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Wyoming is made possible in part by grants
from Kennecott Energy, proud to be a part
of Wyoming's future in the uranium exploration,
mining, and production industry. And by the Wyoming Council
for the Humanities, enriching lives
on Wyoming people through the study of Wyoming
history, values, and ideas. - I went to Manti, Utah, to see if there was
gonna be another draft and they said, "In the
near future, pretty near, "we're gonna have somebody go," and I says, "Get
me on that list." And when my mother got
that thing, she says, "You've gotta go
to the service," but she didn't know that
I volunteered to go. (upbeat soft rock music) - Over 140,000
passengers annually use the Natrona County
International Airport, Wyoming's largest air terminal. Before serving Wyoming, however, this Casper air field
served the nation. I'm Deborah Hammons,
and this week, Main Street Wyoming
visits the past and looks at the
future of this airport. During World War II, thousands
of combat crews trained here before being sent overseas. (happy big band music) - Well, as you can well imagine, this big flat surface out here, with nothing but bushes,
there were no trees, there was some wheat grass,
and it wasn't farmed; it was just a
prairie land, really. And wide open spaces and
they had to have a level area in which to start, and
it was very desolate. In fact, we had moved our
offices into what had been the old City Hall downtown,
and that's what we worked from until they had enough buildings
for us to move out here and have actual on-site control. And we came out here,
and in the mornings then when I'd come to work, there'd be rabbits on the
doorstep and little muskrats and there were snakes all
over here, they were terrible. They would kill 'em. And sometimes the
fences out here would have 200 snakes
strung across them. The man who was in charge from the Seventh Service
Command Corps of Engineers was looking for a secretary, and so they were
interviewing people. And someone approached
me and said, "Well, why don't you
go in and talk to him?" And I thought, "Well, I'm
down here at the Henning, "I'm having a ball and
meeting all these people," and he kept urging me to go in. So, I went in one Saturday
and visited with him. And he said, "Would you
be at work at 9 o'clock "the next morning, on Sunday," and that's the way it happened. The setup for this base was
to be about five months, but the base was
started and completed in three-and-a-half months. It set quite a record. But, see, we had
no labor problems, we didn't have any difficulty. Everybody was anxious to do
something for the war effort. And carpenters and workers
came from surrounding states and everybody worked
furiously to get this up, and we had the finest
materials to work with. - At the Salt Lake
City Air Base, I stayed there for I think
it was about 10 or 12 days when they called my
name and called me in and handed me a piece of paper with 30 men's names
on it and said, "Buchanan, you're gonna take
these men to Casper, Wyoming." And I'd heard of the place, but I'd never been
anywhere near it. But we boarded a train,
took our duffel bags and all our stuff
that they had gave us and we boarded the train
and went through Denver. We had a layover in
Denver for a couple hours, then we come on in to Cheyenne. Ended up in here
I think it was in the last part of September. The wind was
blowing a little bit and they backed these six-by-six
trucks up against the train where we could unload and get
our duffel bags and everything and wheeled us out
to the Army air base. - They advertised in the
paper for sheet metal workers. And there was one
class before ours and I'd answered the ad, and
you had to take a physical to pass civil service, you had to take a test
and pass civil service. And then, I went to the air base and I went to school
for six weeks. And I didn't know what the
word sheet metal meant. (laughing) I didn't know. I didn't have any idea. But it sounded like part of
the war effort that would help. They were saying,
"We need your help," so I just went to
work in sheet metal. - See, when the United
States entered World War II, all the training was done
in the coastal areas, and these men needed to
learn bomber training and target shooting
in the mountains because they flew
directly from here to the European
theater of operations and to China-Burma-India Hump. And that was the
purpose of this, it was to get them
training in the mountains, and they went all
over the general area. Usually, there would be
4,000 crew members come in, and then there was the
backup of the military, and there were probably
200 of those people that were here all the
time to keep things going. - I believe there was eight
girls came outta the same class, much younger girls than I, come outta the same
class that I did, and you always worked
with a partner. They have a thing
called an airgun and they drive the
rivets with the airgun. Then you have metal
bars, all shapes. And so, it was my job
to put the metal bar agin the other
side of the rivet. It's called bucking the
rivets, and that was my job. I bucked rivets. Ruey Waldron drove rivets. And I always worked
with the same partner. - The picture that you have, can you tell me what
work you were doing on that particular plane? - If I remember rightly,
I'm not really authentic on, if I remember rightly,
it went to land and the wheels didn't come down. So, the pilot brought
it in on its belly and took the skin and
bent a whole bunch of ribs of the underneath part of
it and took the skin off from probably right in
front of the wings to back, almost the tail
gunner's position, almost the back end of it,
and then way up the sides, because when it landed, the skin of airplane
is real thin aluminum, and when it landed, it pushed
up and buckled the sides. So, we had to put in all
new sides and all new ribs and the whole thing
new, the bottom new. - [Deborah] How
long did that take? - I believe it
was about 30 days, but we worked on that job, yes. - Was anyone injured? - If I remember rightly,
eight of the boys was killed. Eight of them. - There would be
eight to 10 people and there would be the
pilot and the copilot and the navigator and
the turret gunners and the belly gunners
and people like that. The pilot and the copilot were
usually commissioned officers and the other
people in the plane would be non-coms or privates. - [Deborah] How did the
servicemen themselves react when they first
arrived here in Casper? - Well, they were
horrified to see that, a lotta of 'em were from
larger towns and cities and they'd never been
in an area like this where it was so bleak. And as we came in this morning, right outside the building
here, there were 11 antelope. I was watching them
'til you appeared. And they became fascinated
with the wildlife that was here and they enjoyed the
Casper Mountain thoroughly to go up there. And it took 'em a
while to adjust, but then when they realized
how much people loved them and wanted to do things for
them, then they enjoyed it. - My first job the next morning after we had been in
the barracks overnight and went to the
headquarters was, a lieutenant says,
"Buchanan, you come with me." And I didn't know what
he was gonna do with me, but I went in there
with him and he says, "We're gonna make you
a private chauffer "of the base commander,
Colonel Moore." And I kinda looked
at him a little bit and he says, "You look like
a pretty clean-cut guy," and he says, "this
is what we're after." He says, "Would
you take the job?" And I says, "Yes sir, I will." So, I ended up
driving Colonel Moore for about three-and-a-half,
four months. After I left, got out from
driving Colonel Moore, I went into motor maintenance
or the motor pool dispatch. I was a dispatcher at the
motor pool for quite some time. We would dispatch
trucks to town, to other squadrons for cleanups. The WAC department, we'd
dispatch trucks down there; they'd have to go to
town to get laundry or food or whatever it was. And I would work from
sometimes 8:00 in the morning until 4:00 in the afternoon,
and then I would change shifts and I'd be on from 4:00
in the afternoon to 11:00, and then we would go from 11:00 'til 7:00 in the
morning sometimes. But we run this motor
pool the clock around. - This building in
which we are now seated was the Servicemen's Club and they could come over here
and read and write letters and different bands
would come and play. We had USO downtown, a lotta those girls
would come out here and dance with the soldiers. - We would go there at night and a lot of us
would play cards, some of us would shoot craps,
and some would read books. There was a piano in there and sometimes you'd
run onto a guy that was a pretty good piano
player and he'd play songs, a bunch of us would sing. We had good times in the
Servicemen's Club out here. It was a nice place to go. A lot of the WAC
ladies would come in. Sometimes this guy
would play the piano and we would dance a little bit. But it was a nice place
to go in the evening. - Well, as I say, this
was such a desolate area and the commanding officer,
who was then Colonel Moore, approached the officer who was
in charge of social services and asked him if they
knew what they could do to make this building more
attractive and more homey. So, he talked with the
men who worked for him, most of whom were artists
and things like that, and they decided to do
the history of Wyoming on the walls of this building. And so, they visited
with the Indians and they visited
with the Mormons and they visited with
other church groups and they went down to the
state office in Cheyenne and talked with people there, and finally put together
the whole history of Wyoming from the beginning, when
the Indians were first here. And then they painted
this whole story around the walls
and over the windows and over the doors of
this particular building, and it ended up with a flyboy
looking up into the sky, which was appropriate
at that particular time. - The people in Casper
really treated us good, the people from the air base. They were all for it
and they had open house out there one time and there
was a five-mile carlength of cars coming out there
to see what was happening at the air base and
how it was being done, what was being done
in certain ways. They looked at the
planes, everything, yeah. - We worked on another
airplane for quite a long time, putting a wing, it had dipped
down and tore a wing off. And that was about the
second or third accident for that ship, so when
we got it all fixed up after all these hours, they had a test pilot
come in from Texas. And he looked it over and
he said, "This is a lemon "and it will always be a
lemon, and you watch me." So, we all go out on
the ramp to watch him. He took it just as
high about as he could and here come his
parachute down, and the plane went
straight into the ground. He said, "That's not
gonna kill anymore kids." You just couldn't fix it. It just never was a success. So, the test pilot fixed it. And that was fine. (laughing) (upbeat synthesizer music) - Well, I've been kind
of a junk collector all my life, I guess. Just always saving stuff and finally got too much
to keep in the garage, so I had to have some
place bigger for it. Basically, they were
just maintenance hangars. Basically built the
same as probably 90% of the hangars built
in World War II, were all built from
the same prints. The Hangar Five down there
is a little different. It's still basically
the same design, but it's bigger
than this one is. But most of it's built by hand. The holes were all
drilled by hand and a lotta handwork in 'em, but the nice part
is the wood in 'em. You can't even buy wood in
Casper like that anymore. They'd think you'd wanna
be building a grand piano instead of a hangar. But there's very few knots in it and it's really
well-constructed. The doors, you can push
those doors open by hand, one person, so it's well-built. - Tell me about the
planes that you have here. - Well, we have two MiG-15s. They're really the Polish
model; they call 'em a Lim-2. They were surveillance, used for surveillance and
ground attack airplanes, and also to upgrade into
the supersonic jets. They're from the
Polish military. They had to get rid of so
many for the arms agreements and that, and this
is some of the stuff that they phased out. Well, they come from
Warsaw in Poland to the coast on trucks, and then they were
put on a barge there and went to
Bremerhaven, Germany, and were put on a
seagoing vessel there and shipped to Houston, Texas, then put back on a truck again
and hauled up here on trucks. Well, the one's
ready to run now. It hasn't been
painted yet and that, but it could be done in
a short period of time if I just had the time
to work on it now. Everything else is pretty
hectic around here, getting ready to race and stuff. Well, it's designed
in about 1938, the original design of 'em,
and this is a 1945 model here. It's a Navy model, SNJ-5. The Air Force model's a T-6,
so it's the same airplane. And almost all the
free world used these as either advanced trainers or gunnery trainers
and things like that. They used smoke rockets
and things in Korea to mark the targets for the
ground attack airplanes, things like that. - [Deborah] Can you
describe how the race works? - Well, it starts
like a NASCAR start. Everybody's lying
abreast on a pace plane. There's six airplanes that
race and one pace plane. And after he starts the race, you're usually about a
thousand feet above the ground and you pass in front of the
crowd down to about 40 foot, the pylons are 40 foot tall. And it's usually a three-
to five-mile course and it's an oval course
like a regular racetrack, only it doesn't have
to be any set shape, other than for
safety of the crowd. - What were some of
the characteristics of the military
planes of that age? - Most airplanes are alike. There are some have
some peculiar bad habits that you might bring out in 'em, but most of 'em
fly about the same. Some of 'em are lighter on
the controls than others, react faster and
things like that, but basically they're the
same, especially warbirds. B-17, it's a easy
airplane to fly. They almost had to make
'em fairly easy to fly because most of the
people didn't have that much experience
or time in airplanes. They moved 'em up pretty fast, so they had to be
pretty forgiving. We've almost always got
some kind of wind here, but it's usually down the runway 'cause they have a
lotta runways too, so it's not all
that bad, really. I think it's a real
good training airport
for that purpose. There's a little
of everything here. Tried to have
something for everybody to have something to
look at and enjoy, never throw anything away. (soaring orchestral music) - As in any economic center, you either continue to
upgrade your facility or you start going in reverse. As with most communities, this airport is one of
the economic engines. It's the front door
to the community. Last time we took a survey, there were about 400 people
employed out at the airport and their livelihoods
are connected in some way to the airport. - Well, the flight
service station's basically charged
with giving pilots, whether they be private
pilots or professional pilots, weather and
aeronautical information that they should know
prior to taking off, and that would include
basically weather advisories for turbulence or
icing conditions or areas of low ceilings
or restricted visibilities. Also, we can give
him radar reports just by looking and using
our different functions on our monitors that can tell us where the large areas of
precipitation is occurring; that is, thunderstorms
or what have you. Also, we give them information
on notices to airmen; that is, aeronautical
information that is important to the flight, such as if a navigational
aid is out of service or if a runway is closed
or if an airport is closed, things of that nature. And armed with this information,
then the pilot is prepared to taxi out and
conduct a safe flight. - Say again your iden, please. -
[Pilot]
Roger,
that's
Bonanza-Five-Zero-Zero-Golf-Ech. I'm about 21 miles south
of Rock Springs, VOR, I'd like to land
at Rock Springs. Do you have any weather
advisory for me? - Number
Five-Zero-Zero-Golf-Echo,
Rock Springs weather, 1,000 to 2,000, scattered
to 5,000 then broken, visibility niner-zero. The temperature's six-eight,
dewpoint is two-six, wind three-five-zero at five, Rock Springs altimeter
is three-zero-two-niner. And for airport advisory, you can contact Rock Springs
UNICOM on 122.8, over. - [Pilot] Roger, that's
122.8, thank you very much. - We're affected heavily
by the state of the economy in the community
and in the state. If the economy goes down, businesses change their travel
methods and their frequency and people's discretionary
income goes down and they stop their
recreational travel and the freight stops
moving, all of those things. When the economy goes down,
we go down right with it. And it happens very quickly. - [Deborah] Besides
commercial flights, what other kinds of
activities do you have here? - We have two
fixed-base operators that operate from this airport. They do a variety of
things, such as charter and aircraft servicing
and that sorta thing. One of the features that
we have at the facility is a foreign trade zone, and we have for many years
marketed that facility. And there are some opportunities
for manufacturing here. In fact, the last
two major companies that moved to the community both identified the foreign
trade zone as one of the things that made the community
attractive to them. Last September, got
Federal Express in here to run a ramp operation, and
that's a very exciting project. That's one that we had
worked on for 10 years, and finally it paid off. In fact, for the last
three or four years they'd been telling me that, "Oh, in September we're coming
and it's gonna be great," and finally last
September they came and, frankly, it is great. They fly a 727 from
Memphis into here and that arrives at about
5:00 in the morning. And then there is a fleet of Cessna 208 Caravan
cargo airplanes based here. There's seven of those
and a Fairchild F-27 that is based here as a
result of Federal Express, and it's quite an
operation going on. And they look forward to the day when they have a
little larger airplane to accommodate their
lift needs here, but the business
continues to boom. And with the new
mines opening up in Rock Springs and Gillette,
they're looking at having to put extra flights
in there daily, and so that means there'll
be more aircraft based here and more pilots. It's really a great
operation; we like it. We're tickled we got it. - Originally, this was
Casper Army Air Base. Can you tell me what
buildings remain from that period of time? - A couple of things that
are of great interest, one of them is the
enlisted man's club or the non-commissioned
officer's club, I guess, and it has murals in it and it really is quite
a fantastic place. And that's been rented by
several square dance clubs over the years and they
really have done their best to ensure that those murals
were well taken care of and we've been very happy
to have them in there because they have been
tremendous caretakers. And so, I think that that is certainly
something of interest. The problem that we
have is whether or not this is the appropriate
place to display that, that particular building. It might make more sense
to put it somewhere where there are caretakers
around all the time, where the public has
better access to it. - What do you think
the future looks like? How are you planning for that? - At this particular time within the master
plan that we're doing, we're doing a historical
survey of all of the buildings and all of the facility that
existed during World War II, and that has been
accomplished at this point. Next step will be to see
what the results of that are and are there any
recommendations as far as is there anything worth really preserving
or whatever out here. - Just the first
of July this year, a lady called me and she
had been one of the WACs, the Women's Army Corps, who
had been stationed here, and she had met her husband,
who was a tail gunner returning from Italy
and stationed here. And 50 years ago,
the first of July, they were married
in our base chapel. And that chapel now is the
Lady of Fatima in Casper, and they moved that
whole building in there. And inside structurally, it's just exactly as
the way it was out here. So, they went out to the
church and got to go through it and renew their vows, and
they were both just ecstatic. Others have come in, and I have
pictures of some of the men and a crew that's
leaving overseas and they pointed
themselves out to me, and it's been a
real fun experience. And, of course, they all
remember this building and the fun times
they had over here and they all wanna
know about it. And sometimes we can
find someone to let us in and other times we can't, so some of 'em got to see
it, but not all of 'em. (mellow piano music) - The roots of this airport
reach all the way back to a time when our nation had
one purpose: to win the war. What we have today and what
we hope the future holds were all made possible
by the sacrifices of that generation of Americans. Our profound thanks
to all of them. I'm Deborah Hammons. - [Announcer] Main Street
Wyoming is made possible in part by grants
from Kennecott Energy, proud to be a part
of Wyoming's future in the uranium exploration,
mining, and production industry. And by the Wyoming Council
for the Humanities, enriching lives
of Wyoming people through the study of Wyoming
history, values, and ideas.
