Word: radars
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Coastal radar runs from Vancouver to San Diego on the Pacific, from Labrador to Savannah on the Atlantic. Navy radar picket ships patrol offshore for added warning. Spot local radar nets have been built around critical targets-SAC bases, nuclear weapons centers and great cities. Mostly, the radar line is string-thin. Sometimes stations are closed for repairs. Usually, the radars are beamed high for maximum range, leaving gaps for low-level attack...
Goose & Carrot. Life on America's radar line-the loo-odd Aircraft Control and Warning stations-is an unsettling mixture of utter monotony and utmost intensity. Although every operator knows that the next blip on his radarscope could be the herald of death, staring steadily into the electronic eye can be endlessly boring. Radar sites are usually remote and lonely. Permanent stations, costing $5,000,000 each to build and $500,000 yearly to run, are surprisingly elaborate. Example: "Mother Goose," a warning site about 65 miles east of Albuquerque, N. Mex., is set up to protect...
...families, and movies every night. A doctor comes every ten days, a chaplain every twelve days, a dentist once a year. "I've been in the Air Force 18 years," says First Sergeant Clifford Clegg, "and this is the best station by far." Most servicemen, however, rate radar stations as dreary, dismal duty...
...station exists to track Soviet raiders, if ever they come, and to guide by voice radio the U.S. interceptors scrambling skyward to give battle. In the windowless operations building, manned in shifts around the clock, two of several installed radar sets ceaselessly sweep the sky. Every passing plane is plotted, immediately reported to direction center "Carrot," which has to answer the insistent question: Is it the enemy...
...Kirtland Air Force Base, Albuquerque, Carrot checks all aircraft reported by the regional radar and observer net (including Mother Goose). Carrot identifies planes through flight plans, airfield reports and other means, including IFF ("Identification Friend or Foe,' electronic gadgets emitting special signals). No plane can remain unidentified for more than two minutes-the maximum is fixed by General Chidlaw's order-without the air controller at Carrot ordering a jet scramble...