Word: palmerola
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...combat soldiers dispatched to Honduras last week first pitched their tents at Palmerola air base, more than 100 miles from the contra sanctuaries in Honduras that were the target of an incursion by Sandinista troops. The Sandinista assault, grandiloquently characterized by the Reagan Administration as an "invasion," had prompted Washington to respond with paratroopers and infantry. There was "no intention" of sending U.S. troops into combat, assured the White House. Officially, the soldiers were there for a "readiness exercise" intended to show U.S. support for the Honduran government -- a rather dubious claim, since the fighting took place in a remote...
...their part, the Sandinistas are intensely concerned about U.S. activity in the area. Up to 1,000 U.S. military personnel are involved in seven separate regional exercises. The U.S. contingents include about 120 Army engineers who are building roads near Honduras' Palmerola Air Force Base, a company of infantrymen patrolling near the same site, and a dozen servicemen who assisted at a Salvadoran-Honduran naval exercise that ended last week. Most of the recent arrivals are early harbingers of a major U.S. joint exercise with Honduras known as Big Pine III, which will take place sometime after the first...
...that the U.S. aircraft regularly penetrate about 100 miles into Nicaraguan airspace. He further claimed that most of the flights originated at Howard Air Force Base in Panama or at military bases in the U.S. But some of the aircraft, he said, embark from the Honduran military base at Palmerola, about 50 miles northwest of the country's capital, Tegucigalpa. Palmerola is the temporary home of some 300 members of the U.S. 224th Military Intelligence Battalion and of about a dozen unarmed U.S. military reconnaissance aircraft. The mission of the top-secret 224th is known to include spy flights...
TIME Senior Correspondent Peter Stoler visited several of the U.S.-built installations. Among Stoler's observations: >The great majority of U.S. personnel in Honduras?about 1,300?are stationed at Palmerola, about 50 miles northwest of Tegucigalpa. They are part of Joint Task Force Alpha, whose primary mission is planning for Granadero I. The task force members are largely support troops, broken down into headquarters, communications, logistics, engineering and military police companies...
...other major U.S. unit at Palmerola is top secret. The 300-man 224th Military Intelligence Battalion, from Hunter Air Force Base in Savannah, Ga., is separated from the rest of the compound by triple-concertina barbed wire and signs cautioning would-be intruders that sentries are allowed to use "deadly force." The 224th's activities are to fly OV-1B Mohawk and RU-21J Beechcraft reconnaissance aircraft loaded with surveillance gear over El Salvador and gather information on the movements of F.M.L.N. guerrillas...