Back to Work
Ok, that was fun! Two weeks at home, visiting relatives and friends, and feeling like I’d never been there before. Most everyone I knew was either in college or the military. There was a war going on, remember? So, I wasn’t too sad to get back to the base and find out exactly what a Technical Control Specialist, or a glorified telephone operator, really was. Turned out that most of the guys I was hanging out with were also to be Tech Controllers. That made it easy, I knew most everyone in my class in a short amount of time, like after the first block. I don’t even remember what the blocks were, like we did in the electronics training before leave, except that one block was typing. That block started while we were in the first block and lasted until the last block. We had an hour or two a day of typing. To pass that block we had to type 20 words per minute without any errors. We had speed accuracy tests every day until we had achieved that goal. I was fortunate, I had taken typing in high school so I was fairly close to that requirement from day way. Well, maybe my accuracy needed some work.
I guess the first thing we had to learn was, “Who were we working for?” Well, you name them and we worked for them, starting with the Air Force Communications Service (AFCS), then the Defense Communication Service (DFS), the Defense Communications Agency (DCA), the National Security Agency (NSA), and a host of others. “Who did we work with?” All those listed previously, plus the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Army, the Pentagon, the White House (yeah, that one), every military installation on the planet, every civilian communications company in the U.S., and organizations like NATO, USAFE, SHAPE (Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe) and so many others. And most importantly, “Who did we have to talk to in order to complete our job?”
The last question was the basis of our job. We were an operations type position which answers the earlier question of why we didn’t have to go through the full electronics training, just the first six blocks, because we weren’t going to repair anything but we needed to know electronics well enough so we could speak intelligently to repairmen of all types of equipment. We needed to talk to cryptographic departments about the methods of hiding our secret messages from our enemies, or modems used to put multiple teletype channels together on one cable, or radio technicians about HF, Tropospheric, Microwave radio service techs, and a slew of others. We were “jacks of all trades”, literally! We needed to know enough about every piece of equipment so we could effectively and efficiently trouble shoot every part of every circuit type and direct the actual servicing technicians as to what was not working properly.
Why you ask? Good question! I’ll give you an example. Let’s say the teletype operator in the Consolidated Base Personnel Office (CBPO) at Hickam AFB, Hawaii needed to speak to the CBPO at Ramstein AFB Germany. They had sent a message to Ramstein but had only received garbage back, not a legible message. So, what and where was the problem? Well, that is where a tech controller would come in, but not just one, there would be one at every base that that circuit traveled through from one end to the other. By using special test equipment and the ability to speak to each base, we would determine where the problem was and make an alternate route for the circuit until the failed portion of the circuit could be repaired. That alternate route was usually made by using a patch cord to run the circuit through a different route, maybe totally eliminating the base with the problem. Once repaired, the patch was removed and the circuit was back in service as it was originally designed. Now you know why we were called glorified telephone operator (because of the patch cords). Just remember, there were no satellite communications to speak of in the early 70’s, nor computers, WIFI, or Bluetooth for that matter, and tech controllers didn’t fix anything, but we knew who would and we created work orders for the proper technicians to make those repairs.
It’s all too easy for me to talk about this job after having done it for six years, but what I understood after that crash course on how everyone is connected, well that’s another story. So the school covered many things from many angles and from many different points of view. Test equipment, communications modes and methods, reports to the many organizations involved, and how to speak to all sorts of support roles. In any case, coming out of tech school and going to your first duty station earned you a new name. Like “rainbow” and “ping” before, now we were called “jeeps”! Why you ask? Because as you reported to work and started hearing how the real world worked, you usually said “jeepers, I didn’t know that”! Hence, the name “jeeps“.
Shortly after completing my training as a Telecommunications Control Specialist (Level 3), I was re-assigned to the 2045th Communications Group at Andrews Air Force Base. I was finally going to be in the real Air Force stationed in or near Washington D.C. I was truly excited about that station although I had dreamed of more worldly places, like Hawaii, or Italy, or Germany. I was also very happy to learn I wasn’t headed to Greenland, or Iran, or Viet Nam.
So I left Keesler AFB, headed for Washington D.C. with a short leave at home in Michigan. I was not going to look back. Biloxi was a place where the locals didn’t like us, probably for good reason, but it wasn’t where I wanted to spend any more time than required.