Lee Loader

Worked on one of those in the Navy, 63-66. It was the US Naval Attache to Oslo Norway. We were stationed in England, but the plain had a Marine flight crew, We did the maintenence at USNAF West Malling Kent England, and latter we got moved to USNAF Mildenhall Suffolk England.
Ours was painted a real dark gray, with white lettering. HU16-D Albatross. Grumman made good aircraft.
Long time ago now.
Dave

When I was a kid in Corpus Christi, the Coast Gaurd was actively the HU-16. My Dad and his friends spent most weekends out on the Laguna Madre. We would camp on cots, no cover on any spit of sand. The GG pilots thought nothing of a water landing and spending meal time with us to include a few beers. At NAS-CC there was a huge US Army helicopter depot were the casualties of the war were being rebuilt. They aviators were the same, no problem with stopping to see what was on the grill.

Interesting RD, I spent a year of my Army enlistment at CC Naval Air Station and spent quite a bit of my time in ARADMAC as I was working in S4 at the time. I got there via a volunteer program per DA circular "Operation Flattop" which was a floating helicopter maintenance depot operating from there that ended up in Cam Rahn Bay (sp). One year tour on the boat (world war 2 Jeep Carrier I believe) then back to Corpus (66', 67' for me).
good duty station other than I met my first wife there. LOL. Naw, she was fine for a Texican...must of been a couple things I liked about her we were married 20 years....I really liked Corpus at that time but I understand now (still in touch with the first) it has really changed a lot and I wouldn't recognize a lot of it with the exceptions of Waterfront park and the T heads probably. Brings back a lot.

The Helicopters that came to ARADMAC for "repairs" were an eye opening experience as they were as they came from the field, blood stains still in the seats on a lot of them, and a lot of holes, you'd think some were beyond repair. There was an Army training battalion on base (I was not part of that) that was training in hydraulics I believe, plus a few WO rotory wing pilots. If wanted they would take you up on occasion, course they wanted to scare the bejeezus outa you and usually did.

Small world. Yeah, the helicopters being unloaded at the port and being transported via flatbed along Lexington Blvd (later South Padre Island Dr), told the real story of how the war was going. I think that ship became the Corpus Christi Bay or something like that, I've been on it.

Our neighbor and my Dad's best friend in life was a fellow named Russ, he ran the depot and thus the helicopter support on our fishing trips. He was a hard charger and an unbelievable MC, so every fishing trip (every weekend) was an event. We even had a Chinook full of people show up once.