SR71 EMR Processing and Travel

The 1912 program afforded me quite a few opportunities for travel to brief the EMR, its capabilities and SR71 ELINT processing in general. In the early part of the program the majority of the Direction Finding (DF) analysis was performed on an ADAGE interactive graphics console. The analysts would get the data processed by the CDC computers and further process on the ADAGE, rather cumbersome, but the best we had at the time. One trip to was to Maryland with Maj Ron Knecht to brief some folks at the FANX near BWI. It was a little disconcerting in that there were several areas that only Ron was allowed into and one or two areas where I was allowed in and not Ron; something about level and type of clearance. Never did get a clear explanation of it. Only a short trip, overnight as I remember but I always thought I was being observed.
At Beale, the EMR processing was finally being completely processed to the reporting level on the CDC 3200 computers.  The ADAGE computer had been retired to processing pulse data for ‘fine grain’ analysis.  All processing program modifications on the CDC computers had to be done on Punch Cards.
Another trip I took was to NSA at Ft Meade, Maryland. There was a lot of ADAGE equipment located there and they had some pulse level analysis tools that we could possibly use. It was sometime in the summer and I was wearing sandals and shorts on the plane. I got there but my baggage went to Minnesota and after haggling with the airline people I got permission to buy clothing for the meeting the next afternoon. I spent about $150 for everything I needed to look fairly professional and was able to get all the labels off, so I didn’t look like a mannequin. I finally got my baggage the next day.
The meeting was in one of the basements and lasted until after 1am the next morning. The NSA man that was demonstrating the analytical software was a night owl and usually worked into the morning. It was an interesting session to say the least. I had checked out of the motel prior to the meeting. After the meeting was over I drove to Baltimore airport and caught an essentially empty flight to New York to go to AIL Deer Park for some other meetings. I was the only person to board the flight and as luck would have it; my baggage did not get on that flight. It took 2 days to get my clothes.
During one of the early trips to England I was asked to go with an AF lieutenant to Germany to brief the EMR system to a group in Germany at the ‘Patch Four’ barracks in Stuttgart.  The Lieutenant was to brief imagery. We flew on a C130 to Ramstein and I rented a car and drove to Stuttgart. I have never driven so fast! Just to keep from being run over by trucks we had to drive around 160 km/hour. Once we got to Stuttgart we found out that only the lieutenant’s clearances had been sent so I could not do the EMR briefing. Go figure. We returned to Ramstein that evening.
Ramstein is near Kaiserslautern (K Town) and we were there during ‘Fasching’ a sort of Mardi Gras prior to Ash Wednesday. We spent a day walking around K Town drinking beer and toasting everybody. Lucky for me the lieutenant had taken German as a student at NYU and we didn’t get into too much trouble. However, he must have skipped the class on what to order at meal time; I did not enjoy our only ‘sit down’ meal. The other meals were snacks, walking around with a stein in one hand and some ‘brat’ in the other.
I also traveled to Omaha, Wright Paterson, the Pentagon and Greenville Texas for 1912 program related meetings. The Omaha and Greenville meetings were for joint sessions with the people running the RC135 ELINT AEELS program. There were several heated discussions of how to process and report data with LtCol Barry Kibbe of SAC. When he retired he went to E-Systems in Greenville, Texas and I also ran into him at the O’Club in Mildenhall during one of the SR71 deployments.
During one meeting in Omaha I was coming back from lunch with Jack Migliaccio the 1912 program manager at AIL. Walking down the hallway I spotted an officer in front of me talking to two enlisted troops. I recognized The voice of a classmate of mine during graduate school at Beale Air Force Base. I said rather loudly “Bill Campbell”, he turned around and called my name and asked me how I was doing. Meanwhile Jack was astounded at my calling out his name, Bill was a two-star general.  Bill asked what I was doing at SAC and said that he had a few minutes and invited us to come to his office for a short chat. Jack was amazed at this casual encounter.
One interesting benefit to the early trips to England was the perks given by the rental car agency Wilhire.  On one weekend, a Saturday I think, they took about 10 tech reps and wives to the town of Ipswich to a riot and a football (read soccer) match broke out. The rental agency had a company box on the 50-meter line cozy and warm.  Refreshments and food was served throughout the melee. I never had been a soccer fan until I was able to watch it this way. It was cold and rainy on the pitch (read field) but being warm (learned to love Scotch) made it enjoyable. It was a lot more enjoyable that the NY Giants football game I went to at Yankee Stadium around 1960 in a snow storm. At that outing we had to bring our own warmth in the form of flasks and had to wrap in blankets, both to keep us warm.
Jan and stayed in the Smoke House Inn, a favorite watering hole adjacent to the base. We did a lot of touring and in the Northeast part of England.  We did go to London one weekend in December 1983. We checked into the Tower Hotel near the river on a Friday. Early the next day, we decided to take the tube to a stop in the Knightsbridge area close to Harrods department store. We walked a few blocks and went into the side door of Harrods. We spent an hour or so walking around just looking at Christmas stuff and finally went out the same side door we had entered and crossed the street to the tube station to go back to the hotel, about a half hour ride. When we got to the hotel we were not allowed to enter until we showed some ID and proved that we were registered as a guest of the hotel. While we were on subway somebody had set off a car bomb near the exit of Harrods we had walked out of and had killed one police lady who had been giving tickets to parked cars. The Usual Suspects for this type of action were the IRA and their followers.  The most Jan remembers is how cold it was. We attended Sunday Mass at a small church in London and there was no heat, only cold stone walls.
The northeast of England is rich with interesting and historical sites. In Bury St Edmunds, about 15 miles from Mildenhall, are the grounds of the abbey where the Magna Carta was signed. Cambridge was about the same distance in the other direction with great shops and college grounds. Ely Cathedral was also nearby. It seemed that every rural church or cathedral in the area had a tomb of someone buried near the altar. I may be mistaken but there seemed to be a lot of wives of some King Henry just lying about and then a church would be built over her. Probably not true, but it seemed that way.