Message posted by Vince on November 13, 2006 at 18:51:42 PST:
From 1973 to 1978 I was stationed at Nellis AFB as and avionics technician working the flight line. During the latter part of my tour there the end hangar of a row of small to medium sized hangars was taken over by an unspecified unit on base. They welded all of the side doors and all but one of the back doors shut. The one back door that was left operable was installed with a vault style combination lock. The hangar doors themselves were secured from the inside with long bolts that tightened against one of the wheels that the door rolled on there by keeping it from moving (well almost, you’ll see what I mean in a second). For the next week or so us guys working the flight line rarely saw anybody go into the hangar and when we did it was usually officers with security escorts. One morning I was heading out to work on some F4s when I passed the hangar in question. I could tell something interesting had happened. The hangar doors were open a little ways and there were a lot (I mean A LOT) of security police, several men in civilian clothes (one of which was an acquaintance of mine who I knew was AFOSI) & most of the top brass of the base. No one was happy. A wooden frame had been built just inside the hangar doors and over that was attached some black plastic sheeting so you couldn’t see what was inside the hangar. I considered it wisdom not to hang around to ask questions. When I got home after work (I lived off base) I decided to tell my next door neighbor about what had happened. He had been a crew chief in that section before he had separated from the AF and I thought he’d enjoy the story. I had just started when he got this big grin on his face and he said “I know what happened and what is in the hangar”. He had been talking to one of his friends that still worked there and got the story straight from the horse’s/culprit’s mouth (I also knew the guy). You don’t take something away from a bunch of GI’s with out explanation with out raising a lot of curiosity and when you have a curious GI anything can happen. Seems that some members of the mid shift crew decided to find out what was in the hangar so they took a Colman, which is a big tractor for towing planes, and hooked its bumper on the edge of one of the hangar doors and pulled it open, the “locked” just slid on the guide rail. Inside they found three planes a MiG-17, a MiG-21 and one they weren’t sure about. Very shortly after that the hangar was cleaned out and given back to the maintenance people. And just for the record I don’t remember any of the names of the folks involved.
In Reply to: Re: RED EAGLES - Press Release posted by Joerg (Webmaster) on November 13, 2006 at 18:21:49 PST:
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