of materiel, food and fuel. Severing the lifeline with their most powerful ally threatened the survival of all Allied forces in Europe and the West Indies. The daring and ambition of the German Navy
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was backed by a wellprepared, well-supplied fleet of vessels which had been waiting for an opportunity to wage war. But Americans were soon to experience that disarming Britain was not the only objective of the deadly campaign. In the first six months of the war in 1942, U-boats, under command of Admiral Karl Donitz, sank 400 ships off the Atlantic coast. Frequently executed in broad daylight while horrified onlookers on nearby beaches watched helplessly, these unprecedented raids paralyzed both military and merchant marine operations. The result was a virtual embargo of the entire eastern coast. Accounts of U-boats firing onshore spread alarm in coastal communities. St. Simons Island residents remember chilling sightings of submarine lights surfacing at night during those first grim months.
Vulnerability
Before blimps patrolled the coast, a walk along St. Simons Islands pristine beaches might reveal shattered bits of cargo and human remains. These shocking discoveries were washed ashore from vessels ambushed by U-boats. Photo courtesy of the Glynn County Airport Commission.
The War Hits Home

The tranquility and charm of Georgias coastal barrier islands was shattered by the U-boat menace. Military ships, merchant marine, even pleasure craft were fair game. School children walking along East Beach were shocked to discover that a puzzling, sandcovered stick they stepped on by accident was the disembodied arm of a woman that had washed up on the shore. Sheer terror transported them home to their parents, who alerted the Coast Guard. A search revealed the spoils of a previous nights attack, grisly bits of human remains amid the debris of a wrecked ship.
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No one was safe on the seas that America had previously looked upon as insulation from European conflicts. Sinkings were so numerous that the Navy referred to the Cape Hatteras area in North Carolina as iron bottom, where ships masts were visible topside as the casualties piled up at an alarming rate. President Franklin D.
At the J.A. Jones yards in Brunswick, work surges ahead on a Liberty ship after the keel is laid. Photo courtesy of the Brunswick-Glynn Regional Library.
Vulnerability
Roosevelt decided to limit reporting of these events to a traumatized American public to avoid further damage to the shaken national morale. The papers and radio obligingly did not report the extent of the losses. Winston Churchill wrote to Roosevelt in 1942, worried about the escalating attacks. He confided, The spectacle of all these splendid ships being built, sent to sea crammed with priceless food and munitions, and being sunkthree or four every daytorments me day and night. The southeastern coast was particularly vulnerable for several reasons.
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The intricate channels and barrier islands prevented a clear sighting along a far stretch of coastline from the surface. The peculiar configuration of the outer reefs and bars made it necessary for ships to
Vulnerability
venture farther away from shore and its protection to encounter waters of a navigable depth. A number of new targets, shipyards, were cropping up on the Atlantic coastline as fast as they could be thrown into action. The J. A. Jones yards in Brunswick, as well as facilities in Charleston, South Carolina and Jacksonville, Florida, were feverishly building Liberty ships at a phenomenal pace to supply troops abroad. Unless a reliable system of protection could be devised, each launch of a newly completed ship would become U-boat target practice.
This photograph taken moments before the launch of the Liberty ship Westore at the Jones yards was shot from an NAS Glynco blimp. Photo courtesy of John A. Fahey.
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The War Begins
Chapter
Major Thomas H. Daniel, commander of Coastal Patrol 6 of the Civil Air Patrol on St. Simons Island. In the frightening early months of World War II, the Civil Air Patrol gathered civilian pilots and private planes to search off the Georgia coast for lurking U-boats. Photo courtesy of Winn Baker.
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The War Begins
Brunswicks Newcastle Street in the early 1920s. Behind the arched doorway was the Grand Opera House, later the Ritz Theater, where the war could be forgotten for an hour or two. Photo courtesy of the Golden Isles Arts & Humanities Association.
Why Glynn County?

The Navy selected Glynn County, Georgia, to base a new defense against submarine warfare: airships, or blimps as they were commonly known. A fleet of
non-rigid, helium-filled airships had been ordered by the Navy in 1940, and a languid peacetime delivery schedule was quickly shifted into high gear. Two hundred additional ships
were ordered from the Goodyear Company in Ohio. Airship bases in Richmond, Florida, Weeksville, North Carolina, and Key West, Florida, were granted priority status for construction along with the facility in Brunswick. Why was Glynn County selected? The Bureau of Aeronautics had several criteria for site selection. Accessibility to the Atlantic Ocean was within an 8-mile range, and all the necessities of good water, adequate electric power, and rail transportation were already in place. There were no hazards to air navigation on the flat coastal plain, and clear approaches were available
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over the Marshes of Glynn. The potential building site itself was flat and undeveloped, at a relatively high elevation for the area. The land was covered with pine and palmetto growth, as opposed to the trademark giant oak trees so typical of South Georgia. Few families lived in that portion of the county six and a half miles north of Brunswick, yet the roads were adequate. The chaotic early months of the war caught sleepy Brunswick, Georgia, off guard. In one aspect, however, it was well prepared.
The War Begins

The town had suffered from the Depression as painfully as the rest of the nation, yet an enlightened leadership in Glynn County had been surprisingly progressive in promoting aviation for years.
Above: Malcolm B. McKinnon Right: Delta Air Lines initiated air service to Brunswick at Sawtell Field in 1941. The countys main municipal airport at the time was McKinnon Field on St. Simons Island, but local enthusiasm for aviation justified the establishment of another airfield. First day cover courtesy of Bryan Thompson.
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As German military presence strengthened ominously in Europe in the 1930s, businessman Howard Coffin, the founder of Sea Island Company, worked with Brunswick mayor and County
The War Begins

Commission Chairman Malcolm B. McKinnon to build a handsome new airport on St. Simons Island. In 1942, the U.S. Navy purchased the 4-year-old airfield to establish a radar training school. From the first days of the war until the Navy took possession of the field, a fearless group of private pilots volunteered the use of their own aircraft in the newly assembled Coastal Patrol 6 of the Civil Air Patrol. For month after frustrating month, Coastal Patrol 6 flew over the Atlantic, spotting German submarines making their way toward the Georgia coast. The unarmed small
Below: McKinnon Field was renamed NAS St. Simons from 1942 until 1947. Photo courtesy of Larry Wade.
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planes were underpowered to pursue retreating vessels out to sea when they realized they had been sighted. Sam Baker, a local flight instructor who flew for the Civil Air Patrol, sighted a grounded U-Boat and its crew stranded on the sandbar off of nearby Sapelo Island, waiting for a favorable tide. Another foray revealed a submarine very near the surface and close enough to fire onshore, disguised with a
The War Begins

sailboat rigging obscuring its periscope. Captain Sam, as he was known in Glynn County, radioed urgent calls for help to Navy bases in Charleston and Jacksonville. The responses were
Above: Captain Sam Baker. Right: The Sandwich and Suicide Squadron, Coastal Patrol 6 of the Civil Air Patrol. Photos courtesy of Winn Baker.
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condescending, suggesting that all the Patrol pilots had overactive imaginations. Sam Baker and the other brave souls of the so-called Sandwich and Suicide Squadron could do nothing more than turn their planes around in helpless fury as the U-boats slid away, undamaged, and waited for an unguarded ship. No one was imagining the terrifying blast that shook the southeastern coast of Georgia early in the morning on April 8, 1942. German U-boat 123, under the command of Captain Reinhard Hardegen, sank two tankers off the coast of St. Simons Island. The SS Oklahoma and the SS Baton Rouge lost 21 crewmembers. The tanker captains had naively assumed that since they were traveling at night, they did not need to take evasive zigzag maneuvers, despite repeated instruction to do so by the Navy. Their running lights and on-board lights made them an easy target. Depositions given by surviving crewmembers
The War Begins

pointed strongly to the possibility that a saboteur had been aboard at least one ship. That day, the war literally hit home for coastal Georgians. Survivors of the attack were brought to the hospital in Brunswick to be treated for burns, exposure and shrapnel wounds. Despite the fact that every single hotel room in the
The damaged hull of the SS Baton Rouge revealed the point of impact from a U-boat torpedo. The ship sank quickly, but was recovered later and towed into the St. Simons Sound. The tanker, along with the SS Oklahoma, was hit 13 miles off the Georgia coast near Brunswick. Photos courtesy of Carl Phillips.
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The War Begins

boarding house beds for well-deserved sleep, accommodations were found for the shaken merchant mariners. Underneath the flurry of Southern hospitality, coastal Georgians knew the stark truth. The wreckage of one ship was towed the short distance into the St. Simons Sound, where it was plainly visible to the shocked citizens of Glynn County as they stood on the St. Simons Pier. The ships were hit in water so shallow that the broken hulls stuck up above water level. Onlookers were awed by the size of the chasm made by a torpedo in the side of the tanker. They were
Survivors of the attack on the SS Baton Rouge in the early morning hours of April 8, 1942 took this photo from the lifeboat. Photo from the collection of Mrs. Olaf H. Olsen as published in Memories from the Marshes of GlynnWorld War II. Reprinted by permission of the author, Sonja Olsen Kinard.
city was already taken by shipyard workers and newly assigned military men, the crewmen were overwhelmed by the
hospitality of the citizens of Brunswick. Somehow, even in those days of hotbeds where shipyard workers rented 8-hour stretches on
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The War Begins

more vulnerable than anyone had cared to discuss. And being the rather remote, sleepy little resort and port town that they were, would anyone in Washington care?
Downtown Brunswick as it appeared in the early 1940s. Glynn Academy is in the foreground and the Oglethorpe Hotel is near the riverfront in the distance. Photo courtesy of John A. Fahey.
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Chapter
Building the Base

The first of two blimp hangars at NAS Glynco takes shape in 1942. US Navy photograph courtesy of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.
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Building the Base
The United States Navy Arrives

Downtown Brunswick at the turn of the 20th century. Photo courtesy of the Golden Isles Arts and Humanities Association.
News that the Navy had selected Glynn County as a site for a base was welcomed in many ways. The Depression had taken
its toll. Elegant Victorian facades of downtown shops and offices held on to their dignity as the occupants lost their own. Business after business failed. Offices that once held
thriving sewing machine dealerships, dry goods and import firms were vacated. City fathers turned a sympathetic, blind eye to rows of cots that were lined up in the spaces upstairs over the shops on Newcastle Street. Anyone whose family could earn $7 a week was considered marvelously fortunate. Hardship was not new to Brunswick, Georgia. The citys history was a wildly fluctuating series of good times and bad, ranging from a prosperous seaport in peacetime to a nearly deserted outpost in both the Revolution and the War Between the States. Epidemics of yellow fever and other diseases typical
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of the 18th and 19th centuries reduced the population to a fraction of its usual census on several occasions. When war was declared in December 1941, favored status was given to building new ships to supply the troops. High priority was also given to construction of new military bases. Staggering
Building the Base

losses of newly manufactured munitions and supplies to the Nazis made coastal defense imperative for survival and success overseas. Glynn County, Georgia, was the epicenter of several extremely urgent war efforts: the shipyards, coastal patrol and the Navy base. This sudden and unique reversal of fortunes increased the population of the area more than fourfold. When the war broke out, the population of Brunswick was scarcely 15,000 people. Within a few months, it reached approximately 65,000 people, bringing all the predictable problems of virtual overnight growth.
A Navy airship flies over the J.A. Jones Yards on Brunswicks south side, where Liberty ships were built at a feverish pace in World War II. Photo courtesy of the Brunswick-Glynn County Library.
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A fierce competition began for skilled workers and living space. Commercial and residential construction in the United States came military uses. Seasoned foremen were nearly kidnapped from job sites around the Southeast, lured to Brunswick with sign-on bonuses that represented more than a years wages in Depression days. The pressure was on to find able-bodied workers for both the shipyards and the Navy base while the military was urgently beckoning young men and women into their ranks. Base representatives traveled to small towns near Brunswick, then to more remote rural communities to recruit workers. Housing was in desperately short supply, and many people, about 40% of the total workforce,
Building the Base

were trucked in from as far away as 40 miles each day. Exhausted men were often found sleeping soundly in the back rows of the towns two movie theaters, the Ritz and the Bijou. Along with the increase in population came an increase in bars, made prosperous with the unaccustomed presence of folding money in traditionally empty pockets. Law enforcement was inundated with complaints and emergencies. Young people from more isolated rural areas were well accustomed to extreme manual labor, but not to unlimited quantities of strong drink and even less to the close proximity of strangers.
A supervisor watches over workers at the J.A. Jones Yards in Brunswick. Photo courtesy of the BrunswickGlynn County Library.
to an abrupt halt as structural steel, plumbing pipes, electrical wiring and paint were diverted to
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a few miles away from home, and never without their families. Those who were too far from home to travel back and forth to the base construction site might be forced to rent a bed for the 8 hours between shifts and overtime. The days and months passed, without support from loved ones or familiar faces in the sea of humanity that swarmed over the once-sedate sidewalks of Brunswick 24 hours a day.
Building the Base

and all contracts were signed as of August 8, 1942. The site was created from a series of transactions including condemned land and outright purchase of acreage from the Brunswick Peninsular Company and T.R. Sawtell. Later acquisitions enlarged the base; but for the time, the initial footprint of the facility was deemed sufficient for wartime activity. The name NAS (Naval Air Station) Glynco, acknowledging Glynn County, was devised to avoid confusion with Brunswick, Maine, the location of another airbase. Initially, the design indicated one hangar for the new base. In June of 1942, Congress reassessed
Shipyard workers toil in the sweltering South Georgia sun to complete the top deck and gun turret assemblies for a Liberty ship. Photo courtesy of the Brunswick-Glynn County Library.
The real country boys, as foremen called them, were thrown into a situation as strange and disorienting as soldiers in the field, as many of them had never been more than
The Work Begins

The property, 2,400 acres of flat pineland and what the government described as palmetto swamp, was purchased for $6,000,000
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its plans for coastal defense and added a second hangar to construction orders. This enabled Glynco to house its own eight-ship fleet, and dedicate space to service ships of other detachments for refueling, maintenance and repair. Since patrol and escort areas sometimes overlapped the usual territories for specific squadrons, this capacity was important for Navy airships too far from their home base to make it back safely. Requisitions and specifications were altered for seven of the new east-coast bases to include a second hangar. At Glynco, work began on September 15, 1942 as the site was cleared. The first order of business was the installation of a series of railroad connections, including a 1.6 mile long spur of track to connect the base to three existing commercial lines that came into Brunswick: Southern, Atlantic Coastline and the Atlanta, Birmingham and
Building the Base

Coast lines. On the base property, workers struggled in the mud after typical fall rains to lay 5.4 more miles of track that would deliver materials to the building sites. Work was halted to allow the relocation of an African-American church and its burial grounds. The Navy hired the churchs minister and deacons to locate and transfer the remains. After the clearing and grading were completed, landing mats, taxiways and mooring-out circles for blimps were paved. Specifications called for bituminous asphalt paving rather than the usual heavy concrete, since airships were considerably lighter
The blimp hangars were assembled in Tacoma, Washington, dismantled and reassembled like giant puzzles in Georgia. A numbered position code was marked on each piece of lumber delivered by rail, as seen here, to the construction site at NAS Glynco. US Navy photo courtesy of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.
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Building the Base

than fixed-wing aircraft. The rest of the land was readied for building while a fantastically complicated plan was devised by architectural engineers of Robert and Company, Inc. in Atlanta to build the behemoth hangars needed to house the airships.
An intricate network of beams rise to form the parabolic arches of the huge hangars at NAS Glynco. The hangars were completely assembled in Tacoma, Washington, numbered and dismantled for rail transport, then reassembled in Brunswick. US Navy photos courtesy of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.
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Building the Base

from steel supports that were later covered with another material, but the war demand for steel made it necessary to build allwooden hangars. In fact, the hangars at NAS Glynco were the largest wooden structures in the world at that time.
Roofing materials on Hangar One seem to grow over the beams in layers as workers step carefully across a hastily assembled platform. All the timbers were fireproofed before delivery, using a chemical that did not protect them from moisture and might have hastened their deterioration in later years. US Navy photographs courtesy of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.
The Henry Mill and Timber Company in Tacoma, Washington, was selected as the supplier for base construction materials. The design called for Douglas fir timbers, cut and milled in Oregon. Normally, such large structures were fabricated
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The hangars were completely assembled at the mill, where each piece was numbered. The buildings were then dismantled, and sent one rail car load at a time to fireproofing plants all over the country. The pieces were reloaded in the same sequence. An orderly progression repeated that procedure, steadily delivering the parts as needed so that lumber did not stack up and present an obstacle to the crews manipulating the giant timbers. Amazingly, even in the chaotic days of the
Building the Base

first year of the war, there were no delays in the delivery routine. Steelworkers were called in by W.C. Shepard and the Griffin Construction Company of Atlanta, the assembly contractors, to fabricate the huge wooden parabolic arches
Enormous concrete pylons served as door supports for the hangars. Walls of the pillars and crossbeam were 15 thick. US Navy photos courtesy of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.
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of the hangars. A railroad line was positioned down the middle of each of the hangar floors, with cranes on the site lifting the treated timbers directly off the rail cars into place according to the numbered
Building the Base

plan. The 51 trusses that formed the supports of each hangar grew from the sandy coastal plain like the ribs of a massive beast. Stationary steel tower derricks, used as scaffolding to erect the timbers, were dismantled and moved numerous times as the hangars took shape. Concrete pylons over 14" thick and 150 feet tall were poured to support the doors of the hangars. When they were finished, each of the two hangars measured 1,058 feet long, 297 feet wide and 182 feet tall. The Navy estimated that one hangar alone contained enough lumber to build 380 6-room houses. Each hangar cost
Both hangars, mooring out circles and the first cluster of buildings were finished by January 1943. US Navy photo courtesy of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.
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Building the Base

A pair of K-series airships approach the hangar on portable masts, dwarfing the waiting ground crew. US Navy photo courtesy of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.
$3 million to build, and was large enough to enclose 6 football fields. In just six months the base
became operational. Naval Air Station Glynco was commissioned on January 25, 1943. At that point, the
entire base was about onethird completed, with just one barracks structure, a mess hall, two storage buildings, administration and radio buildings finished in time for the ceremony. The landing mats, taxiway and mooring-out circles for the blimps, the most essential requirements to launch airship activities, were completed as well. As time progressed, the Navy built gas and helium tanks, housing and mess halls, recreation facilities
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and a dispensary, garages and maintenance shops, plus all the storage and utilities required for the operation of the base. At the peak of the construction effort on the base, 2,300 civilian workers were employed at Glynco. Initially, the work was scheduled for one 10-hour shift per day, Monday through Saturday. Hours were cut back in December and January due to the early arrival of darkness on the fledgling construction
Building the Base

site. In the summer of 1943, Lt. Commander L.G. Loyd, the officer in charge of the project, allowed the schedule to ramp up to two 10-hour shifts per day, seven days a week, to complete the facility. The entire project was built in an incredible 429 days, or 14 months. What was the larger, more permanent impact of the Navy presence on Glynn County, Georgia? The influx of new money was certainly welcome as war erased tourism and the shipping trade. Construction workers came for the Navy base, and many who were too old for military service stayed on after its completion to lend their skills to record-setting
Below: Commissioning ceremonies for NAS Glynco on January 25, 1943. US Navy photo courtesy of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center. Right: The cover of the Airship Squadron 15 newsletter, dated June 1943. Courtesy of Ruby Allman.
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work on shipbuilding lines. The Great Depression was most certainly over. The wide recognition of the areas new importance was a source of pride. The
Building the Base

arrival of the United States Navy lifted the status of Brunswick, Georgia, to that of a National defense resource that played a major part in repelling a ruthless enemy. Past hardships were swept aside, small stature was ignored and natural assets were recognized. A new, permanent legacy of supplying the country with well-trained defenders began.
WAVES and sailors on parade in downtown Brunswick. Photo courtesy of the Golden Isles Arts and Humanities Association
36
Chapter
Giant Warriors
At a length of 250 feet, with a gas volume of over 400,000 cubic feet, K series airships dominated the skies over Glynn County in World War II and the Cold War years. US Navy photo courtesy of the Glynn County Airport Commission.
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C H A P T E R
Giant Warriors
ZP-15
In the discouraging early months of the war, accusations flew about general mismanagement, lack of national leadership and poor training. In fact, most of the scramble in the first six months of 1942 was due to a severely downsized military and a poor state of readiness. When the war broke out, the entire LTA (Lighter Than Air) program could count only 100 pilots, including active, retired, reserves and students, in its numbers. Only 100 qualified, enlisted air crewmen were on the rolls,
The cover of the Base newsletter, April 19, 1943. Courtesy of Ruby Allman.
with a pitifully understaffed administration census of 30 officers and 200 enlisted personnel. By 1944, the program listed 1,500 pilots and 3,000 air crewmen on active duty. By 1945, there were 706 officers and 7,200 enlisted men and women. In February 1943, Fleet Airship Wing One established their newest command, Airship Patrol 15 (ZP-15), at Naval Air Station Glynco. Commander Anthony L. Davis, the first commanding officer of the base, welcomed K-34, the first ship to arrive at Glynco. Soon, seven other blimps would join the K-34 to begin patrol and escort duties for the vulnerable ships off the Georgia coast.
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4
Compared to traditional patrol aircraft available for anti-submarine warfare at the time, blimps provided a relatively vibration-free observation platform to detect the presence of U-boats. Stationed at the large windows that wrapped around the control car, lookouts had a wide vista to report anything unusual bubbles, ripples, oil slicks or other signs of a suspected U-boats presence. K ships were capable of sustained flight, with a typical mission averaging about 8 hours during the first year of patrol duties. Since the airship program was so abruptly accelerated in the first confusing
Giant Warriors
months of the war, the numerous operational difficulties, mechanical and technical shortcomings and crew training problems were overcome in combat conditions. Despite these obstacles, average missions increased to 15-20 hours, and longer on occasion.
Airships in Wartime
Initially, the Navy had used airships primarily for research and development, along with duties in photography, map-making and placement of mines. Early experiments in rigid airship design brought well-publicized calamity. The growing German U-boat menace brought about a re-examination of the newer helium-filled, non-rigid K-series craft. Its low-altitude flying capability and relatively slow speed were ideal to hunt and track the deadly submarines that were terrorizing the coast.
Finding the Enemy Beneath the Sea

Locating a submarine from the air was a serious test of vigilance and endurance. On a smooth, glassy ocean surface, a submarine periscope could be visible several miles away. Unfortunately, that was rarely the case. Experienced U-boat captains used their periscopes sparingly
K-ships on a training exercise over the waters off the Georgia coast.US Navy photo Courtesy of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.
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4
and knew to travel very slowly to reduce their telltale wake. A choppy sea reflected every bit of light in the sky, turning each shadow into a potential submarine sighting. Limited visibility from rain, haze, fog or mist on a windy day hampered efforts even more. Blimps were armed with several surveillance tools that increased their effectiveness and made their participation in hunter-killer squadron operations viable. All Kseries ships were equipped with ASG radar with a 90mile radius and underwater search gear. Later in the war, Loran long-range navigation equipment, customized for its first aviation use, was added. Submarines of World War II vintage relied on
Giant Warriors
periodic surfacing for air intake and exhaust. Airborne radar would initially sight a periscope or snorkel from the submarines diesel engines. Once a suspicious sign suggesting a submarines
Below: A K-series airship framed in the doorway of an NAS Glynco hangar.
Right: Three of the eight Kships assigned to NAS Glynco moored on portable masts in front of their immense wooden hanger. Official US Navy photos courtesy of Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.
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4
presence had been detected on radar, the airship went toward it at full throttle- between 65 and 75 mph. At that point, the submarine would generally realize it had been spotted and submerge quickly, a maneuver called a "crash dive. When the blimp arrived at the point of the disappearing contact, a smoke float would be dropped to mark the location. Once over the suspected area, the blimp dropped instruments know as sonobouys around the target in a circular pattern.
A U.S. submarine preparing to crash dive in a training drill. Photo courtesy of Charles Tillery.
Giant Warriors
Developed specifically for anti-submarine warfare in 1942, a sonobuoy combined aspects of a radio receiver, transmitter and good old-fashioned fishing float. The device measured 6 inches in diameter by 3 feet in length, and floated upright when dropped into the ocean. The impact of its landing popped an antenna up, and at the same time a hydrophone, or underwater microphone, dropped down on a cable, flooding the interior compartment with seawater. A salt-water battery was activated, and began to send a signal tuned to a specific FM frequency. This effectively gave the hovering blimp
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point, its location would be confirmed by a magnetic anomaly detector (MAD), which could be used to detect a large metallic mass moving beneath the waters surface. Originally developed as airborne aids for geologists searching for oil and mineral deposits, combatadapted MAD equipment allowed blimps to detect variances in the earths magnetic field caused by the submarines. The MAD gear could see" the submarines without interference as airships had very little metal in the bow area, where the detector was grounded. Inside the gondola, or control car, of the blimp,
Giant Warriors
the readings were interpreted as distortions in the sweeping arcs of a needle attached to a pen, which transferred markings to a steadily advancing roll of paper in a chart recorder. In the early days of the war and the LTA program, the false alerts were frequent, due to the sobering number of wrecked ships already fallen victim to earlier U-boat attacks. Updated charts, improvements to the equipment, more training and experience quickly reversed the trend. Soon, the electronics operators defined the specific "signature" submarines created on the charts, making them
Commander, Fleet Air Wings Atlantic, Rear Admiral Robert Hickey (seated above the two stars), enjoys a turn at the rudder of the K-80. Visible in the bubble above the windshield is the ships 50-caliber machine gun. Photo courtesy John A. Fahey.
ears under the water to hear sounds of the subs screws turning. Eventually, the U-boat would be forced to pass between two sonobouys placed on the circumference of the circular pattern. At that
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vulnerable to detection even when submerged and in an all-quiet state. After moving in on the sonobuoy signals, the MAD was again used to attempt to find a precise location of the lurking U-boat. Three positive MAD readings were considered sufficient justification to attack, and the airship would drop
Giant Warriors
whatever armament it had contact bombs, depth charges or homing torpedoes. A burst of air followed by an oily patch on the surface meant that target had been hit. Often, the blimp would mark the spot with yellow dye markers or white smoke bombs and stay to guide fighter aircraft from nearby carriers or bases to make the attack with their more powerful weapons. If the sub surfaced, airship crews were ready with a 50-caliber machine gun mounted inside the control car.
Contact! The specific size and shape of this air bubble cluster on the surface, shown here as part of a US training exercise, meant a direct hit on a submarine below. Photo courtesy Charles Tillery.
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The Bold Mission of LTA
Chapter
Enormous K-series ships tower over the base contingent of fighter planes in the hangars at NAS Glynco.US Navy photo courtesy of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.
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C H A P T E R
On Board
Pratt and Whitney engines (suspended in the frame) on blimps offered power, but a punishing level of noise. US Navy photo courtesy of the Glynn County Airport Commission.
The entire patrol crew consisted of 9 men: a pilot, one or two co-pilots, two mechanics, two riggers, and two radiomen. One of the co-pilots would assume
duties as a navigator for the mission. Pilots manned the elevator control and rudder during takeoffs and landings. On patrols, a rigger could take control of the rudder, while one
of the pilots remained at the elevator control. This arrangement offered pilots welcome relief on flights that could last as long as 20 hours. The men worked in harmony in tight quarters, communicating over the roar of the crafts two powerful 425 horsepower Pratt and Whitney Wasp engines and the constant arcing and sparking of the temperamental radar and radio equipment. Many veterans of airship service came away from the experience with glowing memories, damaged eyesight from the close proximity to the radar equipment and hearing loss from the incessant noise. A former blimp crewman
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stated simply, Even if we had known about the potential dangers of doing our jobs, it wouldnt have made a difference to most of us. It was war, we had

a job to do and the enemy was out there. The skill of the pilot was a substantial factor in the success of this type of mission, as in all aviation. Numerous unpredictable conditions had to be monitored simultaneously, with pinpoint accuracy and timing. Rain was a dangerous variable. Although in photographs and from a distance, the silvery surface of the blimps appeared smooth, there were millions of crevices on the textured skin of the envelope, the large, inflated bag-like portion above the control car of the airship. One veteran stated, Up close, the skin of the envelope would remind you of an automobile tire. Each of the indentations in the rubberized fabric created an opportunity for water to collect, potentially adding up to 500 pounds
A routine patrol mission from Glynco to Gitmo in Cuba ended tragically, with a suddenly shifting wind slamming the airship into the rocky cliffs, then into the sea. Photo courtesy of Charles Tillery.
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C H A P T E R

accurate readings could be made. Another category of sailor was sometimes included on board a patrol airship: pigeons. Blimp pilot Commander John Fahey recalled, We did carry pigeons on some of our flights and there was a pigeon loft on the base. We never had to actually use them for communications, but took them out for pigeon training, letting them go for their flight back to the base making sure that we were not over 100 miles from Glynco because over 100 miles none ever returned. I was always amazed to find that most of them returned even though flying from
An airship executes a difficult landing on the deck of an aircraft carrier. Photo courtesy of David Gill and Wanda Taylor.
to the ships weight in moments. Wind was more of a challenge to an airship than to a traditional fixedwing craft, as its enormous size created a mass and
resistance dilemma. A constant adjustment of pressure was required to keep the blimp in proper shape, at a safe altitude and to keep the craft reasonably stable so that
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C H A P T E R

balloon flights, which was the only way to notify the base of our final landing. Patrol flights presented a number of challenges, as Commander Fahey related in his book, Wasnt I the Lucky One. Probably the most difficult problem was not flying the airships, but navigating. Pilots usually rotated this responsibility on a daily basis. All navigation was by dead reckoning. The envelope prevented an opportunity for celestial navigation. Radio direction was in its infancy and often a blimp was too far distant for it to be effective. When navigating, every hour I took wind stars, measuring the drift on various courses to be certain of the wind and staying on track during the many zigzags outlined on the patrol area chart. Constant vigilance of the weather and wind served me well. I never failed to return to the base safely on time. Others were not as fortunate. Some for the lack of remaining fuel crashing within ten miles of home base. A month before I reported to ZP-15, on November 8, 1943, K-13 ran out of fuel eight miles from NAS Glynco and crashed in the Georgia pines.
The shadow of a Navy airship silently announces its return home to Glynco. Photo courtesy of Charles Tillery.
so far out to sea. At Lakehurst (New Jersey, the base where the LighterThan-Air program began), we carried pigeons on free
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Blimps: An Exclusively American Advantage

A Navy blimp follows a CVE aircraft carrier as part of a hunter-killer mission. US Navy photo courtesy of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.
Although hunter-killer activity was an important component of airship service in the war, probably the most well-
documented success of the program was convoy escort. In fact, K ships in World War II flew a total of 55,900 operational flights with more than 550,000 hours in the air. Of the 89,000 surface ships escorted by blimps, there
was not a single loss of a ship to a U-boat when escorted by an airship. Vessel losses from German submarine attacks went from an early-wartime high of 574 ships in 1942 to 65 in 1943, dropping to a total of 8 for the entire year of
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5
1944 and only 3 in 1945. None of these losses was incurred while a surface ship was escorted by a blimp. There was only one documented loss of an airship as a result of a combat encounter with a submarine in 1943. Attacks on escorted vessels became too great

a risk for the German submarines, and the enemy blockade of the coastline of the United States ended. Once they suspected they had been spotted by a blimp, or Luftshifft, most U-boats would abandon the raid. If they brought their submarines to a depth that would insure the proper angle to accurately launch a torpedo volley against a convoy ship, they were vulnerable to confirmed sighting and counter measures. Blimps became a potent deterrent to attack, making the success rate of the program much higher than direct contact with U-boats would indicate. John P. Hely IV, a former blimp pilot, noted, Part of Germanys fear of the blimps came from their belief that we would be as efficient as they would have been if they had blimps. But in fact, nobody but the United States, or an ally, would have blimps during World War II. The reason was simple: helium. The United States had the only source of helium in the world adequate to maintain military airships. Although the Germans had done a great deal of research and engineering on the principles of lighterthan-air flight before the war, they lacked the materials to make a fleet viable. The crucial balance
Impure helium was stored in a Hortonsphere adjacent to Hangar One. During a long patrol, helium would become contaminated with fuel and other substances, which had to be removed before reuse. US Navy photograph courtesy of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.
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in the war against the Uboats was tipping in favor of the United States at last.

in the freezing Atlantic waters following a surprise U-boat attack. Since the bases were on American soil, many civilians with family members overseas expressed scorn and resentment toward members of LTA squadrons. President Roosevelt made the decision in the first weeks of 1942 to downplay the dangers of U-boats within gun range
Denied Respect
Service in the LTA program was dangerous, and sadly, not widely recognized or appreciated. Fire was a constant concern, claiming more airships than enemy guns. The crash crew was a highly respected group in every airship unit. Crash crews were often called out in the community to help local firefighters. Many Glynn County families remember Navy firefighters, pictured here in an Armed Forces Day exercise, with deep affection and gratitude. US Navy photo courtesy of the Glynn County Airport Commission.
Despite the confirmed success of the program, Lighter-Than-Air received surprisingly little respect from other parts of the armed services and the general public. Taunting songs followed them, referring to anyone who served in an airship squadron as just a pimp/who flies a blimp. Personnel on cruisers and destroyers referred to blimps as gas bags, even though airship escort saved thousands of men from dying a horrible death
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5
of coastal towns on the Atlantic seaboard. The specific anti-submarine warfare technology developed for the airship program, such as improved MAD equipment and sonobouys, appeared in inventories and reports simply as special equipment to conceal their

top-secret nature. Although his concern was public morale, Roosevelts actions effectively made the airships contribution to domestic security seem like a low priority to anyone who did not have access to the classified reports, including other military personnel. Even today, many Americans hold the opinion that Germany never directly attacked the United States. The term homeland security would not be coined until the aftermath of terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 decades after thousands of men and women honored their country with valiant service in LTA, repelling a ruthless enemy. When Commander John Fahey attended the funeral for a close boyhood friend who had perished on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day, the boys father refused to speak to him. The priest told me later that the reason was that he felt I had never gone to war.
In addition to their success as escort and patrol craft, blimps were excellent research and development ships. Numerous advances in defense, navigation and communications technology came from painstaking trials on board airships. US Navy photo courtesy of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.
52
POWs
Chapter
Behind the gates of NAS Glynco were many secrets, including the identity of some of the inhabitants. US Navy photo courtesy of the Glynn County Airport Commission.
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POWs
Roadside Assistance
Like the Navy Radar Training School at NAS St. Simons, which is located at the current McKinnon St. Simons Island Airport, NAS Glynco housed some German prisoners of war. The German prisoners worked primarily on base construction projects. Rumors circulated about the presence of a larger group of German POWs at Glynco, but since the base occupied hundreds of acres, many men stationed there never saw them. Commander John Fahey wrote, Recently, I recalled an incident which happened involving me and German POWs at NAS
The dilapidated military surplus Jeeps assigned to stateside bases were nothing more than a collection of mismatched parts on four bald tires, according to the recollections of many World War II veterans. Photo courtesy of Joseph Schlosser.
Glynco which, I am afraid, showed my naivete and my lack of experience far removed from the present more sophisticated life style of modern youth in our country. Although I could fly an airplane as a teenager, I was not licensed to drive a car until I was 27 years of age. During and after WWII (from 1943-1947) we traveled around the Marshes of Glynn on buses or by hitching rides from the many generous and hospitable Brunswick residents. In the days of WWII and its immediate aftermath, one couldnt purchase an automobile. In 1945-1946 Blimp Squadron 12, Detachment 5
operated out of NAS Glynco. I had returned to Glynco as a pilot in Detachment 5 in July 1945. We had a Jeep assigned to the unit, and on one morning I decided to drive it around what we called Perimeter Road, a dirt road just inside the outer boundary of the base. The road was desolate with nothing but brush and pine trees on both sides. Surprised and distracted on this isolated road by a group ahead in some kind of military garb, I let my Jeep slide off into a ditch to the right. After exiting the vehicle, to no avail I tried to push it up onto the road. The group ahead they were Germans. There were no American guards with
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them. I had heard that there were German prisoners housed on the base, but never encountered any or knew anyone who had contact with them. Some of us thought that it was a rumor. The Germans were very friendly. None, however, spoke English. Four or five joined me trying to push the vehicle out of the ditch. It wouldnt move. They kept trying until finally one German walked to the driver seat, smiled, and took the gear out of second and placed it into neutral. With all the manpower pushing, the Jeep, of course, almost flew out of the gully. All of them laughed and looked at me with expressions of amazement, wondering to themselves, I am sure, how in the world did they lose a war waged against such dumbkorfs. Many years later while on dangerous reconnaissance missions as an American assigned to the Russian army behind the Iron Curtain in East
POWs
Germany, I encountered numerous Germans who had been POWs in the United States. Most knew a little English and helped me in intelligence collection or getting out of difficult situations. Most had been housed in Waco, TX, and I never ran into one who had been a prisoner at Glynco. Even though stationed on the base in those days, we had no information provided to us about housing of German POWs.
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Chapter
Life and Opportunity

Original plank owners of NAS Glynco and Airship Squadron 15 gathered for this historic photo two weeks before the commissioning ceremony. Photo courtesy of Captain C.H. Dorchester.
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The Life Savers

During the war, the LTA program continued its original assignment of research and development while carrying out intensive patrol duties. Submarine detection equipment designed and refined for airship use served as the basis for Airborne Early Warning (AEW) and satellite technology in later years. Another application of airship expertise was airsea rescue. A technique refined at NAS Glynco by members of Squadron 15 was tested in the waters right in front of the St. Simons Lighthouse. Two airships, K-118 and K-88, were rigged for retrievals from the open water.
John A. Fahey piloted the K-88, (nicknamed 88 Keys) in this 1945 air-sea rescue training exercise over the St. Simons Sound. A bag of sea water served as an anchor to hold the craft steady as the sailor in distress was hauled up to the ship. Photo by Ralph B. Jones, Chief Photographer for the Atlanta Journal. Courtesy of Sandy Jones.
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Commander John Fahey was selected to test the new procedure. Someone with great ingenuity designed an excellent method to be used by a blimp in retrieving an individual from the water, Fahey wrote in his book, Wasnt I the Lucky One. All that was needed was a pilot to test the new idea in flightThe crew would drop a bag with the capacity to hold about 3,000 pounds of water. The bag would be connected by wire to a winch in the blimps control car. Trailing behind as the blimp approached a downed pilot, the bag would fill with water and eventually anchor the blimp over the man. A life ring would be lowered to the surface and the crew would hoist the person aboard. The blimp would be in a slightly light condition when the operation began. Once anchored, any tendency for the blimp to rise would be

countered by the weight of the water in the bag. I tried the maneuver. It worked. Airships used their unique abilities to great advantage in rescue work. Helicopters were still a novelty at this point in history, and none of the early models were at sea. The blimps ability to hover in a stationary location allowed the crew to lower food, medicine, first aid supplies and hot soup or coffee to survivors of shipwrecks still in lifeboats, awaiting rescue by surface craft. This was especially important in situations when the sea was too rough for surface rescue units to reach the men. As techniques were refined
The air-sea rescue training mission, as seen from the water. The rescue subject in the life ring was hoisted aboard the K-88 as a 3,000 pound bag of sea water held the ship steady over the mans location. Photo courtesy of John A. Fahey.
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Opportunity
For many young people in the United States, the war presented an opportunity to change their lives while serving their country. The Great Depression had held millions of Americans captive, unable to even dream of further education and travel while they struggled simply to keep everyone fed and sheltered. Although no one would have chosen this particular way to pull the country out of its paralyzing inertia, the fact remained that a war of such large proportions leveled the playing field for many. Faced with a widowed mother and three younger brothers, at the age of ten
John A. Fahey continued his early success at NAS Glynco in a long, illustrious career in the Navy. As a Russian linguist and spy for the United States in the Cold War, Fahey was called upon to advise military leaders and Presidents. Pictured here with John F. Kennedy as he campaigned for President in 1960, Fahey remembers JFK as a good listener. Photo courtesy John A. Fahey.
over time, other duties included delivering charts to surface craft and occasionally lowering a doctor onto a ships deck to attend to a critically ill seaman. Air-sea aid and rescue would be used for the duration of the LTA in the Navy.
in the depression years of the thirties, my prospects for a professional life were very gloomy, Commander John Fahey related. My father had been the second oldest of fourteen children and worked with his older brother and his father to support younger brothers in pursuing their college educations shortly after the turn of the century. Although his brothers became successful and affluent in later life, when my father died at the age of 45, my mother struggled alone without help to keep our family together. Despite the fact that there was no hope for me to seek a higher education, my mother let me enter
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the college track in high school where I excelled in math, physics and foreign languages. After graduating from high school, I was able to enter a federally many years later that my mother visited the director of the program and pleaded on the grounds of my meager financial opportunities to get a skill or an education. The director had succumbed to her desperate appeals. It took me quite a while to catch up to the other students who had a high school background in drafting. Upon completion of the intensive program while still a teenager, I was qualified as a draftsman and offered a position in the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey Department. Before accepting the offer, from a fellow high school classmate I learned of a Navy announcement about

accepting high school graduates for the Naval Aviation Training Program to join college students if they could pass the entrance examinations with high scores. I sped to the Boston Naval headquarters and took the tests. Fortunately I not only had advanced physics in high school, but also had enrolled in an aerodynamics course, enabling me to pass the Navy tests without difficulty. Entering the Navy Flight Program was a great equalizer. My collegeeducated first cousin, son of one of my affluent uncles for whose education my father had toiled as a skilled laborer, was a
F4F Wildcats were used at Glynco and in many US Navy aviation training programs in World War II. US Navy photograph courtesy John Lindgren.
sponsored program at Tufts College, training selectees in engineering drawing. I had no secondary educational background for admission, but I learned
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Naval Airship Aviator, and now I was to join him as an equal with the opportunity to achieve my own potential in life. Assignment in 1943 to NAS Glynco was provided by either a stroke of luck or a godsend. A fairly new base of airship operations, it provided opportunities to excel far more plentiful than those at the Mecca of airship operations, Lakehurst, New Jersey. Experienced senior blimp pilots in large numbers were stationed at Lakehurst, where opportunities for young Ensigns, not even old enough to vote, were few. At Glynco, chances to advance to senior and command pilot were excellent for unfledged officers who showed promise. The United States also underwent a new equalization in its geographical areas as well as in the rapidly changing prosperity of its citizens. NAS Glynco and its surrounding region also experienced a metamorphosis. The area became well known for its wartime contributions as a Navy anti-submarine warfare center at Glynco, Navy training school on St. Simons Island, and in Brunswick the construction of liberty ships so essential for winning the war. My

new life began at Glynco at the same time the area in southeastern Georgia also flourished anew. Equalization, as a result of my opportunity to enter the Navy and the foundation established during a three-year tour of duty at Glynco, led to completion of my Naval career with one rank higher than that of my Lakehurst-stationed first cousin and provided me with a future as a university faculty member, a Russian linguist with many exciting experiences, a wonderful wife, met at Glynco over sixty years ago, and three children, six grandchildren, and two great grandchildren. Thanks Glynco!
Glynn Academy senior Barbara Ann Haag and her Navy beau, John Fahey, on a date at the Palm Lodge on Highway 17 in 1944. Their romance entered its 60th year in 2005. Photo courtesy John A. Fahey.
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Chapter
The Glynn Academy Class of 1945. Every member would forever be affected by the War. Photo courtesy of Barbara Ann Haag Fahey.
Golden Isles Gold Coast
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The Graduation Dance for the Glynn Academy Class of 1945 offered Glynco sailors in their dress blues a chance to impress the local girls. Photo courtesy of Barbara Ann Haag Fahey.
Love in Bloom
It was not surprising that the citizens of Glynn County loved the Navy. Their arrival signaled not
only the end of the Depression in the county, but the assurance that they were to be cared for and protected. When two Navy
officers were billeted in Agnes Lyons spacious Old Town Brunswick home in the early days of Glyncos construction,
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she worried that the cries of her newborn son would disturb them. They begged her repeatedly not to worry about them, as both had children of their own and crying babies were nothing new. Still, she took extreme care to keep the children quiet in the few hours the officers were asleep in her home. They worked such long, awful hours, she recalled. It seemed like they would just get to sleep when someone would call from the base for them to

go back for some problem or another. They would have to leave even before I could fix something for them to eat. They never complained, just thanked me for what I was able to do for them and left. For young, single ladies in Brunswick, the handsome new boys in their snappy dress blues were exciting. And as young people often do, they found a way to have fun even in the midst of fear, uncertainty, shortages and hardship. Wartime brought people together who never would have had the chance to meet otherwise. Barbara Ann Haag Fahey, a student at Glynn Academy in the 1940s, found not only wartime romance but a life partner thanks to NAS Glynco. I was fresh out of the ninth grade living with my mother alone in our home, as I was the last of five children, Barbara reminisced. Brunswick, Georgia, became my home away from my Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, home by an unexpected circumstance. My sister, Bette, had returned to Pennsylvania to have her first child. Her husband was a chemical engineer, working at Hercules Powder in Brunswick, Georgia. She had to have an appendectomy and of course needed help to return with a baby to Georgia. My mother
Newlyweds John and Barbara Fahey dance at the Officers Club at Glynco in 1945. Photo courtesy of John A. Fahey.
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agreed to allow me to help my sister, as school was out for the summer. At that time war was all around us in one way or another. We sat in a crowded coach all the way to Georgia with servicemen in every car. Bette, her husband, Bill, and daughter, Barbara, my namesake, had a small second floor apartment with Mrs. Hotch at 1406 Lee Street. I completely fell in love with Brunswick and all of its very friendly residents.
A NAS Glynco blimp flies low over the schoolyard at Glynn Academy in 1945, allowing a lovestruck young sailor to ask a pretty coed for a date over the ships loudspeaker. Photo courtesy of John A. Fahey.
You couldnt say, Hey, to anyone in Pennsylvania and I loved the quiet, peaceful surroundings. Now, if you didnt know me, youd believe thiswhat I found were hundreds and hundreds of men, no service ignored. I was 17, and it was a Golden Isles Gold Coast for me. It didnt take me a long time to let my mother know that there was another small apartment in Mrs. Hotchs house across from my sister Bette. Please, I pleaded. Rent our home and move here. Bless her heart, she did just that and soon I was in Glynn Academys class of 45 and dating
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and dancing through every service group. My dear mother started to alter uniforms for service men. The shipyard was in full swing, turning out Liberty ships like magic and we knew we all had to work together and support the war effort. We stepped on tin cans at home and practiced marching at school. About $7.50 was what our food cost per week for mother and me. With $35 rent per month, life was without much strain. The Glynn Academy students were very kind to me, and friendly. With that all day, plus dating and dancing at night, I had a great time in Brunswick.

There were some drawbacks the pulp mill let you know it was there when the wind was right and heaven help you if you had to drink sulfur water. The Marshes of Glynn were O.K. for swimming if you stayed out of the mud sailing was good at high tide going over a rickety bridge to St. Simons Island and its beautiful beaches was welcome and it was all sweet. There were days when a neighbor heard her son was lost and we all mourned. Once a son thought lost was found, and we celebrated. I met my future husband, John (Fahey), on the base at Glynco. He swept me off my feet well, not completely we had no transportation as you couldnt buy a car, and so we walked a lot and took the bus to the base. A taxi cab happened occasionallyor we might double date with a friend. In a year and a half he asked me to marry him, which I did and our lives for 60 years have been filled with travel, challenges, 3 children, 6 grandchildren, and 2 great grandchildren. Johns an overachiever and has kept me busy, productive and active, from our first meeting at lunch on the base at Glynco in wonderful Brunswick, Georgia.
John and Barbara Fahey at a Navy ship reunion in April 2005. The couple met on a blind date set up by one of Faheys fellow pilots, Bob Ashford, at NAS Glynco in 1944. John remembers, For me truly it was love at first sight. Photo courtesy of Dunning Company Inc.
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The Cold War Heats Up

Caption
Chapter
Several eras of Navy aviation coexisted peacefully at NAS Glynco in the 1950s. A row of McDonnell F2H Banshee fighters poise on the edge of the newly constructed runway. In the background, the enormous K-series airship and its hangar are reminders of the bases importance in the Lighter-Than-Air program. NAS Glynco was the only air station in the world to operate all categories of aircraft at the same time: blimps, helicopters, propeller craft and jets. Photo courtesy of Bob Badzinski, supplied by John Lindgren.
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C H A P T E R
For a brief time after World War II, blimp hangars at Glynco were used for storage of decommissioned war planes. Right: Rows of SNJ fighters with their wings removed were stacked in the hangars until reactivated for use in Korea. US Navy photos courtesy of the Glynn County Airport Commission.
The War Ends

When the war ended in 1945, the base was reduced to Naval Air Facility status. By 1947, operations at Glynco were cut back considerably. The blimps
departed for Weeksville, North Carolina, and eventually were returned to the home base for all eastcoast LTA activity, Lakehurst, New Jersey. At the end of the war, the Plane Preservation Program began. Glyncos immense hangars were turned into storage areas
for partially dismantled aircraft. Where the giant silvery airships once floated, tethered to their fragile-looking masts, row upon row of F6Fs and other attack planes were stacked, eerily stripped of their wing assemblies and former fierce appearance.
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9
In 1948, the Navy announced its plans to close the base in the summer of 1949, after all the planes scheduled for storage were processed. By March of 1949, the program was to have been cut short as many of the aircraft on the list for preservation were

needed again for active service with tensions building in Korea. The contingent of 168 civilians and 175 military men waited for the next development as the directors of the Chamber of Commerce pleaded with the Navy not to close the base. But it was not the Chamber of Commerce that convinced the Navy to keep the base open. Commander W.R. Peeler announced to the Brunswick News that Glynco was to be kept open indefinitely because of its importance in the Navys Lighter-Than-Air operations. He also pointed out that Glynco was the only blimp base between Weeksville, North Carolina, and the Florida Keys. If the Navy closed the base, it would be handicapped in its experimental LTA operations at Key West, where there were no hangars to store the blimps. In his January 1949 press release, Peeler announced that LTA
NAS Glynco enjoyed a comeback in the early 1950s thanks to a renewed interest in using blimps for anti-submarine warfare. Once again, sailors assembled for inspection in the enormous wooden hangars at Glynco. Photo courtesy of Charles Tillery.
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C H A P T E R

activities would be the main focus of Glyncos future activities. The town was overjoyed, and efforts were made to create a volunteer Naval Reserve LTA unit. In September 1949, an airship returning to Glynco after a long flight paid a visit and thrilled crowds gathered at dedication ceremonies and the inaugural football game at the brand-new Lanier Field.
A visit from a Navy blimp made a lasting impression on crowds gathered for the dedication of Lanier Field in 1949. Courtesy of the Brunswick-Glynn County Library
For sheer drama, reported the Brunswick News, the dropping of a football from a Glynco blimp was hard to beat... Incidentally, that was quite a feat of maneuvering. In fact, the pin-point bombing of the 50-yard line did everything but steal the show.
Heated Words, Cold War

The late 1940s and early 1950s were a time of adjustment and unrest where the military was concerned. Postwar decommissioning of bases left many small towns in economic turmoil, and confidence had been
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shaken by the vulnerability of the coast to submarine attacks. Plans to step back LTA activities after the war created passionate outcry from the public as well as some sectors of the military. Disputes between various branches of the military became a turf war over aviation responsibilities. In August 1951, Airship Squadron 2 was transferred from Lakehurst, New Jersey,
Free-ballooning was a favorite part of LTA training at Glynco. Pilots and crewmen needed to know how to guide a ship that had lost power safely to the surface. Judging by the smiling faces, nobody minded the standing-room-only accommodations. US Navy photo courtesy of the Glynn County Airport Commission.
Caption
to Glynco. The outbreak of trouble in Korea prompted the Navy to take another look at its Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) posture and upgrade its participation in the airship program. The temperate climate of the Brunswick area meant that training exercises could be carried out all year long, with minimal interference from the weather. By January 1952, Glyncos classification went from Naval Air Facility to Naval Auxiliary Air Station (NAAS). The base carried the unique distinction of being the only facility in the world with every known type of aircraft in use: blimps, helicopters, prop planes and jets.
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The period of time between 1951 and 1953 was a time of frustration and false starts for the Navy in Brunswick and the Golden Isles. Congress approved an expenditure in 1951 of $10,000,000 for expansion at Glynco. In the

midst of the bidding and contract awards process, a new administration was elected and ordered all federally- funded defense spending to come to a halt pending review. Protests and confusion followed. By January 1953, all conflicts were resolved and the future of NAAS Glynco looked bright. All airship training programs for the entire US Navy were transferred to Glynco. In April, the go-ahead was given to bring the Combat Information Center (CIC) School from Glennview, Illinois, to Georgia. The target date for the completion of transfer of all CIC courses was set for 1956. A massive building program included the construction of a new 8,000 runway, CIC training building, new Bachelor Officers Quarters, Operations Building and Enlisted Mess Hall. The base regained its full Naval Air Station status by the end of the decade. Further changes came about when Glynco became part of the Naval Air Training Command in 1953, and the CIC School was designated a separate command from the air station in 1955. By the end of 1958, Glynco had three resident commands: the Naval Airship Training Command, Airship Squadron Two and the Naval CIC School.
Construction begins on the new 8,000 runway at NAS Glynco. Photo courtesy of Charles Tillery.
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A Glynco sailor on pressure watch makes an adjustment to the envelope of a K-series blimp. US Navy photo courtesy of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.
Chapter
10
Dangers and Demands
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10
Dangers and Demands
Blimps were demanding aircraft, requiring a large crew of skilled ground handling personnel to launch and land. These shots from inside the gondola of a blimp show the number of men needed on an ordinary day; windy weather or an approaching storm might call for a larger crew. Photos courtesy of Charles Tillery.
Hazardous Conditions
Despite their impressive, poetic appearance, blimps could be difficult and dangerous. On the ground, blimp veteran and author Larry Rodrigues referred to airships as bucking around like a wild animal caught in a trap when landing in
windy weather, or in extreme temperatures. Flights were timed to depart and return at dawn whenever possible, when winds were lightest and temperatures coolest. Men trained at Lakehurst, New
Jersey, remembered the early morning launches in miserable, frigid winter weather with loathing; at Glynco, they appreciated the milder climate and the lack of treacherously icy pavement. In difficult
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10
Dangers and Demands

masts drawn by heavyduty military vehicles called mules. Great care was exercised to stay clear of the exposed propellers on the powerful twin engines mounted on each side of the control car. Common sense would dictate this, however upon landing in hot or windy conditions, the great ships shifted suddenly and without warning. Ground crews would have to watch several things simultaneously: wind speed and direction, the speed at which the ship approached, the condition of the runway and the effect of humidity or, worse, rain, on the ships weight. Larry Rodrigues commented, In no other aircraft situation do you not know how much your craft weighs. Another unusual variable in LTA flight was the very fact that the ship was constantly trying to escape from its moorings. The mooring-out circles, as the large cloverleaf-shaped tarmac discs were called, gave the anchored airship a full 360 degrees to rotate in the wind without hitting another blimp. If the ship was outdoors on a portable mast, a seemingly mild gust of wind could send the tail of the ship straight upward, a condition called kiting. Anyone inside the control car performing routine checks and maintenance
Two K ships on portable masts await their next patrol at NAS Glynco. US Navy photo courtesy of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.
weather, everyone on the flight line might be called in to help land a ship, from the clerk to the mechanics. Teams of men grabbed lines to guide the ship in and out of the hangars, mooring them on portable
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again, landing on the wheels supporting the control car with a bonejarring impact. Despite the demands and many hazards, life was not all work in the huge blimp hangars at Glynco. Sailors in the LTA program were proud of their unique craft and the importance of its contribution to anti-submarine warfare and search-andrescue operations. The men and women of Glynco enjoyed a certain amount of freedom and autonomy, and an occasional opportunity came about to develop new talents. Don Donatt remembered, During the Christmas of 1953 we had a tree in the
Dangers and Demands

electronics shop. I hung all the VR tubes, or any vacuum tubes with gas in them, on the tree, and then I turned my radar on scan. The radar swept back and forth across the tree, the tubes would light on and off at regular intervals. Everyone thought that was clever and I think the local paper had a write up about it. A well-known saying in Glynn County was that the massive blimp hangars had their own weather. It could be dry outdoors while a shower drenched the inside of the structure. What must have seemed like an urban legend referred to the terrariumlike effect of semitropical
A slight breeze was capable of sending the tail of a blimp higher than the nose, a condition called kiting. US Navy photo courtesy of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.
could find himself hurled headlong into the front windows, pelted with anything left loose in the cabin when the ship kited. When the wind stopped, the ship would level out
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humidity inside the cavernous, stifling wooden buildings meeting cooler coastal breezes when the clam-shell doors were open. Blimps were highly sensitive to change in climate. AT3 Robert L. Koryciak, aviation techni-
Dangers and Demands

cian for Patrol Unit 2, explained, Pressure watch meant going from airship to airship inside the hangar and checking their internal pressure. There were usually 5 ships in the hangar and the pressure reacted to the outside temperatures. If the outside temperature was dropping, we had to pump air into the airships to keep them rigid; if the temperature was rising, we had to open valves to let some air out. The sensitivity to its environment and its immense size made a blimp a hazardous craft to fly in peacetime as well as combat. Altimeters, which indicated the ships altitude, were crucial to the safety of airships, which often staged launches before sunrise, making visual evaluation impossible. Robert Koryciak recalled the failure of an altimeter on a foggy February day on patrol from Glynco in 1956. One morning we took off in the K-100 at about 4:40 A.M. behind one of our other airships, the K-97. Our command pilot, I believe, was a Commander Doyle. The first radioman was a first-class petty officer named Jeffries. He was in the radio position during take-off and sent the take-off information, by Morse code, to NAAS Glynco (NEA-1). I was in the middle of the gondola, in a seat with my seatbelt
K ship vs. Georgia pines: An altimeter malfunction caused this dramatic crash in 1956. Fortunately, no lives were lost and no serious injuries were sustained. Photo courtesy of Robert Koryciak.
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Dangers and Demands

We fired off signal flares and a young man on a motorcycle saw them and found his way back to where we were. He went back out and led the emergency vehicles back in. We were all transported back to Glynco and given thorough physical exams at the Medical Center. Other than a few scrapes and bruises there were no major injuries. The Navy released a statement that was printed the next day in the Brunswick newspaper that one of our airships had made an emergency landing in a wooded area due to mechanical failure.
Right: The engine of the blimp that crashed off US Highway 17 in February, 1956. Below: Limbs of pine trees pierced the skin of the blimp gondola as it descended in the predawn darkness. Photos courtesy of Robert Koryciak.
fastened and looking out the side window. It was extremely dark and there were no visible lights on the ground except for one or two cars when we passed over Highway 17 and turned south. In a matter of a few minutes and without warning, we began hitting trees. The gondola was bouncing violently from side to side and the lights were going on and off. Finally, after
one last violent jolt, we came to a stop. Commander Doyle ordered the fuel and electric power to be shut off. Everything went totally black until a couple of flashlights came on and we went to the rear of the gondola and jumped the five or six feet into the brush and broken trees limbs. We got to a clearing nearby where a head count was taken and everybody was accounted for.
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Tarzan and the Martians
Chapter
1 1
Imagine how a 10-yearold would react to an enormous blimp suddenly appearing without warning outside his classroom window. US Navy photo courtesy of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.
C H A P T E R
11 Tarzan and the Martians
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So Sail On Men from Mars!

While residents of Brunswick and the Golden Isles became accustomed
Routine training flights took Glynco blimps over a number of small communities on the southern Atlantic coast. US Navy photo courtesy of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.
to seeing the blimps sail over their heads, not everyone in other parts of the Southeast was immune to the impact of the sight.
On January 18, 1956, children at Live Oak Elementary School in Florida were shocked to look out the window of their classrooms and see a blimp from Glynco hovering overhead. Several classrooms emptied to join the lucky fifth graders already outside for physical education. Senior pilot Lt. Commander Ervin Hodge, a native of Live Oak, was touched to see a group of excited children on the playground, hurriedly organized into formation by their quick-thinking teachers to spell out the word, HI. The airship came as close as it could, and dropped down cups
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bearing the identification of ZP-2 for the children to keep. Resourceful teachers turned the

incident into a language arts lesson, directing the fourth and fifth graders to write letters to the crew. Their letters ranged from the hilarious to the touching. One young lady thought the ship was a giant birds egg, while another child feared that the approaching blimp was a bomb. A young boy thanked them politely for interrupting class, and suggested that the crew consider becoming daredevils in movies. I think everybody would like you, too. In those days of heroic science fiction of the mid1950s, every intergalactic intruder was assumed to be from Mars. Apparently one lad named Buddy Linton was unconvinced that the ships inhabitants were human, breezily bidding
To a teacher, everything is an opportunity to learn, including the discovery of a huge silver blimp hovering over your classroom.Courtesy of the Brunswick-Glynn County Library.
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them, So sail on men from Mars. The letter most treasured by the men of ZP-2 was from a young man named Lester Frier. He wrote, Some of us were scared at first, but when I saw the United States Navy written on it, I wasnt scared any more.
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Playing Tarzan
Life at NAS Glynco was busy, and the duty was frequently dangerous. Yet many of the veterans of service there remember it as a more relaxed, not-bythe-book type of place. And with the lure of every type of airborne
The ground handling crew awaits the arrival of an airship on the runway at NAS Glynco. Photo courtesy of Charles Tillery.
transportation known to mankind in the 1950s within reach, young sailors succumbed to the call of the gigantic toys in the blimp hangars. As Donald Donatt, a member of the ground handling crew of Airship Squadron 2 remembers, the fun could
easily turn into a thrill ride with very high stakes. Let me review the procedure to take a blimp out of the hangar, he explained. After the portable mast is attached at the nose, the blimp is moved forward. However, the tail section is controlled by hauling on the two long lines attached at the stern. Crewmen are directed to pull one way or another by the Chief in charge (to keep the tail from the side of the hangar). When the blimp reaches the sill, the tractor pulling the mast accelerates to clear the sill quickly, in case a side wind outside would blow the blimp into the side of the hangar. At this time, the handling crew
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releases the two aft lines and after the tractor has stopped, someone (in the tradition, the first man on the line) disconnects the

line, gathers it up and returns it to the hangar. Well, we discovered that as long as the person who recovers the line has to go out there, why not hang on to the line and play Tarzan? With the tractor accelerating, the swing on the line turns out to be very long. It was my turn to play Tarzan that day except there was one problem. The man in the cockpit was not paying attention. He was supposed to give the blimp up elevator as it cleared the hangar to keep the blimp from kiting. (Kiting happens when the tail rises while on the portable mast.) Well, he gave it down elevator instead and it kited! Now, everyone in LTA knows that once your feet leave the ground you let go of the line except when
Don Tarzan Donatt poses in front of his ship in 1953. Photo courtesy of Don Donatt.
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youre playing Tarzan. The next thing I remember was

the Chief hollering, Get the hell down from there! There I was, about 100 feet above ground and everyone looked like ants. Well, fortunately I did not panic and came down hand-over-hand while the idiot in the cockpit turned to up elevator. The next day in the bulletin there was an announcement: No more Tarzan play. Still feel queasy, though, when I am in a high area.
The cover of a safety manual compiled at NAS Glynco features the squadrons mascot, Blackdog, lecturing a class full of young blimps. The booklet contained a collection of actual mishaps, losses and near-catastrophes in LTA on the base, including horseplay. Courtesy of Ruby Allman.
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Chapter
12
The Legend of Blackdog
Blackdog, the mascot of ZP-2, from 1944 to 1957. US Navy photo courtesy of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.
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12
The Mutt with Wings

The official Christmas card of ZP-2. Courtesy of the BrunswickGlynn County Library.
When ZP-2 transferred down to the Georgia coast from Lakehurst, New Jersey, in August 1951, the crew had
a special member accompanying them: Blackdog, a scrappy little mixed breed dog of probable chow and boxer ancestry. The mutt took up residence with the Airship Utility Detachment in 1944. When the unit was sent to Glynco seven years later, no one questioned that the dog would come along as well. Before coming to Georgia from Lakehurst, Blackdog flew enough hours to justify the notation Received flight training. The little mascot was always on hand during ground handling operations, chasing lines and grabbing ropes in his teeth. Around Easter in 1953, a piece of lumber fell from the ceiling of the hangar, puncturing
the envelope of a blimp at the mast. Blackdog barked incessantly until someone came to investigate. The little dog earned his keep that day, saving the Navy the cost of K ship by allowing the riggers to patch the ship before it had deflated to the point where it collapsed and other areas were damaged. On August 12, 1955, Hurricane Connie threatened the Georgia coast with damaging high winds. The members of ZP-2 prepared to evacuate the blimps to a safer mooring. In the rush of preparations, no one thought to check on the dogs whereabouts. As the last ship was airborne, the ground crew began to look for the dog, but he was
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nowhere to be found. The search went on for 20 minutes before the ground crew frantically radioed the last blimp, asking them to check their lines. To their horror, the airship crew realized that the animals leg had become tangled in their lines and he had been dragged aloft. The poor dog had been dangling helplessly beneath the blimp for a total of an hour and twenty minutes, badly injured and buffeted by approaching hurricane winds. The crew immediately turned the $2 million blimp back toward Glynco, fighting storm force gusts, and lowered the hurt, frightened
ZP-2 at Blackdogs funeral. Photo courtesy of the BrunswickGlynn County Library.
dog into the waiting arms of the ground crew. He was rushed to a local vet, who put him on the binnacle list for 2 weeks while his leg healed. This episode won Blackdog a spot in the limelight on WSB Radio 750 in Atlanta as The Newsmaker of the Day. After his dramatic rescue and recovery, Blackdog was grounded, and on numerous occasions, required forcible removal from the hangar. Slightly insulted from his change of assignment, the canine mascot of ZP-2 made himself useful catching rats. He died on August 22, 1957, at approximately 18 years of age. The little dog was buried near his beloved hangar, with his crew in attendance at his funeral.
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Chapter
13
Blimps of silver; hearts of gold. The men of ZP-2 had plenty of both. Photo courtesy of the Brunswick-Glynn County Library.
Brownie
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13
Brownie
What are we going to do about this?

Katherine West greets her new puppy, compliments of the tender-hearted men of ZP-2 at NAS Glynco. Photo courtesy of the Brunswick-Glynn County Library.
In most ways, the men of Glyncos Airship Squadron 2 were just like all other American men of their generation. Family men, patriotic, head of the household-type guys. Loved kids, loved dogs. Just like everybody else except for the fact that they soared over the Earths surface in gigantic, silvery, helium-filled blimps. It was that inclination toward intrepid tender-heartedness that
encountered the cruelty of the world in the early fall of 1956. Chief Petty Officer R.C. Duncan read a letter to the Editor of the Atlanta Journal that moved him deeply. It was a letter written by little Katherine West, who had recently lost her father and had just been assaulted with a new, unbearable grief. Her beloved dog, a boxer named Brownie, was killed by a hit-and-run driver. She wanted to know how this could happen, how such a good dog could be carelessly killed, how the driver could just go on without stopping to help her suffering pet and how grownups who were supposed to be in charge
of the world could allow such things to happen. The plaintive letter sent a spear of fatherly indignation through the Chiefs heart. He cut out the letter from the paper, and tacked it to the Mess Hall bulletin board the next morning. What are we going to do about this? he wrote in the margin of the clipping. The squadrons most dedicated dog-lover, Lt. Commander Edwin Kryspin, raised championship boxers and as luck would have it, his own pet had just given birth to a litter of promising new pups. Commanding Officer R.T. Brinn wrote little Katherine a letter, informing her that there were still people in
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the world who cared about such things, and that she was to have the pick of the litter. As soon as the puppy was old enough, two men from ZP-2 enlisted the aid of Lt. Commander Walter Foley, a pilot at the air station, and flew the
Brownie
Katherine West and her Glynco benefactors admire her boxer puppy at NAS Atlanta. Her smile was all the thanks they needed. Photos courtesy of the Brunswick-Glynn County Library.
dog in a Glynco plane to Atlanta on October 19, 1956, where they delivered it to its delighted new owner.
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Airborne Early Warning
Chapter
14
This enormous Super Constellation aircraft, shown here at its final duty station at the Naval Air Museum in Pensacola, served many years on its training mission at Glynco. Photo courtesy of George Giessman.
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CIC School
The new Combat Information Center School complex at NAS Glynco boasted every piece of state-of-the-art radar and military equipment available in its day. Photo courtesy of James S. Smith.
The relationship between blimps and the Combat Information Center, or CIC, School at Glynco in the 1950s was a logical union. When radar capabilities
improved during World War II, the entire system began an evolutionary process. Whether the report came from a patrol or a training mission, the procedure was the same. The coordinates
of the sighting were radioed to the Combat Information Center on land. The sightings, as in the war, might have originated from visual location, radar, magnetic anomaly detectors or sonar equipment. In wartime and in the 1950s, the readings were transferred at the CIC to a large plexiglas disk that bore the same markings as the radar screen. A light was placed behind the lens of the reading disk, and a large piece of paper was clamped to the surface. The radar readings were marked on the paper, which bore register marks to re-position the sheet if it was needed for later reference. After the
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fighter aircraft, surface craft or ordering a response by the airship. One veteran of airship service noted wryly that although the system might have been primitive by todays standards, nobody had to stop the war because the computer went down. The systems only flaw was the occasional need to replace the light bulb behind the lens. As the science of electronics developed, Glyncos training advanced with it, keeping combat support personnel from all branches of the service on the cutting edge of defense technology. By April 1956, the new CIC Building was completed at a cost of nearly $1 million, equipped to train both officers and enlisted men. The new Bachelor Officers Quarters, called BOQ in the Navy, was completed at just over $1 million, supplying 180 rooms for participants in Advanced Naval Flight Officer and other training courses. The commanding officer at the base was quoted by the Brunswick News, forecasting a total of 3,000 men and women to be stationed at Glynco by 1958.
Sailors in formation at NAS Glynco proudly spelled out the name of their new school for an Armed Forces Day photo in 1956. US Navy photo courtesy of the Brunswick-Glynn County Library.
Willy Victor
The advent of the Cold War called for new technology to comply with the emerging need for Airborne Early Warning (AEW) protection. The EC-121
information had been analyzed, decisions were made concerning directing
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aircraft, manufactured by Lockheed, was designated as the WV-2, or Constellation, by the Navy. The men and women attached to WV-2 squadrons referred to the plane affectionately by its alphabetic equivalents, Willy Victor. Numerous adaptations and improvements were made soon after the first Constellations were put into service, and the Super

Constellation, or SuperConnies, as they were also nicknamed, appeared on Navy bases. Designed for long-range reconnaissance and surveillance flights, these elegant airplanes sported a prominent radome on the top and bottom of the cabin, which housed a mobile radar station. The Super-Connies augmented the blimps patrol activities with greater speed and longer range per patrol. The Constellation was considerably more expensive to manufacture and operate than an airship. But its longer range, modern technology and quick response capability made it ideal to counter possible enemy aggression in the Cold Wars intense early years. The WV-2 was an impressive, powerful, 4-engine aircraft with an unusually wide wingspan of 123.5 feet in proportion to its 116.3-foot long body. Inside the cabin were numerous workstations with sophisticated electronics equipment, bunks for the crew and a sizable galley for food preparation on the SuperConnies long missions. Bo Watwood, who spent much of his time in the military associated with these aircraft, recalled, I was in Navy schools there in Glynco in the spring of 1956.
An occasional moment of mugging for the camera lightened the mood in the flight tower at Glynco for Richard E. McInturff (in the sunglasses) and his fellow sailors at the Naval Air Station. Photo courtesy of Richard McInturff.
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My best memories are of the wonderful weather, great food, (prepared by local cooks on base at the mess halls), and my first

sighting of a Navy blimp. Although at the time I did not know it, the airships I saw were of the K series. I later attended an abbreviated flight course in these wonderful ships. Being a native of Alabama, the folks seemed like home to me and I enjoyed my 20 some-odd weeks there. There were two training missions going on at Glynco in the mid-50s. The most important of which was the Navy training crews to operate and use the Super Constellation aircraft made by Lockheed. Keep in mind, this period of time was before any satellites. Our military needed a way to detect any aerial attack from the USSR so as to issue an early warning to all the military and civilians alike. The short-term answer was these amazing aircraft and their even more amazing crews. So far as I know, all of the Airborne Early Warning crews [for certain operations] were trained at Glynco. My first training flight on one of them was the first time this Alabama country boy had been on a flight of any kind. The blimp connection is that the Navy was developing the same
Young visitors to NAS Glynco enjoyed the Aerology display at an Armed Forces Day open house in 1956. US Navy photo courtesy of the Glynn County Airport Commission.
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electronic detection gear for blimps to be used over the Atlantic as semi-

stationary radar stations. The reason was that it cost about 80% less to do it with blimps as opposed to WV-2 aircraft. Glynco was the main cog in this large wheel of national security. I suspect the fine folks of Brunswick had no idea of the importance of their local Navy training base. Area school children toured the planes on Armed Forces Day Open House events, staring in awe at the many blank screens and the numerous forbidding ropes stretched across the task areas, each bearing a sign warning them not to touch anything. AT2 Ken Hayes remembered, It was a lot of fun working on all that stuff behind the ropes. Some of that equipment was classified at the time
Armed Forces Day visitors to NAS Glynco in the 1950s were awed by the towering arches of the cavernous blimp hangars. US Navy photo courtesy of the Glynn County Airport Commission.
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and visitors did not see all that there was. It was even more fun flying on the WV-2s. I got to go to the Caribbean and quite a few places in the USA. I even got to fly shotgun when the Pilot or Co-Pilot needed a rest. This was usually on missions over the Atlantic. These planes were used for training personnel as operators of the equipment that flew the Barrier Flights over the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans monitoring the skies looking for Soviet Aircraft attempting to attack the USA. This was the method used before days of satellites to do the monitoring. These barrier flights flew over the Atlantic from Newfound-

land to the Azores 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. They even had bunks on the planes for the crews to sleep while the second crew monitored the radar screens, etc. The flights were typically 14 hours. Assignment to the Constellation crews was not only prestigious, but fascinating work and a career-enhancing move for anyone involved with electronics in the Navy. The long missions and large crew census created an opportunity for a crew member to distinguish himself with culinary skills. AE3 Frank McCabe reminisced about waiting for an opening to join the coveted Connie Line. I had just been promoted to AE3, so when we reported to the line, I pulled rank to be assigned to the Connie Line. After several months, one of the flight Electricians was leaving the service, so the slot on (Aircraft ID Number) 331 opened up. I volunteered for and was accepted for flight status. The duties of the flight electrician on my crew were, of course, the electrical system and the flight log, but the main duty was the Galley. Where feeding up to 32 people was accomplished on a three burner hot plate while maintaining freshly brewed coffee for the cockpit, I kept my flight
AT2 Kenneth Hayes in 1960. Photo courtesy of Kenneth Hayes.
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status because my skills with coffee were as good as my skills with volts and amps!
T-39 T-33 CH-34 Helicopter
TS-A2
Hot spots
T-39 Sabreliners
T-39 Sabreliners
Hot spots
WV-2 Super Constellation
T-39 Sabreliners
Hot spots
TS-A2s
Hot spots
T-33 Trainers
An infrared photograph taken July 10, 1971, shows several types of training aircraft used at NAS Glynco. Hot spots created by the , retained heat of recently flown planes and those currently in flight, are clearly visible. These patterns on the pavement revealed information about the inventory of planes and activity at Glynco. The T-33s did not fly that day, so their position on cool pavement created lower contrast and made them less visible. A lone WV-2 was too large to fit into the hangars at NAS Glynco. US Navy photo courtesy of the Glynn County Airport Commission.
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NATTC-State of the Art
Pride and precision were the orders of the day during the ADMAT inspection held on March 23, 1961 at NAS Glynco. Photo courtesy of Captain John Lowe.
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NATTC State of the Art
Blimps in the 1950s had evolved from the WWII K series. Newer models had elongated gondolas with bunks and galley areas, longer envelopes and vastly improved radar capabilities. US Navy photo courtesy of the Glynn County Airport Commission.
LTA Departs
The announcement of the Navys plans to discontinue all LTA activities stunned the military and civilian communities in 1959. Many operational shortcomings
had been overcome in that decade. Notable achievements included perfecting the art of aerial refueling and landing a blimp on the heaving deck of an aircraft carrier. Successful research
and field trials carried out on blimps contributed to the advancement of aviation electronics. Advanced models of the K ship and two new classes, the M and N series, were larger, faster and less troublesome to operate. As the threat of cold war hostilities increased, it seemed incredible to eliminate a successful program of Airborne Early Warning in 1959. As usual, cries of politics and favoritism rang out at announcement of the Navys decision. It was not politics that ended the blimp era for the US Navy; it was nuclear science. A well-publicized trial was staged to test the
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test submarine pursued them. A blimp, hovering overhead, attempted to track and intercept the submarine, yet with all their combined skill and improved equipment, the crew could not see the new Nautilus. The submarine could dive too deep, too fast and did not need the revealing exhaust snorkel that a World War IIissue diesel craft required. The exercise resulted in just one submarine destroying the entire convoy of the trial mission. The cost of newer airships was a factor as well. During World War II, airships of the prevailing version of the K class were ordered in quantity, driving
A Glynco airship in the late 1950s shows signs of evolving technology. Note the angled rear fins and large radome on the bottom of the control car. These ships were capable of sustained missions to monitor the activity of Russian submarines.US Navy photo courtesy of the Glynn County Airport Commission.
airships ability to track the new Nautilus class nuclear submarines. Several
American destroyers and cruisers were sent out on the open waters, and the
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the average cost down to $318,000 per ship. After 1949, innovations in electronics and smaller orders drove unit costs up to an average of $2,736,000 per blimp over an 8-fold increase in price.

Sophisticated technology in the newer blimps had benefited other platforms of aviation. No one could deny that the airships had performed admirably as research and development craft. But as these discoveries were passed on for specific adaptation in newer aircraft, the limitations of the blimps became more dominant factors in pondering their survival. The requirement of large ground handling crews, even with newer, reversible motors, added to their cost. Improvements in the design of agile, less costly helicopters made them a better option for rescue operations. The days of Navy LTA were over. At NAS Glynco, Lt. Commander Robert Gill climbed aboard the gondola of the last airship with a heavy heart, and flew it away from Georgia, back to Lakehurst for deflation and storage. He never forgot his love for the Georgia coast, however. When he retired from the Navy, he returned to Brunswick to open Troupe Creek Marina, now operated by his wife, Wanda Taylor, and son, David Gill.
Lt. Commander Robert Gill and crew board the gondola of their ship at Glynco as the ground crew holds the blimp in position. Photo courtesy of Wanda Taylor and David Gill.
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Captain John Lowe, right, waits to board a visiting blimp for one last ride at Glynco.
Mother Nature and the Navy

While sad, the departure of the blimps did not slow
progress at Glynco. Base commander Captain John T. Lowe recalled taking one last ride in a visiting airship that stopped by the station in 1960. It was
Lt. Commander Robert Gill and crew steer their ship through the uprights of the old Sidney Lanier bridge. Photo courtesy of Wanda Taylor and David Gill.
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just too expensive to improve the detection capabilities of the blimps, he pointed out.

The gigantic blimp hangars, now showing signs of age and deterioration, were reused for a number of other training purposes, particularly air traffic control school. Ironically, the original specifications called for the Douglas fir timbers to be fireproofed, but no treatment was done to prevent the more predictable element that plagues structures in the semitropical climate of the Georgia coast: moisture. The Navy did not plan, in 1942, for a long-term use of the structures in its haste to protect maritime interests along the Atlantic coast. Bit by bit, the hangars were rotting away. The row of lean-to buildings added to the sides of the hangars for additional classroom and office
Years of wind and weather took their toll on the gigantic blimp hangars at Glynco by the 1960s. The hangars were hurriedly built in a time of national crisis; the Navy did not plan for their longterm use. US Navy photo courtesy of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.
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space were stronger than the original building as time wore on and pieces of the arched ceilings fell to the ground. Hurricane Dora caused between $50,000 and $60,000 worth of

damage when it tore through Brunswick and the Golden Isles on September 8, 1964. The necessary work was done to stabilize the damaged structures, but time and humidity worked harder. Although the blimps were no longer at Glynco, the bases ability to handle Lighter-Than-Air flight operations made it an ideal location for Project Skyhook in the early 1960s. This study for the National Science Foundation employed balloons as a platform to study cosmic rays. The research effort reminded many former LTA personnel of the early days of the giant airships and their contribution to a number of non-combat applications of flight research, including mapping, photography, meteorology, navigation and communication.
The NATT Center headquarters at NAS Glynco in 1964. Photo courtesy Captain John Lowe.
Symbols and Structures

The addition of the Naval Air Technical Training Center, or NATT Center, as it was called, increased the budget and rolls of the base. When Captain Lowe arrived at Glynco in 1960, a massive building program was in the works. Many of the previous structures built in wartime were intended for temporary use only; the extended life of the base called for replacements
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passenger terminal replacement project of 2004, became a symbol of the base. The bases training mission expanded, and the command was divided into two parts. The Air Station handled the logistics of the facility, such as the mess and residence halls, maintenance and upkeep of aircraft for the students. The Training School handled a wide array of instructional tasks, including Advanced Naval Flight Officer and navigator training, electronics and radar operation, target acquisition, and the Air Traffic Control Schools. Gone were the plexiglas disks and hand-marked paper records of the 1950s. The program, along with the other courses, called for sophisticated electronics and nearly error-free maintenance. Lt. Commander Roy Norman was clearly the right man for the job. He had worked on a wide variety of demanding technical assignments, including the nuclear
Above: Thousands of military men and women gained important skills in classrooms at the NATTC School at NAS Glynco. US Navy photo courtesy of the Glynn County Airport Commission. Right: Lt. Commander Roy Norman. Photo courtesy of Lt. Commander Roy Norman
and upgrades. The impressive jet runway had been added to the base in the mid-1950s after more land had been added to the base holdings, and a new operations building and flight tower were added in 1960. The tower, which stood intact until the
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testing program in the Bikini Atoll and the design and construction of the television studio and on-board broadcast network on the USS Saratoga. While serving as the original Electronics Maintenance Officer on the USS Enterprise, Lt. Commander Norman was summoned to NAS Glynco to reconstruct the equipment found on the ship in a classroom setting.
Right: Captain John Lowe, right, passes the wrench to his counterpart at the NAS as he took over the NATTC command. Below: The change of command ceremony separates the NATTC and the Naval Air Station in 1961. Photos courtesy of Captain John Lowe.
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Instruction in classrooms with realistic training situations was important for all members of military aviation teams on the ground and in the air, Lt. Commander Norman pointed out. Under his guidance and supervision as Assistant Maintenance Officer, 206 technicians created a unique instructional facility in the T building. The ground floor housed workshops, classrooms and a theater. The top floor was divided among CIC classrooms, which were exact replicas of radar rooms of carrier and destroyer classes operational at the time. The second floor was completely taken up by literally miles and miles of electrical cable. In the days before the microchip and semiconductors, the complexity of Glyncos various training programs required an entire floor to house the wires, and a double-reinforced ceiling on the first floor to prevent it from collapsing from the extreme weight.
Above: The T Building. Photo courtesy of the Glynn County Airport Commission. Right: Miles of heavy electrical cable were necessary to run complex training programs in the 1960s. Photo courtesy of Lt. Commander Roy Norman.
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Today, we could probably replace all that heavy wire with one or two desktop personal computers that people have in their offices, Lt. Commander Norman observed. A program called air intercept training created a simulated combat situation that gave ground personnel a chance to guide pilots in NAS Glyncos 50-squaremile dedicated air space toward a target. A target representing an aircraft or surface ship was simulated electronically by instructors. Students at the CIC School directed airplanes from the base toward the targets in a variety of possible scenarios. The skyline of Glynco sprouted a futuristic, bristling collection of antennae and radar equipment. The work was demanding for instructors and students, requiring precision, diligence and enormous patience.
Above: A CIC School simulation of an Essex class carrier. Right: Ground Controlled Approach equipment in front of the classroom complex. Photos courtesy of Lt. Commander Roy Norman.
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Marines at Glynco
Chapter
16
Members of the Marine Air Detachment at Glynco were an important element in the Air Traffic Control Schools, both as students and instructors. Photo courtesy of the Glynn County Airport Commission.
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Marines at Glynco Except for the Roof Disintegrating Things Were Fine.
In 1962, the Marines moved their Air Traffic Control School operations to NAS Glynco from Oletha, Kansas. When Master Sergeant Don Lee arrived in January to set up operations in Georgia, he was delighted to leave the snows of Kansas behind. His years of service in Korea had left him with a permanent distaste for snowy weather, and he immediately liked the town and its friendly residents. Master Sergeant Lee had plenty of work to do making arrangements for the arrival of the Marine Air Detachment at Glynco
This aerial shot of NAS Glynco taken in 1961 shows the relationship between the blimp hangars, located at the edges of the mooring-out area, and the runway at the Air Station. Air Traffic Control school offices were located in the blimp hangars when the Marines arrived in 1962. Photo courtesy of Captain John Lowe.
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before everyone else reported in the spring. The school anticipated full enrollment of around 800 students and 130 instructors from the first days of operation. The scope of the training mission involved a number of complex curricula for both Navy and Marine students. Since the Marines and the Navy are considered part of the Sea Services in military classification, training for all air operations in both branches was designed to be interchangeable. Marines would account for about 25% of all people in the combined Air Traffic Control Training operations at any time, Lee explained. On an aircraft carrier, you might have, say,
Marines at Glynco
three Navy squadrons and one Marine squadron flying. Marine pilots go to Navy flight school, while a number of the instructors at the Navy school might be Marines. When Lee stepped on to base at Glynco, he found the basic facilities favorable, but he was taken aback at the dubious condition of the location of the schoolthe old blimp hangars built under wartime conditions in 1942. The roof was deteriorating rapidly, with timbers scattering inside the massive structure as they fell from above. Past hurricanes and moisture had taken their toll. I didnt know what to think of it, he admitted.
The World War II vintage blimp hangars were beginning to surrender to the humid coastal climate by the early 1960s. U.S. Navy photo courtesy of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.
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Those hangars werent in what you would call the best of shape in 1962. Despite the lodgings, the school was rapidly organized to offer the progression of demanding courses required to keep
Marines at Glynco
Right: Students at the controls of mobile consoles in vans for Air Traffic Control school. Below: Ground Controlled Approach equipment inside the training building in a traditional classroom. Photos courtesy of Lt. Commander Roy Norman.
the military in the air. Basic Air Traffic Control instruction, or A School, was the starting point for all military flight controllers. The men and women who had been in that job with the fleet for
around five years returned for advanced training to become Senior Air Traffic Controllers in B School. Ground Controlled Approach, or C School, taught enrollees to talk pilots down to a safe
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landing when the runways were obscured by bad weather conditions. CAAC training, or Carrier Air Approach Control, enabled its graduates to offer the same life-saving assistance to pilots on aircraft carriers. Additional training for enlisted personnel dealt with maintaining the equipment for flight control services under all conditions. Diesel mechanics were taught to keep the vital generators running, and radar repair specialists learned the intricacies of the equipment in the large vans parked outside the blimp hangars. RIO (Radar Intercept Operator) training for officers was also part of the instruction at Glynco.
Marines at Glynco
Many additional types of training were offered at Glynco, but the Marines were not involved with programs outside of the aviation control classes, Don Lee pointed out. All training for the Marines at Glynco dealt with launching and recovering aircraft. Although the instruction was uniform, the individual identities of the Navy and the Marines were firmly established. Marines had their own barracks, administration offices and commanding officers. The spirit of cooperation was present, but it never interfered with the pride each branch of the service upheld for its own heritage.
These 15F2 training devices were used to train Radar Intercept Operators in the F-4 fighter aircraft. Photo courtesy of Lt. Commander Roy Norman.
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1 7
The Navy from a Womans Perspective
WAVE Kay C. Bauer re-enlisted for an additional 6 years while at Glynco, as Commander Al Ufer, seated beside her, looked on. Photo courtesy of Commander Al Ufer.
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WAVES at NAS Glynco provided airship crews with vital weather information before each launch and landing. Weather balloons were released (right) and then tracked with a theodolite (below) to measure their direction and the angle of ascent. Photos from the collection of Phyllis Rhoades Steinmann, in Memories from the Marshes of GlynnWorld War II. Reprinted by permission of the author, Sonja Olsen Kinard.
WAVES in WWII
When war broke out in 1941, there was an unprecedented call for male and female volunteers. The Navy WAVES (Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service) created opportunities for
young women from all walks of life to serve their country. As she conducted interviews and research for her fascinating book, Memories From The Marshes of Glynn: World War II, Brunswick author Sonja Olsen Kinard
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developed a deep appreciation for the sacrifices and difficulties young WAVES at NAS

Glynco encountered in the 1940s. A WAVE arriving at Glynco Naval Air Base during World War II soon found that her paycheck of $40 a month didnt go far when she had to buy her uniforms, Ms. Kinard explained. Coming in May to the south with only a wool uniform necessitated purchasing a seersucker uniform. That was the only kind they had in Brunswick. For a dress uniform, she had to go to Jacksonville by Greyhound Bus! The cost of a dress uniform was $15.00. Because of the small income and the need to buy uniforms, she requested shirts be sent from home and dyed the appropriate color to wear with the dress uniform. The lack of structural steel for the blimp hangars
A young Glynco WAVE takes a reading from an anemometer, a wind velocity monitor, and prepares to cut off the printout tape from the chart recorder. Photo from the collection of Phyllis Rhoades Steinmann, as published in Memories from the Marshes of Glynn World War II. Reprinted by permission of the author, Sonja Olsen Kinard.
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the wartime metal shortage affected young WAVES in ways that are hard to imagine today, as Ms. Kinard discovered. Shoulder pads were a permanent part of the uniform. Every time a uniform was washed, the shoulder pads had to be cut out and then sewed back in. Snap fasteners were the answer. However, there were no snap fasteners to be found in Brunswick due to the shortage of metal. These were shipped in by mothers. Mothers have always been a valuable resource for young people in the service, especially to young WAVES away from home for the first time. Mail call might contain a bundle from family members that staved off the loneliness and homesickness for a little while. Ms. Kinard noted, Home packages not only contained cookies and cakes, but items that had been requested such as coat hangers, tooth paste, hose, pajamas plus fresh fruit. Fatigue was an everpresent factor for everyone on the base, including young WAVES. Time was a valuable commodity and sleep was a catch it as you can component of military life. The working schedule left only time for sleeping as a shift was never worked long enough at the same
Sailors from NAS St. Simons do their best to impress young WAVES from NAS Glynco as they sunbathed by the pool at The Cloister Hotel. Photo courtesy of Joseph Schlosser.
created unique problems when the base was built, calling for the use of enormous wooden timbers as substitutions. Yet in the smallest of details,
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time of day to get used to it. Two mid watches (midnight to 7 a.m.); two day watches (7 a.m. to 4 p.m.); two evening watches (4 p.m. to midnight). Then two days off. Days off could be spent at the beach on St. Simons or at the Sea Island pool, where the military could come for just a 10-cent charge for a towel. Other days away from the base were used for shopping trips to Jacksonville. Transportation to and from the base was always inventive, Ms. Kinard recalled. If you missed the bus to the base, you hitchhiked. Once a group of WAVES missed the bus at night and needed to hitchhike to get back to the base on time. An elderly gentleman driving a very nice car gave them a ride. He was able to get inside the gate by showing a card, and he fussed at them for hitchhiking. The gentleman was U.S. Senator George from Georgia.
Service in the Sixties

Andrea Gondek Cadieux was barely nineteen when she arrived in south Georgia in 1966. She was still shaken from a severe bout of mononucleosis that put her in the hospital for an extended period right at the end of her A School training in Memphis, Tennessee. Before she fell
A 1966 front-page article in the base newspaper announced both increases and decreases in pricing for WAVE uniform clothing. Courtesy of Ruby Allman.
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ill, Andrea had registered her preferences of base postings. During her recovery, she found out that she was being sent to NAS Glynco, a place that she never requested. While she recuperated in a hospital on a base near her parents home in Massachusetts, Mrs. Cadieux remembered, I kept saying, Where is this

place, anyway? In the back of my mind, I wondered if I had done something wrong and was being punished for it. Nobody I knew had heard of Glynco. The young WAVE was understandably disappointed when learning the statistics. After her basic training in Bainbridge, she went to Memphis for A School, receiving her AZ (Aviation Maintenance Administrationman) designation that qualified her to work in aircraft hangars as well as a number of other clerical duties. Memphis was a monster base, she recalled, with a male to female ratio of roughly 170 to 1. And with 170,000 admiring males at their disposal, young single WAVES could decide to replace a guy every week and never run out! To say the least, Memphis was an exciting place for a young military woman to be in 1966. When she arrived, Andrea Gondek Cadieux found a completely different atmosphere at Glynco. The WAVES
Part of Andrea Gondeks duties involved maintaining logs of aircraft like this F2H Banshee. Photo courtesy of Bob Badzinski, supplied by John Lindgren
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as opposed to the open dormitory style arrangement in Memphis, and careful placement of her locker gave her even more privacy and a feeling that her quarters were a real room. The group of women stationed at Glynco in 1965 was very smallonly 40 WAVES lived on base at the time, with another group of married personnel still on active duty living in a trailer park nearby. The women in the barracks would get together occasionally and cook in the kitchen located in their building. From the first minute she arrived, AZ Gondek was treated with great respect. What it lacked in single-girl excitement, Glynco replaced with sincere appreciation. The base was much smaller than the facility in Memphis, with the population fluctuating as students at the NATTC arrived and departed. The average was, as she figured, probably about 3,000 to 3,300 between the air station and the Training Center. Wherever they were, WAVES got a lot of attention from men on their bases, Mrs. Cadieux recalled. At Glynco, it was a settled bunch of guys, eager to be helpful and show her around the base, make sure she felt at home and extend the Navys version of Southern
The main hangar and offices at NAS Glynco. Photo courtesy of the Glynn County Airport Commission.
barracks were left over from World War II, when women in the Navy served as clerical workers, information specialists, aerologists and meteorologists, among other duties. The quarters were old but really nice compared to others I had seen. The cubicles had walls
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hospitality. Almost at once, she noticed a different attitude at Glynco toward the WAVES than at other locations during the Vietnam era. Back in the 60s, women were not allowed in combat situations, Mrs. Cadieux explained. At most bases that saw a lot of combat preparation and deployment, the men tended to resent the women for taking up all

their shore duty. At Glynco, all of the duty was shore duty, so that kind of tension was just not there. They appreciated the work we did, and everyone was extremely polite. The issue of women in the Navy created amusing situations for Andrea. Some officers tried to take a modern approach to the young WAVES, but found it harder than anticipated. One of Mrs. Cadieuxs favorite stories of her Glynco days was an incident early in her tour of duty, involving a nononsense gentleman named Lt. Stern. He ordered the young woman to accompany him on an inspection of a group of the mens barracks, thrusting a notebook at her and instructing her to take notes at his direction. At the first building, they were met at the door by a dismayed enlisted man, who tactfully tried to warn them that the guys who had night duty are sleeping in there, umm, and are not exactly fully dressed The man was given a brisk lecture on this is the Navy, we have women in our service, keep up with the times and get used to it! Lt. Stern brushed by the mortified young man, beckoning the young WAVE to follow him. Inside, the pair found that the warning had been politely inadequate. Mrs. Cadiuex
T-39 Sabreliners like this one, shown here in front of a blimp hangar, were used extensively in training at Glynco. Navy photo courtesy of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.
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laughed as she recalled her own discomfort at age nineteen in the moreproper 1960s, standing at the foot of the bed of a sleeping serviceman who was decidedly out of uniform, taking detailed

notes as Lt. Stern barked his comments. The officer went through the first of the several barracks on the days schedule without any indication of concern. At the end of the tour through the first building, however, he gruffly ordered, Gimme that notebook and go sit in the car! From the vantage point of her office adjacent to the runway, Andrea got a closeup view of the dangers of training operations. Sometimes training flights tested the skill and judgement of more than the students. She clearly recalled a terrifying day when a T39 Sabreliner radioed in to the flight line that one of the wheels was jammed in the up position. Mrs. Cadieux, with her additional responsibilities as Technical Librarian, and her friend, base librarian Karen Carsilies, rushed through the emergency landing literature. Other
The jet runway, hangar, tower, operations building and support buildings at NAS Glynco in the late 1960s. Photo courtesy of the Glynn County Airport Commission.
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flight line crewmembers were consulted, and it was determined that the only way to avoid a deadly crash was to foam the runway. The flight line commander made an incomprehensible decision

not to foam the runway to save money. The pilot had no choice but to land and do his best to control the plane on two of the three wheels. He did an admirable job, but as the aircraft approached, the anxious ground personnel were unnerved by a strange spectacle. The front wheel assembly of the plane was overcome by exceeding its weight and stress capacity. The landing gear collapsed and punctured the body of the aircraft, piercing the floor of the cabin and emerging between the pilot and copilot. Miraculously, there were no injuries. No one was surprised when the abrupt retirement of the flight line commander was unceremoniously announced in the following days. Unlike the World War II years, transportation was no longer an issue in the 1960s. Access to Brunswick and points beyond became a matter of choice. While many of the personnel stationed at NAS Glynco became very familiar with the town and made many local friends, others stayed close to the base and created an extended family exclusively within the Navy community. Even after Andrea married and started a family, the couple and their son saw little of Glynn County except the beaches,
The beautiful beaches of the Golden Isles were part of the most fondly remembered impressions of Glynn County for all veterans of Glynco. Photo courtesy of the Brunswick-Golden Isles Convention & Visitors Bureau.
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where friends and family spent long, happy hours. Looking back on her experience, she has some regrets about not seeing more of the area. I guess we were just too young to appreciate where we were, she

admitted. We were in the beautiful Golden Isles, for heavens sake! Although Mrs. Cadiuex might not have seen as much as she would have liked of the Georgia coast in some respects, she did have a chance to enjoy a stirring sight that many local people have never seen. Her duties included keeping flight logs of the two Super Constellation aircraft at the base. Used for training purposes, the aircraft flew missions of what she called hide and seek, instructing crew members on navigation, locating and tracking radar targets on what was then the preeminent airborne surveillance technology. Andrea and her friend, Karen, put in a request for two extra seats when they became available on a shorter-range training flight. After the required program of emergency procedures instruction was completed, enhanced by a certain amount of good-natured teasing, the huge plane took off over the barrier islands. The two women were treated to a dazzling overview of the Marshes of Glynn and their favorite beaches when the pilot turned and guided the plane over the deserted beach of Cumberland Island. As if on cue, a herd of wild horses appeared on the white sand, galloping at full speed, rejoicing in their freedom.
The pristine coastal forests and beaches of Cumberland Island often rewarded passengers of NAS Glynco training flights with breathtaking glimpses of wildlife. Photo courtesy of the Brunswick-Golden Isles Convention & Visitors Bureau.
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18
Changes at Glynco
Captain John Lowe did the honors by cutting the the ribbon on the new bowling alley at Glynco. Photo courtesy of Captain John Lowe.
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Changes at Glynco
Civilian Neighbors on the Field

When the 1960s drew to a close, NAS Glynco was thriving. Energetic building programs were underway to create more housing for officers and enlisted personnel, a new WAVES barracks, a gymnasium and other recreational facilities. In the midst of his heavy schedule, base commander Captain C.H. Dorchester received a call from community leaders proposing the joint use of the airfields 8,000 runway. The county officials were seeking a means of offering improved passenger air service by using a facility that could accommodate larger jets than McKinnon Field
Captain John Lowe tries out the new lanes with his men. Photo courtesy of Captain John Lowe.
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on St. Simons Island could handle. Captain Dorchester posed the idea to his boss, Rear Admiral E.E. Christiansen, who approved the plan. Land was donated to allow the county to build a passenger terminal, and in 1971, Delta Airlines offered
Changes at Glynco
Right: The civilian terminal at NAS Glynco. Photo courtesy of the Glynn County Airport Commission. Below: Captain C.H. Dorchester signs an agreement between the Navy and Glynn County as community leaders look on. Photo courtesy of Captain C.H. Dorchester.
passenger service at Glynco. A schedule was devised to keep civilian and military aircraft out of each others way, and a new era in aviation for Glynn County began.
Landmarks Demise
By the early 1970s, it became obvious that the World War II-vintage blimp hangars were becoming a
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hazard. Great chunks of the roof were missing. You could chart the suns position in the sky by watching the patches of light on the hangar floor that came through the holes in the roof, according to Lt. Commander Roy Norman. More pieces of lumber fell
Changes at Glynco
at every storm, and the decision was made, reluctantly, to tear the landmark structures down. The sad task of planning the demolition fell to Commander Al Ufer, the base Executive Officer. Nobody wanted to see them go, exactly, Ufer recalled. But nobody wanted to see them collapse and hurt someone, either.
Below Right: Holes in the hangar roof created an impromptu sundial effect on the floor below. US Navy photo courtesy of the Glynn County Airport Commission Sections of the giant blimp hangars were dramatically sliced apart. US Navy photo courtesy of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.
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explained. Support members were pulled down on each section, and the unsupported segment of roof would cave in. The collapsing slices of the hangars groaned and twisted, then crumpled with a roar. This method allowed removal of one segment at a time, rather than creating an unmanageable mountain of litter to be cleared away all at once. Everyone was a bit nervous about the project, as the contractor admitted, Nobody has had much experience in tearing down blimp hangars. At last, after three months of steady work,
Changes at Glynco
it was time to destroy the massive concrete pylons that supported the hangar doors. The base Boy Scout Troop was allowed to go through the piles of downed timber, with supervision, and remove nails with large magnets. They mounted the nails on plaques that commemorated the LTA program at NAS Glynco as a fundraising project. Every single plaque was sold at once. The official plan to say goodbye to the hangars was to invite the Navy families to witness the historic moment when the pylons came down. When the contractor gave him the schedule, Commander Ufer refused to sign it until the
After the immense roof arches were torn down and cleared away, the concrete pylons, crossbeams and panels of the clam-shell doors remained. US Navy photo courtesy of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.
The Hudgins Demolition Company of Atlanta devised a plan to demolish the hangars in January 1971. Long steel cables were used to cut the hangars into pieces, like a cheese slicer, Commander Ufer
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time was changed from 8:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. Demolition day was on a Saturday, and the first structure to be demolished, Hangar Two, was adjacent to the WAVES barracks. Saturday was the only day most of those young ladies got to sleep in a little bit, he explained. There was no way I was going to sign anything that gave permission to start their day off at 8:00 a.m. with an explosion and a crowd. I told the contractor he could do it my way, or it was no-deal. The contractor relented, and the demolition was set for 11:00 a.m. Dynamite charges were set and the crowd placed at a safe
Changes at Glynco
distance. The pylons looked like two towers and a crossbeam topped by an arch. No one cared to hazard a guess at the weight of the assembly, which had walls 14 inches thick. The charge was detonated, and the concrete towers rose up about a foot off of the ground, then settled, upright, about six feet shorter, and inches away from the position they had occupied for 30 years. Eileen Lundgren Ligay, watching with her children, recalled, They sort of hopped! The final reckoning for the last remnants of Hangar Two came the next day, when a series of
The pylons and crossbeams await their inevitable destruction. US Navy photo courtesy of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center
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dynamite charges finally brought it down. The magnificent hangars, proud Brunswick landmarks that housed airborne defenders of the Georgia coast, were gone. In the following months, Hangar One met the same fate. The resulting rubble required a full year and over $232,000 to remove. Every veteran who witnessed the event and reported afterwards said the same thing: I wanted to cry.
Demolition of the landmark blimp hangars of NAS Glynco was a sad but unavoidable conclusion to their useful years. US Navy photo courtesy of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center
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Families enjoy a summer afternoon at the NAS Glynco Officers Club pool. Photo courtesy of the Glynn County Airport Commission.
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The Best-Kept Secret in the Navy Dont Put Sugar on Those Grits, Sailor!
The term culture shock hardly begins to cover the feeling that many new personnel experienced when arriving at NAS Glynco. It was small, as military bases went, with enrollment varying from 600 men in the 1950s to nearly 3,300 at other peak times. Civilian employees brought the numbers up, and fluctuating class enrollment changed the density at times. It was casual, not overly strict in dress or attitude, as many veterans related. Being transferred in from a large base, or coming straight from a major school environment like Memphis, was quite an adjustment. Perhaps a more difficult adjustment was experienced by sailors like selfdescribed Yankee with an attitude, flight line crewman, ASM3 Jim Miller. Soon after he was sent to
New arrivals at Glynco received a copy of this local guidebook full of base and community information. Courtesy of Captain C.H.Dorchester.
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Glynco, Jim met fellow New Yorker, John Polito, and a lifelong trust and friendship was forged. The men were original members of VT-86, a training squadron that was formed under the leadership of Commander George Eckerd on June 5, 1972. The squadron flew T-39 Sabreliners, training
Below, left: Maintaining literally hundreds of engines for everything from forklifts to fighter jets kept sailors busy on the base. Photo courtesy of Captain C.H.Dorchester. Right: An A-4 Skyhawk on the runway at NAS Glynco. Photo courtesy of the Glynn County Airport Commission. Below, right: A Sabreliner trainer pauses in front of a World War II blimp hangar before a takeoff. Photo courtesy of Captain C.H.Dorchester.
aircraft prized by the Navy which enabled the instructor to act as the co-pilot. They also had sleek, streamlined A-4 Skyhawk fighter jets, beautiful airplanes, as Jim Miller recalled. The unit later devised a name and identity for themselves by combining the names of
the aircraft; Sabrehawks. The squadron still exists, currently based in Pensacola, Florida. When the squadron was created, a partnership between the two men grew, and the pair set out to test the waters of what was a completely foreign culture to them: South Georgia.
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family where all the pasta was handmade each day, John soon grew homesick for real pizzaand lasagna and linguine What he got instead was grits. We went to Shoneys for breakfast one morning and there they were. The first time they served grits to me, I said, You gotta be kiddin- you want me to eat Another problem was regional accents. At first, Jim Miller recalled, Nobody could understand me and I couldnt understand them, either. John and I learned to stay out of those country bars. People thought that with our accents, we were trying to be wise guys and start a fight. But the Pier 17 at Ramada Inn-that was different. We owned that bar! The atmosphere on the base was one of a heightened sense of safety, but military installations in those times lacked the high level of security of the 21st century. Open House events invited the public to the base, a time when both
Sailors joke with Captain John Lowe at the Enlisted Mens birthday party at Glynco. Photo courtesy of Captain John Lowe.
After coming to terms with the humid heat and the fact that the insects and various forms of wildlife were larger than he had ever dreamed existed outside of a Hollywood film studio, John Polito tried to adjust his taste buds to the food. Having grown up in a closeknit, traditional Italian
this stuff? What is a grit anyway? he laughed. I never did learn to eat them. I even tried to eat them with sugarall the Southerners told me not to do that because that was the way Yankees ate them. I figured, what the heck, I was a Yankee so maybe that would make them taste better. It didnt.
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edge of the viewing area after all the visitors had been escorted out of the flight line sector. Suddenly, something caught their eye near the tail of one of their treasured Skyhawks. Closer inspection revealed a young boy of about seven, asleep in the tailpipe of the powerful jet. Shaken and furious, the two men dislodged the child and returned him to his parents, who seemed more amused than concerned. Gradually, both men began to feel more at home. They helped to build the Glynco Golf Course, and
Above: Two of Glyncos prized Sabreliners above the Marshes of Glynn. Photo courtesy of Captain C.H.Dorchester. Right: The Blue Angels fly in formation over NAS Glynco. Courtesy of the Glynn County Airport Commission.
men were uneasy about civilians getting close to the millions of dollars-worth of sensitive airplanes under their responsibility. Miller recalled with a shudder the day when the Blue Angels came to the base to perform. He and Polito were on their way to the
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met more local people. When the Sidney Lanier Bridge was struck by a freighter, Jim Miller happened to be in traffic on the bridge, and volunteered in rescue operations. Over time, they cautiously accepted invitations from their girlfriends families to join them at gatherings, and on hunting and fishing trips. Soon, they were captivated by the warmth

and genuine acceptance of their hosts. After a while, we were invited to every family event picnics, July Fourth, holidays, everything, Jim Miller smiled. If somebody decided to go fishing, they would give us a call. It was great. When he was transferred to the Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia Beach, John Polito remembers the drive into colder and colder weather. When he arrived at the front gate, the sentry gave him a disapproving onceover, making reference to the fact that he was not in regulation uniform. Johns heart sank as he realized just how much he was going to miss his home in Georgia.
When a freighter struck the Sidney Lanier Bridge in south Glynn County, Navy men and women from Glynco aided in the search and rescue efforts. US Navy photo courtesy of the Glynn County Airport Commission
Friends and Family

The majority of personnel assigned to Glynco left it reluctantly. It was the best-kept secret of the Navy, ADRC George Giessman confirmed. Everyone who was stationed here wanted to come back. It was the country club of the Navy.
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Instructor Lt. Bill Schnellman and his wife Mary remember their years on the base as ideal, a Camelot type of life with the family all together and so many friends, great weather for swimming and golf. It was the best time of any place we lived in the Navy.
Below: Base housing at Glynco. Right: The Aquarama on Jekyll Island in the 1960s. The Aquarama offered the best of both worlds for swimmers: a smooth, clean beach and an impressive indoor Olympicsize pool. The beaches of the Golden Isles were favorite recreation spots for Glynco sailors and their families. Photos courtesy of the Glynn County Airport Commission.
TD Wally Bevan took a transfer from a job he loved, working with the astronauts at the Naval Air Experimental Lab in Philadelphia, to come to Glynco. His original intention was to get as close as possible by retirement time to Jacksonville, Florida, where he and his wife had purchased a home on a previous tour. But from the
first moment he stepped on base at Glynco, he said, I absolutely loved it. The entire family holds fond memories of Wally finishing work at 3 PM, stopping by their home on base to join his wife and children and heading for the beach on Jekyll Island every summer afternoon. All three Bevan children joined the Civil Air Patrol
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Squadron that was based at the old Brunswick Air Park, located until the early 1970s in the area now occupied by the Glynn County Stadium. In time, their father became the Squadron Commander. The Navy gave some strong support to that group of kids, Bevan pointed out. The majority of cadets in the Civil Air Patrol were kids from the community, not military families. But the Navy gave us the use of their bus, and donated the gas for any trips we needed to make. When Wally Bevan arrived at Glynco, his first assignment was with electronics maintenance in the mysterious inner
Below: The Administration Building at Glynco. Courtesy of the Glynn County Airport Commission. Right: A Valentines Day Dance in the 1960s meant a time for sailors and their sweethearts to dress up and dance the night away. Photo courtesy of Eileen Lundgren Ligay.
workings of the legendary second floor of the T Building. When he was offered an opportunity to work on the Tri-Annual Audit, a procedure that checks out every single piece of equipment on a military base, Bevan jumped at the chance to get to know not only the
equipment but the people, both civilian and military. Soon, his interactions with the entire base population grew beyond the gates to form strong bonds with Glynn County residents. After his retirement in 1972, Bevan and his family remained in Brunswick as he took a job in local law
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enforcement. His loyalty to the community started the day he arrived in 1968. It was the best duty station I was ever at, he stated emphatically.

both goals as he began his adult life. I have almost exclusively good memories of my year at Glynco, Dan Davis reminisced. Except for boot camp or training school, I was away from home for the first time and into a normal duty routine. I was 19, healthy, happy, and had shore duty. The base had a smalltime feel about it, not too spit and polish, not too military. A softball or volleyball game could usually be found. I listened to Simon and Garfunkel records at the base library, and I still remember the voluptuous nurse holding my head as I had a tooth worked on by the base dentist.
Below: Barracks for enlisted personnel featured rows of plywood partitions that created cubicles where two sailors would sleep and store personal possessions. Photo courtesy of Dan Davis. Right: Some sailors even had fond memories of going to the dentist at NAS Glynco. Photo courtesy of Captain C.H. Dorchester.
Coming of Age at Glynco

Dan Davis came to NAS Glynco in 1970 as a teenager, ready to meet the world and make new friends. He found the small size and relaxed atmosphere of the base a good environment to accomplish
The barracks building was far from luxurious; plywood partitions made rooms for pairs of sailors, the bath and shower was down at the end. On summer evenings we would sit at the windows watching huge bolts of lightning strike the base, windows shaking, thunder crashing.
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deliver someone to the front gate. But I had a certain amount of freedom. I was able to take my time, drive the gray Chevy station wagon at my leisure around the large base, through the Georgia pines, and feel a certain amount of privilege. Sam House from Baltimore. Jim Bible from Ohio. Jim Erickson from Arizona. Milford Ogee Ogier from Oklahoma. These were my closest circle of friends. Art Wall loaned me books and really ignited a passion for reading that I have to this day. Thanks, Art! One name I dont remember, but he was from Iowa, and had a sweet little yellow MG-TD with a Volvo engine. Lance Erb had a Dodge Super Bee. Enough guys had cars so it was always easy to find a ride, always easy to find someone old enough to buy beer. And that meant the beach! We were on staff at the NATTC training school on base and a normal day would be to work through the morning and have the afternoons off. We spent many days; many, many
Above: The entrance to NAS Glynco in the 1970s. Photo courtesy of the Glynn County Airport Commission. Right: The Ops building with the flight tower at the air station. Photo courtesy of Dan Davis.
I believe the chow hall was right next to the barracks. Not remembering the food must mean it wasnt all that bad, right? On duty days I was a duty driver, a plum position. I would normally wait around at the OPS building, waiting for a call. I might have to deliver some papers to another part of the base, or occasionally pick up or
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hours down at the beach on Jekyll Island. The warm Georgia weather, the uncrowded beaches, soft sand, friends, beer. We had it all. We took the occasional side trip; Jacksonville, St. Augustine, Okefenokee, but mostly it was the

Islands and Brunswick. I had a small motorcycle and never worried about a helmet or other protective gear hop on and go! Times seemed much simpler then. The year passed quickly, Vietnam was not even on our radar screen. We were warm, well fed, taken care of and for the most part a happy bunch of sailors. I left in December for the frozen Great Lakes and a couple months of school. Following that was two years at sea on a destroyer out of Long Beach. I havent been back to Brunswick but Id like to visit again. I have many good memories of that year, that duty. For many military men, women and their families, the idyllic setting on the Georgia coast took second place to the friendships they made while at Glynco. Base Commander Captain C.H. Dorchester enjoyed his dealings with local leaders and stated, All the men that I met down there were fantastic folks and a real credit to the community. Perhaps AT2 Ken Hayes put it best as he reminisced, The one thing I enjoyed the most was the great people I met in Brunswick. Truly great people in that town. All in all, it was a wonderful time spent in Brunswick. I wouldnt have traded it for anything.
The unspoiled beaches of Jekyll Island were the setting of many fond memories for sailors at NAS Glynco. Photo courtesy of the BrunswickGolden Isles Convention & Visitors Bureau.
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Off duty hours meant sun, sand and hamming it up for the camera for Foster Hurley and his shipmates at Glynco. Photo courtesy of Foster Hurley.
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Wings
Foster and the Faust

During the 1960s, Americas involvement in Vietnam filled classes at NAS Glynco. From electronics to flight support and officer training, the curriculum in classrooms and in the air was intense, incorporating
Navy Tactical Data System consoles were the scenery for many students in classrooms at Glynco. Photo courtesy of Lt. Commander Roy Norman.
technology that would not be available or even recognizable to the public for decades. For the young men and women sent to the Georgia coast for training, another set of important lessons mastered early in the process dealt with opening their hearts and minds to people from other cultures. When NAO Foster Hurley came to Glynco for training in 1965, he found strong friendships and an open door to the world. In his memoirs, he recalled a turning point in his young life. When it comes to Naval Aviation, the only things better than the planes are the women the gloriously exotic and varied creatures
Ive encountered around the world. But there werent a lot of them available to a lowly NAO cadet at NAS Glynco, GA, in the spring of 1965. And after a long week of chasing bogies on my radar screen in 90s and 135s lead intercepts, Id had enough of the latter and wanted to chase the former. So every Friday afternoon, my fellow cadet and fellow Texan-Tom Mitchell and I would pull out of the base in his ailing Triumph it suffered from cancer of the floorboard, with large holes that let the road show through and toss a coin. Heads, north to Savannah. Tails, south to Jacksonville. Savannah offered more culture; Jax,
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more action. Depending on our mood, sometimes wed go two out of three if the toss wasnt cooperating. As a lapsed architecture student at the University of Texas, I was drawn more to the then un-restored row houses in Savannah than the sprawl of Jax, even though there were mixers with local girls at the Naval Air Station. So on one particular Friday in April, Tom and I put the top down and headed north, soon leaving the pungent aroma of the pine processing plant far behind in the brisk breeze. He and I enjoyed an easy camaraderie, honed over weekly, ridiculously cheap martinis in the Dog Housethe small bar across the way from the BOQ while watching The Jonathon Winters Show on TV. The miles flew by quickly, absorbed by the mutual recounting of our advanced training that week, and before long, Savannah was in sight. We drove directly to a favorite waterfront spot of mine for dinner Boars Head Tavern. The place had a dank, dark ambiance, and one might meet a nice lady at the bar if one were lucky. I was, however, more interested in meeting the new waitress we had that eveninga beautiful Asian of unknown origins. Westerners are woefully ignorant of differences in the features of Chinese,
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Japanese, Koreans, Thais, etc. And though Im far more perceptive now after a year in Southeast Asia, I didnt have a clue then. Her name was Lee Song Cha (at least thats how it was pronounced), she was Korean, she was divorced and be still my beating heart she was interested, too. I laid on my best southwestern charm and convinced her that she should spend some of the next day with us touring Fort Pulaski. She did, and it was the beginning of a beautiful friendshipthat and nothing more. But it didnt matter because she was such a delight. We only saw each other a few times over the next
Foster Hurley at Fort Pulaski near Savannah. Photo courtesy of Foster Hurley.
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few weeks, as I reported to VAW-12 at NAS Norfolk in June. But on more than one occasion during our brief friendship, she invited Tom and I and two or three other classmates to her home for delicious Korean meals. She was amazing to watch, efficiently folding rice into snug little seaweed packets with chop sticks that were like extensions of her fingers far faster and neater than any of us could have done with our own fingers serving them to us like an assembly line. She could have given Edward Scissorhands a run for his money. They were delightful evenings, and the first exposure to traditional Korean food for most, if not all, of us. But the most interesting meal we shared was not in her home, but in the captains quarters of a German freighter Faust. During this time period there was a dockworker strike in Savannah, perhaps the entire eastern seaboard. The harbor was full of ships at anchor, and those moored at the pier werent going anywhere anytime soon. So the crewmen had a lot of time on their hands, and would invariably spend it in the time-honored tradition of tattooed, seafaring men in any of many waterfront bars. I loved the international flavor of those smoke-filled bars, teeming with seamen from all over the world
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their different languages vying for attention like an argument in the UN general assembly. I was never terribly comfortable in these saloons, afraid that if I walked into the wrong room Id find myself in an old Wallace Beery movie, shanghaied by a group of smugglers. But it was in just such a dive that Tom and I met our soon to be fast friend, Immo, skipper of the Faust. He was big, beefy, red-cheeked, fun loving and gregarious and if the strength of his hugs didnt take your breath away, the potent piquancy of his armpits would. We met Immo shortly before meeting Lee and had
Lee Song Cha at Fort Pulaski. Photo courtesy of Foster Hurley.
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already enjoyed his weekend hospitality aboard the Faust sleeping on board and enjoying breakfast in the galley with his small, friendly crew. And as the end of our training neared, he invited Tom, Lee and I for a farewell dinner in his small, but comfortable, quarters aboard ship. We were joined that evening by the skipper of a Japanese freighter that was moored directly behind the Faust. Ive forgotten its name the something or other Maru. I dont remember much about what was served, either. I recall the Japanese skipper brought a bottle of plum wine that we enjoyed with our desserts. No, what I remember most was the extraordinary warmth and good cheer in the room, and the sense of unbelievably good fortune that had befallen me to be gifted with that exceptional moment in that place at that time. Tom and I shared several quick, silent glances over the course of the evening, each conveying the same acknowledgementCan you believe thisthat were here?
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We were two young guys from small towns in Texas who never would have come up with a script like thisbreaking bread with a Korean, a Japanese and a German onboard a German freighter at a dock in Georgia. The Navy has enticed young men onto its ships for years, of course, with the promise of adventure, of seeing the world.
The Faust, home of international hospitality for two Glynco students. Photo courtesy of Foster Hurley.
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Tom and I bought into that dream hook, line and anchor, with the added excitement of flying tossed in. But to get this rich, sweet taste of it all so soon, without even leaving the states hell, we were still in training! Over the next three years I would be privileged to enjoy many special moments in many special places Brazil, Philippines, Japan, China, France, Spain, Mallorca, Italy, Greece, Sardinia and Malta; and, closer to home, St. Thomas, Puerto Rico and Cuba. But none held the singular, intimate magic of that quiet dinner with friends.
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NAS Glynco will always hold a special place in my heart. Its where I met my future wife, the sister of a classmate. Its where I was commissioned, and where I received my wings. But I believe that night aboard the Faust was when I first began to fly.
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A Glynn County civilian a 15-long alligator enjoys a stroll along East Beach while a crew member of a Navy blimp snaps his picture. Photo courtesy of Charles Tillery.
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Wild Things
If You Dig a Hole...

The land six and a half miles north of Brunswick that the U.S. Navy selected for an air base had many prior uses. Millions of years ago, enormous mastodons and giant sloths the size of small light-duty trucks roamed the area, feasting on the abundant coastal vegetation. Later, Native American hunters chased deer and other game across the sandy plain. And through it all, the natural predators kept things in balance. From the earliest days of blimps at NAS Glynco, sailors were curious about the local wildlife. Young men and women from different parts of the
Early residents of Glynn County left these archaeological specimens behind. Top: A mastodon tooth with ridged chewing surfaces. Bottom: A claw from a giant sloth. Photos courtesy of Chet Kirby, Kirby Kids Fossil Museum.
country were stirred together in the Navy melting pot. Those who hailed from colder Northern climates were surprised at the size and vitality of many things, particularly the gnats, mosquitoes and palmetto bugs. John Polito recalled his dismay at the number of love bugs as he rode around Glynn County on his motorcycle during his first spring at the base. Simply unbelievable, the native New Yorker grimaced at the memory. I was picking those things out of my teeth! You learn not to smile on a motorcycle in Georgia during love bug season. Perhaps nothing on the base drew as much
fascination and attention as the most recognizable of local predators: alligators. If you dig a hole in South Georgia, the old saying goes, the hole will fill with water and the water will fill with alligators, Lt. Commander Roy Norman laughed. At Glynco, we proved that theory to be true many times. During test and training flights in blimps, the pilots and crew would often be surprised to see alligators ambling through the marshes close to familiar places, obscured at ground level by the tall marsh grass. CPO Charles Tillery took a memorable snapshot from a blimp in the early 1950s of an impressively
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large gator strolling along East Beach. body of water where humans appeared with abundant delicacies on a regular basis. Veterans from every decade report forays to the pond to bring leftover hamburgers from the snack bar and generous quantities of beer. There are some crazy stories things that 19 and 20 year old sailors will do for pranks, Ken Hayes related. I did hear about a couple of guys lassoing the alligator with a heavy rope and pulling it up to and tying it to the GCA (Ground Controlled Approach, or air traffic control) Radar van that was parked alongside the runway. The GCA Radar van had its brakes set and yet the alligator was bound
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and determined to return to its swamp, GCA Van and all. The van operators came out of the van in a hurry and let the alligator have it. I never heard how the gator got untied, but I do know the van was still there where it belonged. By 1966, an effort to free the pond of alligators was temporarily successful. From her office on the runway at the airfield, Technical Librarian AZ Andrea Gondek Cadieux had a clear view of the runway and the pond beyond it. In her two years at Glynco, she never saw an alligator but heard stories about them. Curious, she looked back over flight logs from previous years and
Have Rope, Will Lasso

Few of the young people sent to the base for training were from the Low Country, so very few of them realized how dangerous feeding the alligators could be. Quite the contrary, most of the Navy veterans of Glynco chuckle at the thought and many can offer a personal recollection of alligator encounters. The star of many stories was the sizeable specimen that lived in the pond at the end of the jet runway. In fact, the legendary gator was probably several generations of reptiles that competed for dominance in the small
The rudimentary, prehistoric brain of a coastal Georgia alligator apparently contains knowledge of how to untie Navy knots...and walk away smiling. Photo courtesy of the Brunswick-Golden Isles Convention & Visitors Bureau.
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saw numerous instances where launches had been cancelled because the runway was blocked by turtles and large, stubborn alligators. Perhaps they were simply asserting a prior claim, since the pond they lived in had been on the land long before the Navy. When Eileen Lundgren Ligay, husband Career Retention Officer Ed Lundgren and family moved to NAS Glynco from Alameda, California in 1968, the custom had long been established for people to visit Florida and buy baby alligators as pets. She remembers that people would take their overgrown pets to the pond at the end of the runway, where it was common knowledge that alligators thrived. Overpopulation might have been the result, as alligators began to appear in places where they had not been seen before. One such place was a small pond near a trash dump on the base where
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families took discarded Christmas trees. A large and apparently prosperous gator would often appear with its huge jaws opening wide and snapping shut impressively. Eileen remembers children on the base enjoyed throwing food to the animal, pleased when their offering landed right inside its enormous mouth.
At welcoming parties for new crew members, VT-86 flight line sailors John Polito and Jim Miller enlisted the aid of the the Runway Pond Gator to create a lasting impression. Photo courtesy of the Brunswick-Golden Isles Convention & Visitors Bureau.
Welcoming Party
VT-86 flight line crew members John Polito and Jim Miller appointed themselves the welcoming committee for any new personnel who reported for duty on the flight line. Their alliance with the Runway Pond Gator was strictly
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non-regulation. The pair took it upon themselves to arrange picnics for any new man assigned to their unit. Before the gathering in his honor, somebody would feed and pacify the alligator with burgers and beer. Then they would throw the new guy in the pond with the gator. The alligator would be more curious than hungry at that point, perhaps somewhat drunk as well, if getting a reptile drunk is even possible. Anyone unfamiliar with the protocol, especially the victim of the welcoming party, would be memorably scared. Jim Miller jokingly defended his youthful indiscretions, Hey, we worked close together in a very dangerous job. You had to be quick, you had to think on your feet. Anybody who couldnt do that was a danger to every other man on the flight line. And if you didnt have enough sense to stand up and wade out of a shallow pond to get away from a drunken alligator, then maybe we didnt want to work with you anyway! Generally, the result would be one wet, sheepishly-recovered newcomer and a lot of laughter and back-slapping from previous initiates. But on one occasion when the hospitality committee had their traditional greeting ritual planned, the flight line got unexpectedly busy, diverting attention back to
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business for several hours. Each man assumed the others had taken care of the hungry gator in proper time before the evenings program. In fact, nobody had. When they reached the crucial moment of the ceremony and tossed the new man in the pond, Polito and Miller were puzzled at the gators unusually aggressive response. A quick survey of How much beer did you give it this time? revealed that the alligator was not only hungry and offended, but stone-cold sober. Now, over thirty years later, both party planners simply laugh and decline to report how it turned out.
Jim Miller enjoyed broadening his career horizons in the Navy by planning welcoming parties for newcomers to the Sabrehawks. Photo courtesy of Jim Miller.
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But they did offer an observation on how large an alligators eyes looked when they are approaching in the water and you suddenly realize that you have not yet shared your beer with it.
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It wasnt until his nextdoor neighbor found a baby wild boar in his back yard that Schnellman took an interest in the wildlife on the base. He watched in amazement as the baby piglet snarled and snapped at everyone who tried to approach it. For two days, his neighbor tried in vain to feed and pacify the baby, which he assumed had been abandoned. No one in the nearby Navy housing was interested in taking on such a fierce pet either. It became apparent that the piglet was a stray, not an orphan, when the large, strong mother boar was seen in yards on their street, searching for the squealing baby. The piglet
Guards at the gate of NAS Glynco did an admirable job of screening human visitors. However, their gates proved ineffective at keeping hungry alligators off the property. Photos courtesy of the Glynn County Airport Commission.
Things That Go Grunt in the Night

Part of the Camelot existence of NAS Glynco in the early 1970s for instructor Lt. Bill Schnellman was a nightly bike ride around the base on the Perimeter Road, accompanied by the family dog. Schnellman listened with mild interest to the wilderness symphony of sounds coming from the darkness beyond his bicycle light, and assumed that the snufflings and cracklings were from the numerous raccoons, possums and deer seen every day in the pine forest on the base property.
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was set free at the edge of a nearby wooded area, where it ran quickly back into the brush. After that episode, Lt. Schnellman realized that the sounds beyond the small yellow circle of his bicycle light might be coming from something more dangerous than a raccoon. He took a new interest in the grunting and crashing sounds especially. I started keeping the dog a lot closer after that, he grinned.
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The target generator room that had trained thousands of Navy pilots was to be forever empty after December 31,1974. Photos courtesy of Lt. Commander Roy Norman
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Heartbreak
Denial and Disbelief

The community braced itself to learn the fate of the Navy base that had been such an important part of the community for three decades. Courtesy of the Glynn County Airport Commission.
It was the equivalent of a bomb being dropped on Gloucester Street. When a formal announcement of the NAS Glynco closure was made public in April 1973, the entire community was thrown into a rage
of grief. Although over 200 military bases around the nation were on the same list, people in Glynn County felt as if a mistake had been made in their case. The predictable procession
of local officials dutifully flew to Washington to demand, complain, and plead with the Navy not to close the base. The outcome was the same; a firm no. A number of local people simply refused to believe that such a viable and vital facility could be closed so abruptly. To their credit, onlookers had a point. The Navy had put the final touches on a recreational facility, and barracks for the WAVES the first all-female residence ever built by the Navywere nearly new. The Wavely Pines subdivision, an entire development of singlefamily housing for married officers, was just
completed, with a number of homes waiting for their first occupants to move in. Equipment for the new Officers Club was left outside, still crated, on the ground. The base had just undergone a building program that had cost the Navy millions of dollars. Closing it at that point looked like a nearly criminal waste of money, a masterwork of bad judgement. What the good citizens of Glynn County did not realize was that regardless of how arbitrary and unfair it seemed to civilians, or to the sailors stationed at The Best Kept Secret in the Navy, or their happy familiesthe base was
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closing in twenty months. Newly paved roads built by the county appeared to serve a cruel purpose: they made it even easier for the Navy to leave. It was a painful twist of the knife. In retrospect, it was likely a combination of factors that led to the astonishing decision to close NAS Glynco. An official within the Navy command decision structure speculated years later that Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter, an outspoken Democrat who was sharply critical of President Nixon, was the target of vindictive action by that administration. Congressional redistricting in the early 1970s enabled political newcomer, Democrat Ronald Bo Ginn, to unseat a long-
Heartbreak
tenured Republican in the 1972 elections. The addition of Glynn County to the First Congressional District made the critical difference in the election. This fact that was not lost on the Armed Services Committee, where the incumbent had amassed a personal power base. Meanwhile at Glynco, ominous changes occurred promptly after the election. VT-86, the Sabrehawks, were briskly transferred in December from the squadrons birthplace at Glynco to Pensacola, Florida. The decision dumfounded instructors, who had enjoyed the 50square-mile dedicated air space off the Georgia coast
Grim reality was hard to face in 1973. As ill-advised as it might have seemed, the decision was final to close NAS Glynco. Photo courtesy of the Glynn County Airport Commission.
Culprits
Rumors of political dirty tricks, payback and favors flew around the community.
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without interference from commercial traffic. Air traffic and air traffic control problems in Florida were growing as rapidly as its population, a situation fraught with potential disaster for training flights. Base personnel noted the signs of an impending decommission with foreboding. Despite the vigorous building program that proceeded without hesitation, one veteran noted, Its never a good sign when they start transferring out your units. Civilian employees of the base were outraged. The training building that had just been completed at Glynco would need to be duplicated elsewhere at Memphis, it turned out, for triple the cost. But to some observers, another development was a significant factor in marking the base for closure: technology. Lt. Commander Roy Norman was in a position to know. Since he had
Heartbreak
designed many of the instructional consoles, he knew every inch of the miles of cable that ran between the top and bottom floors of 3-storied T Building. All of the equipment of the 1960s and early 1970s, he explained, operated on an
The target generator room at Glynco, with its switchboards and desks, would be replaced at another training facility in an updated digital format. Photo courtesy of Lt. Commander Roy Norman.
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analog system. As incomprehensible as it seemed, studies confirmed that replacing the $3 million building at Glynco with a $9 million project elsewhere was more cost-effective than retrofitting the existing structure. The Navys decision to make way for the digital NTDS (Navy Technical Data System) supplied the final nail in the coffin for NAS Glynco. It wasnt just politics that got us, Lt. Commander Norman noted dryly. It was the microchip.
Heartbreak
The Electronic Counter Measures (ECM) equipment classroom at NAS Glynco. Photo courtesy of Lt. Commander Roy Norman.
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An Impact Study attempted to grasp the enormity of the loss of Glynco. Courtesy of the Coastal Area Regional Development Center.
Searching for Answers
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Down to Work
The community scrambled to make a plan for recovery. The base employed 2,804 individuals, including both military and civilian, in 1973. But as with all military base closures, that figure can be misleading. The impact was widespread, considering the families and support industries for a
Above: Vernon Martin, Executive Director of the Coastal Area Planning and Development Commission. In 1973, he secured Federal grants to assist in planning reuse for the base. Photo courtesy of Vernon Martin. Right: Banker Ben T. Slade took on the enormous task of chairing the Glynco Steering Committee in 1974. Photo courtesy of the Glynn County Airport Commission.
county the size of Glynn. While others panicked, Vernon Martin, Executive Director of the Coastal Area Planning and Development Commission, quietly applied for and secured a Federal grant from the Economic Development Administration to complete impact studies for the area in July 1973. By early January 1974, leaders realized that the time for fighting the base closure was over. It was time to get organized. The city and county jointly appointed a 19-member committee with the mission of planning for the conversion of the Navy base. The Glynco Steering Committee began by selecting banker
Ben Slade as Chairman, and elected sub-committees to focus on special areas. The Committee quickly identified one of their goals, to secure use of the air facilities at Glynco for a municipal airport. A public meeting was held on February 6, 1974, and an historic joint resolution between city and county governments was adopted on February 12 to proceed with that effort. The future of Malcolm McKinnon Airport on St. Simons, the previous official municipal airport for the county, had been put on hold. This decision was not met with unanimous approval, however. Scheduled carriers and
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general aviation contract holders at McKinnon were dismayed that their investments appeared to be in vain. Sweeping claims were made that adopting the larger facility at Glynco would cost the taxpayers of
Right: Acquiring the Ops Building and runway at NAS Glynco were the first goals of the Steering Committee. Photo courtesy of the Glynn County Airport Commission.
Regional newspapers like the Florida Times-Union followed the base closure and its impact with keen interest. Courtesy of the Coastal Area Regional Development Center.
Glynn County millions of dollars. Detractors insisted that the rapidly deteriorating Brunswick Air Park, on the site of the current Glynn County Stadium, was
perfectly adequate for future growth. In fact, the FAA already had serious concerns about the conditions of the field and was prepared to shut it down for good. The McKinnon facility was in need of major work, and its location would not allow
for the expansion required to eventually provide the quality of jet service the community needed. The drama was fueled when the more indignant players declared the countys acceptance of the flawlessly maintained runways and facilities at Glynco was evidence of
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Real Estate Distress

Developers in Glynn County felt betrayed by the base closing. A building boom had been underway for many months, encouraged by investor confidence in the Navys recent expansion. Many new homes, condominiums and apartments were under construction when the base closing was announced. As President of the areas largest Savings and Loan Association, Steering Committee Chairman Ben Slade was well aware of the danger to the already-weak housing market that the closure of Glynco represented. Obviously, foreclosures were a concern when the
Navy income went away, he explained. Babcock and Wilcox, the boilermaking plant, had closed, Hercules was on strike, and the hotels on I-95 were in deep trouble already because of the gasoline price crunch. It was a terrible time. Another worry facing Slade and the housing industry was the 232 empty, brand-new homes just completed by the Navy. Intended for officers and their families at Glynco, the large block of homes would flood the depressed housing market in Glynn County. With over half of the apartments in Brunswick unoccupied as the Navy left, more vacant
When Glynco closed, 232 brand-new homes built by the Navy for officer housing were left empty. Photo courtesy of the Glynn County Airport Commission.
a sinister conspiracy. Unfortunately, the cauldron of self-interest over the closing of Glynco was just beginning to boil.
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real estate was the last thing the area needed. The Committee appealed to the Navy not to put the housing on the market for at least a year, and the Navy complied with the request. become a tennis pro on Jekyll Island. It took some persuading, but in March 1974, Davis agreed to join

the effort to find a way to heal the community as the Coordinator of the new Glynco Steering Committee. His primary
Above: Local leaders on the Steering Committee took a preliminary tour of the base to prepare themselves for the upcoming visit by federal officials. Right: Captain William P. Hugo, base commander, welcomed a team of federal agency representatives who arrived to tour NAS Glynco on March 27, 1974. Courtesy of the Coastal Area Regional Development Center.
New Leadership for a New Challenge

A grant allowed the group to hire a coordinator. Gordon Davis was surprised when a Steering Committee member, his friend Bruce Smith, called him to say I have a job for you. Davis had retired from the Army and had moved to Glynn County to
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duties were to assist the committee in finding new uses for the base property, secure the countys right to the airfield facilities and to help bring in new jobs to

replace jobs lost as a result of the base closing. One of Davis first challenges was to coordinate a Federal team visit only two weeks after he began work with the EDA. The findings were sobering. The main employers in the county were hotels, related tourism venues and the Navy. Manufacturing was strong, with the Brunswick Pulp and Paper Company and Hercules, Inc. commanding a significant portion of the labor market. But manufacturing was subject to the economic plague of strikes. As luck or lack of luckwould have it, Hercules was on strike in Glynn County when the base closure came to light. The timing couldnt have been worse, he recalled. The lengthy presentations and work sessions provided the community leaders with a clear understanding of Federal rules and guidelines necessary in converting the base to civilian use. Despite initial skepticism about those Federal bureaucrats from out of town, local leaders came to understand that the agency representatives knew their business. Gordon Davis visited numerous cities that had suffered a base closure. Some prospered; some never recovered. One similarity among successful survivors became clear.
Bit by bit, the Navy removed pieces of equipment and machinery vital to the function of the airfield and other operations. Courtesy of the Glynn County Airport Commission.
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The intense, and sometimes frantic, work began. The committee doubled its efforts to find a new use for the property. Using funds from the same grant that enabled the group to hire a Coordinator, the Committee hired a consulting firm to assist in developing a Base Reuse Plan. Officials from the General Services Administration met with city and county officials along with the Steering Committee to explain the rules and the realities of the tasks ahead.
After the reality of closure was accepted, the community needed to focus its efforts on finding another use for the base property. Courtesy of the Coastal Area Regional Development Center.
A reasonable, wellinformed local citizens group was key in finding a new use for surplus military property, and for replacing the lost income. During his intensive search for answers to the future of Glynco, Davis established close liaisons with appropriate Federal agencies in Atlanta.
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Reality 101
Commander Al Ufer, Glynco Executive Officer, with the winners of annual Civilian Awards. When the base closed, nonmilitary employees faced losing their jobs in a serious economic recession. Photo courtesy of Commander Al Ufer.
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Reality 101
Wake-up Call
Early in the process, the public clung to the assumption that the Federal Government would come and fix it, Ben Slade recalled. After earlier base
Chapel in the Pines at NAS Glynco. Photo courtesy of the Glynn County Airport Commission.
closures proved disastrous for so many areas in the country, the Department of Defense created the Office of Economic Adjustment to assist communities through the loss of military income. The goal of the agency was to guide local groups from grasping on to ill-advised, short-sighted uses of former base property, and to encourage them to develop a consensus plan that transcended what was termed parochial interests, or individual agendas. The first reality was that multiple Federal agencies would have to dispose of various segments of the property. There was no one-stop-shopping to resolve the issue. Ben Slade
spent many long afternoons in storefronts and offices patiently explaining to individuals in the community that it was counterproductive to send more passionate letters or outraged spokespersons who hoped to talk to the right person in Washington. The second reality warned of creating bureaucratic quicksand by insulting the process. Attempting to engage congressmen to maneuver around the obstacles spelled disaster in terms of delay and ill will. The third sobering lesson was that the seemingly inexhaustible supply of local conflict and self-interest had to stop
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immediately. Some individuals demanded that the chapels on base be given to local churches. Several realtors wanted to buy sections of surplus housing for speculative purposes. Restaurant owners wanted to purchase equipment from the large inventory of kitchen supplies. Others wanted to establish private businesses in the mess halls and servicemens clubs on base. A GSA official confided, If you show any signs of local conflict, nobody will want to come here. The last lesson was the hardest to make everyone understand. They told us that the final decision on how the property would be
Reality 101
Congressman Ronald Bo Ginn (in yellow jacket) arrives at Glynco for a site tour. Congressman Ginn proved to be an invaluable ally for Glynn County in determining the future of the base. Photo courtesy of the Glynn County Airport Commission.
used was up to the Federal government, Slade recalled. There would be no piece-meal uses that divided the base up into little parcels for private individuals to use for profit. It was up to us to research the best uses for the
property where our community was concerned, then attract that kind of user to Glynn County. We needed to be prepared to show people we were ready to move on, that we had something to offer them. But we had to keep
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one fact in mind, and that was the final decision on who would use that land was not our decision. It was the governments call. And the possibility existed that one outcome could be that they simply padlocked the base and walked away. We didnt want to let that happen. These hard facts strengthened the Committees resolve, and created the battle cry for the entire effort. I was determined, Gordon Davis emphasized, to find exactly what the Federal government wanted, and that was the highest and best use for the property.
Reality 101
opened and Slade was inundated with requests for new uses. One memorable suggestion was a request by an importer of flowers to reserve the use of just a fraction of the 8,000 long runway to land his small planes that brought in supplies to regional distributors. Other inquiries expressed a desire to use some of the buildings for
Daffodils and Juvenile Offenders

The Navys standard of excellence in building and maintaining its property did not go unnoticed. When the word got out that the Steering Committee was searching for new tenants for the base, the floodgates
Right: The 8,000 runway at NAS Glynco was a critical resource for the future of aviation in Glynn County. Photo courtesy of the Glynn County Airport Commission. Below: A Reuse Plan was created to examine the assets of the property and the community. Courtesy of the Coastal Area Regional Development Center.
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movie sound stages, others hinted that they had Arab oil interests as backers. Im not sure all of them were legitimate, Ben Slade laughed. But I am pretty sure some of them were illegal. Less outlandish, but certainly more controversial, was the formal inquiry by the Georgia Department of Corrections about the possibility of creating an institution for the training of youthful offenders. The training setup at Glynco was ideal, according to the state official. Most citizens of Glynn County disagreed. The response was quick and emotional. The debate got heated, but even the public dismay did not defeat the idea. As Slade remembered, in the committees eyes, the problem was not entirely the fact that it was a prison of sorts. The concern was that the Department of Corrections only wanted a portion of the large base property, one that would awkwardly separate the remaining land into somewhat unusable tracts. The proposal was turned aside for logistical reasons as much as the vocal opposition.
Reality 101
Services Administration. From that point, the effort was to be on the actual conversion once the plan was accepted. The Committee determined that a legal entity would be needed to manage the airport, purchase and develop an industrial park, and complete coordination of the remaining conversions. In March 1975, the county created the Glynn Development Authority under a 1969 Georgia law designed to help communities deal with growth and planning for the future. The specific mission given to the Brunswick group was to manage and develop properties related to the NAS Glynco conversion effort.
The community was in an uproar about the possibility of using Glynco as a youthful offender facility. Courtesy of the Coastal Area Regional Development Center.
Countdown
By November 1974, the Steering Committee completed a detailed reuse plan, approved by the city and county, which was forwarded to the General
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Civilian employees of the base were given an opportunity to transfer to other Navy installations around the country, and many took advantage of that offer. The people who stayed on at Glynco to help with the de-establishment of the base became indispensable. Two local women, Ruby Allman and Ruth Kent, were highly regarded by the military, and were singled out for commendation by Navy officials. Ms. Allman came to work at Glynco in 1955, and served under 13 commanding officers. When the closure was announced, she was promoted to Assistant Administration Officer, helping Lt. Commander Murray Wright shut down the facility. When interviewed by the Brunswick News about her feelings on the matter, she told the reporter, I have developed a love affair with Glynco, and I feel like a traitor letting it goNeedless to say, the day we got the word there were some wet eyes around here. Ruth Kent had put in 15 years of service as a personnel staffing and classification specialist before she was promoted to Civilian Personnel Officer. As of July 1973, Mrs. Kent recalled, there were 2,804 people working on the base, including military and civilians. As the closure procedure went into effect,
Reality 101
she spent month after heartbreaking month arranging transfers and reassignments to places as far away as Spain and Guam, or as close as Pensacola, Florida. As the staffing infrastructure seemed likely to collapse from attrition of Navy personnel, Mrs. Kent propped it up time after time with local people, grateful to get work during the worrisome time of strikes and gas shortages. The sad irony of the situation was not lost on her: by saying goodbye to one group of cherished friends and Navy neighbors, she was able to open doors and offer much-needed help to her fellow Glynn County citizens.
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It was finally official: The base at Glynco was closing. The formal reception marked the end of an era. Courtesy of the Glynn County Airport Commission.
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A Ray of Hope
Cautious Optimism
Despite efforts to be discreet, Federal visitors were spotted inspecting NAS Glyncos property. Courtesy of the Coastal Area Planning and Development Commission.
As the clock ticked toward closing the base, efforts were intensified on finding a new tenant for the property. On December 23, 1974, Naval Air Station
were searching for a new home for the Consolidated Federal Law Enforcement Training Center. Gordon Davis checked out the potential for a mutually beneficial future.
Glynco was officially decommissioned. A few weeks later, Gordon Davis spotted a trio of distinguishedlooking gentlemen looking at the property, and hastened to make their acquaintance. The men
He discovered that the agencys original plan to build a comprehensive training facility in Beltsville, Maryland, was plagued with problems. From the beginning, the original building plan was under-
sized. Environmental issues interrupted construction on that particular site, and when the litigation was complete, the price to complete the project had doubled from its original estimates. The order went out to find another location from the list of military sites planned for closure rather than spend another taxpayer dollar attempting to rescue the doomed plans in Beltsville. The fact that Glynco was already set up as a training facility was a significant advantage. The three visitors from that January day and other officials as well as GSA specialists boiled the requirements down in a cool and
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A Ray of Hope
An initial good impression put Glynco on the list for the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center. Courtesy of the Coastal Area Planning and Development Commission.
businesslike manner. Soon, Glynco took its place on the short list of possibilities with five other locations. Congressman Bo Ginn, and Georgia Senators Herman Talmadge and Sam Nunn put their powerful political shoulders to the wheel in the intense competition for the law enforcement center. The tentative plan was to make the decision by the end of March 1975 at the latest. Community leaders tried
not to get their hopesor anyone elses up too high. In Washington, the battle raged on between factions
that wanted to move to a base in Georgia and those who favored the San Francisco area. While
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decommissioned military properties were in both locations, Hamilton Air Force Base in California was little more than a collection of warehouses. Repurposing them would take a staggering amount of money and time, both of which were in short supply. The cost of living for staff and general operational expenses were so much higher in California that everyone winced at the everincreasing total. Outfitting sites in the other locations under consideration came in at around $45 million. Glynco came in at the bottom of the cost estimates at a bit over $28 million, thanks to the new construction left behind by the Navy. Another compelling argument was the fact that the community so desperately wanted the facility. March ended without an announcement. Lists of questions from the government were addressed, but no answers came back in return. The months dragged on with delay after delay in making a decision. The finalists were notified: it would be Albany, Georgia,
A Ray of Hope
or Brunswick. Glyncos political allies informed the community leaders that, at that point, they could do no more for them. Calls had been made, favors called in. The decision was out of their hands.
Visit Your Mother!

Month after month of grinding work and pressure were taking their toll, and Gordon Davis arranged to take a few days off to visit family members. With no end in sight for resolving the stalemate on site selection, he felt that early spring of 1975 was as good a time as any to pick up his mother and drive with her to visit a brother in Vienna, Virginia.
Everyone in Glynn County held their breath as Glynco moved higher on the list to be chosen as the next site for the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center. Courtesy of the Coastal Area Planning and Development Commission.
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When they arrived late on a Saturday afternoon, Gordons brother had a message for him to call Congressman Bo Ginn in Washington. The Congressman informed him that some twenty-plus delegates from various Federal agencies involved in making the decision about the training centers new location were assembling in Washington early the following Monday morning to take off on a decision-making mission to Georgia. Ginn also informed Davis that he needed to be on that airplane with them on March 22. This was it, Davis emphasized. This was our last chance to show them what we could do and we had one day to plan it all. A series of nearpanicked phone calls followed as he bid goodbye to the family he had come to visit, and made his way to Washington instead. Back home in Glynn
A Ray of Hope
County, Davis secretary and staff worked feverishly to set up a 2-and-a-halfday V .I.P. itinerary. While in route to Albany, the first stop on the site visit, the Federal officials grilled Davis about the areas capabilities and the base amenities. I remember it being David Macdonald, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, a group of between 15 and 18 Federal budget guys, four people from the Treasury Department and some FAA officials, he counted. While the group did the tour in Albany, I stayed on the phone in the airport terminal, arranging everything I could for the Brunswick visit.
A steady diet of questions, delays and frustration was served to Glynn County leaders in early 1975 as they waited for a decision on their future. Courtesy of the Coastal Area Planning and Development Commission.
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the prior Navy use of each building. The afternoon was taken up by tours of the port, the Golden Isles and The Cloister . A banquet at the Holiday Inn on Jekyll Island Tuesday evening was put together by Vernon Martins staff. Marvin Bluestein, a Glynn County businessman who was well-known for his theater and vocal skills, entertained the guests with his signature performance from local musical presentations, Tevyah from Fiddler on the Roof. A breakfast for the committee the next day at the King & Prince Hotel
A Ray of Hope
left the visitors with the final impression of sparkling waves, clean beaches and the morning sun glowing through the stained glass windows of the main dining room. Gordon Davis took off with the group and flew back to Washington. As he parted company with them to go back to his brothers home in Virginia, he still did not know what the committees decision might be. But he was proud of the way his hometown had performed, grateful for the brilliant professionalism of Vernon Martin and his staff and glad that his own staff had risen to the challenge, especially
Best Foot Forward

Steering Committee members scarcely dared to hope that a decision was finally at hand as spring arrived in 1975. Courtesy of the Coastal Area Planning and Development Commission.
The trip could not have gone better, as Davis remembered. An informal dinner with community leaders that evening set the stage for the base tour the next day. Commander George Eckerd, one of the last Navy personnel left, accompanied the tour group, patiently explaining
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on such short notice. Whatever the decision was to be, Gordon Davis knew that everyone had given it their best shot.
A Ray of Hope
The entire coastal region waited anxiously for a decision on the fate of Glynco. Courtesy of the Coastal Area Planning and Development Commission.
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Original FLETC seal used in the centers first years. Center: All the hard work and planning for the reuse of NAS Glynco resulted in a substantial reward with the announcement of the FLETC site selection. Courtesy of the Coastal Area Regional Development Center. Far left: FLETC became part of the Department of Homeland Security in 2003. Official seals courtesy of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.
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Triumph!
Each local and regional newspaper put its own spin on the Glynco announcement. Courtesy of the Coastal Area Regional Development Center.
The Hard Work Pays Off

The announcement was made on May 16, 1975, that Brunswicks
former Navy base, NAS Glynco, had been chosen as the next site for the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center. The news was met with an uproar of rejoicing mixed with incredible relief. Ben Slade remembers it as a huge thrill. It was a perfect fit for the base facilities, the community and the Law Enforcement people. Just a great thing all around. Local people who had been suffering from closures and layoffs soon found opportunities at the former base. Projects left near completion were finished, and anything that needed to be done was identified
as renovation so that the work could be expedited. All protests from the community and demands for special interests were suddenly stilled. In their place was one voice in the community, and it was shouting, Welcome!
The Aerial Perspective

After a period of attitude adjustment, the wisdom of the decision to designate Glynco as the official municipal airport was reinforced by letter from Joe Lynch, Director of Program Operations of the Office of Economic Adjustment. The letter, dated June 5, 1975, told General Services Administration Eastern
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Region Chief Norman Bersky that several goals had been met by transferring the status of primary municipal field to Glynco, which opened as a civilian airport on April 30. The relief in the intensity of the noise level, for example, was a significant advantage gained by reassigning the use for Glynco. Neighborhoods nearby would have an estimated 25-30 year window before a municipal airport sustained the level of traffic that a military base required on a daily basis. Joe Lynch noted in his letter that at the beginning of the Glynco program 18 months before, around the beginning of 1974, the committees had encountered considerable reluctance on the part of the Brunswick area to consider new uses for the former military facility. He further acknowledged a complete
Triumph!
reversal in the community leadership attitude by mid-1975, triumphantly announcing that the entire community was now fully committed to the re-use of the Glynco NAS facilities. Moreover, we know of no opposition whatsoever political, environmental or otherto this proposed use.
Below: The air station facilities at Glynco became Glynn Countys municipal field on April 30,1975. Photo courtesy of Dan Davis.
Right: The dedication of the new Federal Law Enforcement Training Center was a significant milestone in the history of Glynn County, Georgia. Courtesy of the Coastal Area Regional Development Center.
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The period of mourning was officially over. Glynn County was ready to move forward. been able to afford an 8,000 runway, Ben Slade noted. When the Navy departed, the area not only gained the impressive The Navy Legacy air field facilities, but The benefits left behind by regained 50 square miles the Navy were considerable. of dedicated air space, as A community the size of Commander George Eckerd Brunswick and the Golden pointed out. This return to Isles would never have civilian usage would have a major impact on the development of tourism and industry in Glynn County for years to come. The airfield and some surrounding acreage was set aside for County use; the rest of the base property was accepted for the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center. The campus-like atmosphere of the base
Triumph!
easily supported the transition to classroom use by the Federal government. Since its opening in 1975, over 600,000 specialists have graduated from state-of-the-art courses of study in all phases of law enforcement. Currently, enrollment at the Center averages 25,000 students per year. There was a great deal of satisfaction locally when certain parallels were drawn between the original mission of the base property and the present and future uses. For all of its sixty-two years, the goals have been consistent: the protection of the United States, its freedom and its citizens, at home and abroad.
The community was fascinated with every aspect of their important new neighbor, from the training programs to the families it would bring into Brunswick and the Golden Isles. Courtesy of the Coastal Area Regional Development Center.
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Triumph!
Right: The airfield facilities were formally conveyed to Glynn County on July 19, 1975. Courtesy of the Glynn County Airport Commission. Below: At a special ceremony, Glynn County Commission Chairman Percy Harrell, left, signed an official document that finalized the change in ownership as Commander George Eckerd looked on. Courtesy of the Glynn County Airport Commission.
Building Momentum
After the formal ceremony that transferred the airfield and surrounding land to the county, the Glynn Development Authority was tasked with an enormous amount of work. Numerous projects were undertaken to convert the Navy facilities,
renamed Glynco Jetport, to civilian usage. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) funded and installed an Instrument Landing System, as well as new runway and taxiway lighting systems. Two fixed base operators established on the property provided fuel, tie-down
and maintenance support. The enviable runway built by the Navy left Glynco Jetport in the position of being able to state with assurance that any type of aircraft in use at the time could be accommodated there.
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development. The T Building, home of Lt Commander Roy Normans meticulous freeway of heavy cables and the classrooms where Lt. Bill Schnellman patiently taught new Navy pilots the basics of navigation, was leased to the Department of Labor to create the Job Corp Training Center. There, young people in need of job training come from all over the state to gain employment skills.
Triumph!
Other buildings left behind by the Navy were leased to small companies, and the Development Authority purchased the 330-acre tract of land nearby to create the Glynco Industrial Park. New companies, new jobs and new people came to Glynn County as a result. As the
The first flight lands at the newly named municipal field on April 30,1975. Photo courtesy of the Glynn County Airport Commission.
Above: Gordon Davis (L) and Frank McBride look on as Ben Slade signs papers establishing a new industrial complex at Glynco. Photo courtesy of the Glynn County Airport Commission.
The second objective was to use the few buildings left on the county portion of the land as a source of income and job
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former base property developed and attracted opportunity, questions about the existence of two airports in a county the size of Glynn became a source of heated debate. The Development Authority assembled representatives from Jekyll Island, St. Simons Island and Brunswick to create an independent governing entity, and the Glynn County Airport Commission was formed in 1980. This decision was a wise one,
Triumph!
as it offered professional, autonomous management for the communitys emerging aviation needs. In the quarter-century since the Glynn County Airport Commission was formed, it has
(L-R) Frank McBride, Gordon Davis, Vernon Martin, attorney Jim Bishop and FLETC Assistant Director for Administration David W. McKinley celebrate the creation of new industrial opportunities at Glynco, where men and women worked for the previous 32 years to protect our freedom. Photo courtesy of the Glynn County Airport Commission.
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accomplished much for the community. Scheduled carrier service, thriving general aviation traffic and vastly improved facilities have supported the areas growth and prosperity. Virtually all aspects of the business, industrial and civic community have all
Triumph!
benefited considerably from the vision and direction of local Airport Commission leaders.
Glynco Jetport entertained a number of important visitors, including President Jimmy Carter in 1977. Photo courtesy of the Glynn County Airport Commission.
190
Epilogue
Renowned artist Betty Lowe (far right), wife of NATTC Commander, Captain John T. Lowe, charmed the community with her cheerful energy. Mrs. Lowe gave countless hours of volunteer service in the arts and numerous other local causes. Here, she lends her expertise and enthusiasm to the YWCA as she judges their Spring Art Show in 1961. Photo courtesy of Captain John Lowe.
191
Epilogue
What was the most important contribution made by the Navy to Brunswick and the Golden Isles of Georgia?
Captain John Lowe accepts a check from the Glynco Explorer Scouts for Navy Relief, May 1961. Photo courtesy of Captain John Lowe.
During the year of research for Project Glynco, respondents and interviewees were asked this question. It is touching, and in many ways, not surprising, to
summarize the results. Former Navy personnel answered in nearly 100% of the cases with a list of facilities, jobs, dollar amounts and the fact that the Navy base structures were a good fit for the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center. Typically modest and focused on their mission, the military residents of our hometown concentrated on the things they could build and do to make it stronger and better. Civilian citizens of Glynn County invariably responded with one answer: the people. Navy families and individuals were wonderful neighbors, important volunteers, leaders and cherished
192
Members of the Navy were actively involved parents whose efforts were recognized by the community. Ken Minick found time to coach several award-winning sports teams for children in addition to his busy schedule at the Naval Air Station. Courtesy of Ken Minick.
Epilogue
friends. Retirees who were able to stay here or return to live in Glynn County were welcomed with sincere joy. Although they will always be grateful for the infrastructure and financial advantages
left by NAS Glynco, citizens of Glynn County consider the invaluable members of all the military forces who served there as its greatest benefit to our community.
Sailors at Glynco made good use of their time and took full advantage of amenities like the flying club, stables, bowling alley and hobby shop. Armed Forces Day in 1953 was a good opportunity for the men of Airship Squadron 2 to display their talents. Photo courtesy of the Glynn County Airport Commission.
193
Commander Al Ufer, Glynco Executive Officer (pictured on the extreme right), was proud to present the one-gallon blood donor group of civilian employees and Navy personnel from Glynco in April 1970. Photo courtesy of Commander Al Ufer.
Epilogue

Project Glynco

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What improvements were made to Navy airships in the 1950s?

What improvements were made to Navy airships in the 1950s?

What was the Glynn County Airport Commission's role in preserving the history of NAS Glynco?

What was the Glynn County Airport Commission's role in preserving the history of NAS Glynco?

Project Glynco

A History of NAS Glynco Brunswick, Georgia

The Glynn County Airport

In January 2004, a press release

Table Table of Contents of contents

The Early Days

The War Hits Home

The War Begins

The War Begins

Why Glynn County?

The War Begins

The War Begins

The War Begins

The War Begins

The War Begins

The War Begins

Building the Base

Building the Base

The United States Navy Arrives

Building the Base

Building the Base

Building the Base

The Work Begins

Building the Base

Building the Base

Building the Base

Building the Base

Building the Base

Building the Base

Building the Base

Building the Base

Finding the Enemy Beneath the Sea

Below: A K-series airship framed in the doorway of an NAS Glynco hangar.

The Bold Mission of LTA

The Bold Mission of LTA

The Bold Mission of LTA

The Bold Mission of LTA

The Bold Mission of LTA

The Bold Mission of LTA

Blimps: An Exclusively American Advantage

The Bold Mission of LTA

The Bold Mission of LTA

The Bold Mission of LTA

Life and Opportunity

Life and Opportunity

The Life Savers

Life and Opportunity

Life and Opportunity

Life and Opportunity

Life and Opportunity

Golden Isles Gold Coast

Golden Isles Gold Coast

Golden Isles Gold Coast

Golden Isles Gold Coast

Golden Isles Gold Coast

The Cold War Heats Up