MY MEMORIES

Charles Glenn Petersen

Hopedale (continued)

Once at Goose Bay AFB, we discovered why we needed our heavy long coats, it was cold and there was snow everywhere. A big shock after several months in Mississippi. We were put in a barrack meant for transients while waiting for a ride to somewhere else. In our case it was a helicopter ride to Hopedale. We were told to check with flight operations every morning to see when we would leave. For 6 long weeks we lived out of a duffle bag waiting to be taken on any given day to Hopedale.

After being bumped off a couple times, we finally got our helicopter ride 160 miles further north to Hopedale. I don’t remember the name or type of the helicopter but it was a large banana shaped one with large rotors on both front and back. There was one engine with a very noisy drive shaft running over head.

When we got there they had no rooms for us, so for the next couple of weeks, we continued to live out of a duffle bag and slept on cots on the second floor of one of the radar towers. There were 3 radars at the base: a large long-distant search radar, a smaller backup radar, and a height-finder radar, all housed in individual towers, each with its own air-filled rubber dome. The base was located high on a rocky hill on the Atlantic Coast where the wind blew all of the time. It was not unusual to have winds as high as 35 miles per hour, one time during the year we were there the wind blew at 65 miles per hour for 3 full days.

Previous PAGE Next