NKP – Main Parking Ramp, August 1966
This is the upper right corner
of the main picture. The Karl Worst Memorial Chapel in the lower left corner
was named for Captain Karl Worst, the first NKP-based FAC killed over the
Trail. During an airstrike in the
spring of 1966, an F-105 ran through his Bird Dog. The fighter pilot was able
to bail out, but Karl wasn’t recovered.
I don’t know what went on in
the lines of buildings in the foreground.
I assumed they belonged to the 56th Air Commando Wing, and
that impression remains from having walked down the road in front of those
five long buildings a few hundred times. We reported for briefings at the TUOC
off the left side of the picture an hour before takeoff time, then walked down
that road to get to our parking ramp, which is at the right edge of this
picture.
With the Jolly Greens and
Sandies parked just beyond that line of buildings, I assume their Alert Shack
was in one of those buildings or in the single building at the south end of
that row.
At the middle of the right of
the page is an interesting intersection of roads, taxiway, and parking ramp.
The road that continues west onto the main parking ramp is the taxiway
we used to re-enter the FAC parking ramp after a mission. At that
intersection, we made a left turn (north) onto the FAC parking ramp that
continues in front of the light-colored Bird Dog on out through the right side
of the picture. The ramp was long
enough to park about 25 Bird Dogs wingtip to wingtip on both sides. The little
row of tin roofed buildings that goes off the edge of the picture (between the
FAC parking ramp and the main parking ramp may be the FAC hangars.
I only remember about 5, so they may be some smaller support buildings
as I think we could fit an O-1 or O-2 into those hangars.
Just behind those, next to the parking, is a large, portable crane to
pick up broken aircraft. One of
its large tires appears in one of the pictures I have from the two ground
loops the 23rd TASS experienced in January 1967.
I think I recognize the
tin-roofed buildings behind the O-1 at the edge of the picture. From the shape
and location, I believe the one that partially obscures the tail of the Bird
Dog is the Officers Club where we ate most of our meals up through about May
or June 1967. That spring the larger Officers Club was built on the north side
of the east-west road that exits at the lower right corner of the picture. The
building facing the east-west road by the Officers Club is the Base Theater.
I remember walking out from dinner and usually encountering long lines
of NKP’s population buying tickets. One time we came out and discovered no
line, and decided we couldn’t pass up the opportunity.
The feature for the evening was The Curse of the Fly, starring
Brian Donlevy. Enough said!
Beyond the row of four A-1 Skyraiders, a C-47
sits on the ramp and faces the cameraman. Between that white-topped C-47 and
the right edge of the picture, you can see two A-26s facing the edge of the
parking ramp and the runway beyond. That
is the normal parking area for the A-26s although the Air Commando Wing
probably had hangars along the east edge of the parking ramp for more serious
maintenance. Where you see the
two A-26s, the Nimrods were routinely refueled and rearmed. I can’t quite
identify the aircraft behind the A-26s and near the FAC ramp. A couple look a bit like O-2s, but this picture was taken a
year before the O-2s arrived, and they would be parked on the FAC ramp anyway.
The three in the line closest to the A-26s look like Beavers, and the
two facing away from the camera may be as well. Some of you who were at NKP in
the summer of 1966 might know what aircraft routinely parked there.
The triangle in the lower right (by where the
vehicle is turning off the main road onto the road that passed on the north
side of the radar site) was vacant in 1966 with some buildings along the road
farther north. When I returned to
NKP in the summer of 2000, Les Thompson and John Sweet showed me where the 56th
Air Command Wing headquarters had been built at that corner facing southwest
toward that intersection with the vehicle.
