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Tom Basl ... The Air Force Years
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Music playing is Brothers In Arms
THE AIR FORCE YEARS OF TOM BASL ... 1963 - 1967
                           (Edward T. Basl, Jr.)
Basic training photo, Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, 1963
Tech School, Amarillo Air Force Base, Texas, 1963/64
Auto-pilot class at Amarillo Air Force Base,
3320th Technical School, 1963/64. Amarillo
was called "Little West Point" because the
discipline was worse than boot camp, but I
enjoyed the ten months I was there.  The
usual military wake-up call would be a
barracks guard turning on the lights and
blowing a whistle, but ours was different as
the song "wipeout" was played over the
loudspeakers at full throttle and you could
not sleep through that. (To listen to "wipeout"
click here ... this is a midi file and does not
have the same effect as the original song.
This link has graphics so may take a moment
to load).
dancing letters by artie.com
After leaving Amarillo, I was sent to Lockbourne AFB, Ohio during the years of May 1964 until August of 1967 where the auto-pilot/instrumentation work on the F-101B led to a technical degree, work at Allied Chemical and a career with Philip Morris.  I also spent five years with the Virginia Air National Guard.
Squadron patch for 87th FIS,
Lockbourne, in mid-60's
Guys from the 87th FIS in front of our barracks at Lockbourne.
Many of these men were shipped to Southeast Asia during the
Vietnam War and I lost contact with them.
I took these pictures of the 87th F-101B Voodoo while they were on the flight line at Lockbourne AFB. During this time, they were on alert 24 hours a day and fully loaded with weapons.  When the 87th was at Lockbourne, the tail section of the F-101B was all blue with yellow stars. So many men in our unit left for Southeast Asia that those of us remaining worked long hours to keep the planes repaired. There were some nights when we slept in the shop between the test equipment and in the hangers because there were so many planes that we could only grab a couple of hours of sleep at a time.  In
addition, we did emergency work on aircraft such as F-102's, F-106's and F-4's.
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