NAAS Corry Field, Penscola, Florida

With making Airman (AN) back in April my pay went from $85.80 to $99.37 monthly.  Boy was I ever raking in the loot by the time I arrived at Corry Field on July 8, 1956.  I was overjoyed that I was on a real Naval Station as a part of the real Navy as opposed to just being a trainee.  Both, Bob McGowan and Dave Smith were also here with me so I was not completely without past friends.

It was a good thing because my seabag with all of my clothing I was not wearing at the time was lost in transit by railroad from my parent’s farm in northern New York to Pensacola.  I borrowed a set of dungarees from Bob to wear for the first few days I was there.  Because we were required to stencil our names above the pocket of our dungaree shirts our Petty Officers were confused with two McGowans there each day.  As Bob only had two sets, we each had to wash our clothes each evening to have clean ones for the next day.  After a week or so my seabag finally caught up to me.

Upon my arrival I was placed in the Line Division.  As such I, and maybe fifty or more others, were responsible for hour by hour servicing of the station aircraft.  I don’t know the number, but I might guess there were maybe 200 SNJ trainer aircraft located here.  We did all fueling, checking such things as oil and oxygen levels, much the same as taking care of an automobile in a service station, as well as keeping windshields and the aircraft clean.  We worked out of a steel Quonset hut that was nearly unbearably hot in the Florida summer sun.  A swamp cooler was used, but it only mitigated the heat, not suppressed it.  A swamp cooler is a sprinkler type garden hose laid lengthwise of the top of the hut.  When the water was allowed to trickle down the building it did cool it some.

I only held that position for a matter of a month or so until I was transferred to the Structures Shop, where we actually worked on the aircraft.  This is what I had been trained for.  This was the real Navy.  I was finally working on airplanes.  This is the hangar I worked in.

With one year in the Navy, and six months as an AN, I took a Navy-wide test for advancement to Petty Officer Third Class in early August.  I passed it and was selected to that position effective November 16, 1956.  This caused my pay to jump to $122.30 a month.  This isn’t much by today’s standards, and it wasn’t much then either, but any way you want to look at it my pay had advanced from $78 to $122 in a little over a year.  That’s a 56 % increase.  It was more than welcome, I worked for it, and I deserved at least that.

As a Third Class Petty Officer I was expected to lead in a small way, so I was placed in charge of a four-man maintenance crew to work on the structural parts of the aircraft which included all surfaces movable or not, all hydraulics, tires, and other miscellaneous parts and pieces.  All went well until the spring of 1957.  This is an aerial view of Corry Field taken in July 1956.

I’m no longer sure of dates, but I think it was in April when four of us decided to take leave at the same time.  The other three were from Pennsylvania.  One sailor owned a car which he was driving.  I was to be a spare driver, while the other two rode in the rear seat.  The owner of the car fell asleep at the wheel and we overturned several times down an embankment.  I awoke in an Army Hospital located at Pell City, Alabama.  After ten days or so I was released.  That’s another tale.  This last photo is of an SNJ3 flying over Corry Field.