Stanley joined the Air Force voluntarily in 1958, but was under some pressure to do so. He didn’t want to end up in the Army if he was caught in the draft, which was active at the time because of the Cold War. Stanley didn’t see any combat, but served as part of an important deterrent to war with the Soviet Union.
Much of his interview concerns his service in Thule, Greenland. The base was important for a couple of reasons, one of those was it being “Site 1” for the BMEWS system of ICBM defenses.
Last week, we shared a video about the construction of the base in 1953. This week, in addition to the beginning of Stanley’s story, we have the below video from the 1960s. It tours and explains the BMEWS facility.
Stanley, being an aircraft mechanic, isn’t featured in the video alongside the high-tech equipment and its operators, but his role in Thule was no less necessary for the regular function of the base.
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