19620501: Chanute AFB Technical Training School

I attended Minuteman Missile training at Chanute AFB, IL from May 1962 through May of 1963, 3359th School Squadron. For me it was while working in Turkey for Chrysler Corporation Missile Division's I&C Team II installing Jupiter missiles (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZVdD...) around west-central Turkey's mountains when I received a radio-phone call from Carlisle, PA's Draft Board Office...wanting to know why I hadn't provided them with a forwarding address when I moved from Carlisle to Turkey. I never gave it a moment's thought...didn't know I had to! The call was to notify me that my Draft number was coming up! A call to the USAF Recruiter, Gust Lee, in Carlisle, PA got me a pair of tickets to fly back to Carlisle...to Join the USAF thus depriving the U. S. Army of another soul.

Four short weeks of Basic Training at Lackland AFB, TX and I was off to Rantoul, IL...home of Chanute AFB, for extended Tech School training to become a Ballistic Missile Checkout Equipment Specialist.

A year was spent attending school at Chanute, with a lot of growing up, hard and long study sessions, while learning new skills. Our class graduated a year later, in May of 1963. Ten of our class, including myself, was assigned to the 455th Missile Wing in Minot, ND.

During our year at Chanute we learned not only technical skills, but also how to spit shine shoes (a cotton ball, KiWi Black Shoe polish, and either matches or a lighter), how to manually wax floors without benefit of a buffer (consumed lots of Johnson's Paste Wax), how to make an acceptable bunk bed (with hospital corners, that would pass the "quarter" test), how to mow lawns around aircraft static displays, how to peel potatoes, starch fatigues, clean commodes, and how to march. Some of us, anyway.

This video consists of scanned 35mm slides dated from May of 1962 through May of 1963. The dates attached to various photos are dates the slides were developed, not necessarily the date of event occurrence. There may have been up to 1-2 months separation due to having to send the slides to a Kodak lab for development.

There are a few photos in the collection some may consider a tad bit "risque," so prepare yourself should you chose to view this presentation. Leaving these photos out of the presentation would have destroyed the credibility of our having presented a true and complete picture of life as an Airman student at Chanute AFB, IL.

The photos included in this video were taken during the timeframe of May1962 through May 1963.