Facilities of H-3

Facilities and Housing at H-3

Here we can offer a short photo tour of some of the facilities at H-3. The tour will be kind of short since H-3 didn't have a whole lot of facilities. Not shown are the H-3 Golf Course, the H-3 Olympic sized swimming pool and beach Club, the H-3 Television station, the H-3 drive-in theater, the H-3 Shopping Mall of the North Atlantic or the H-3 Tourist and Visitors Center. There is only one reason these thing are NOT shown. They did not exist and are only figments of an over active imagination.

What I can show is the things that actually did exist and allowed photographs. The interior of the radar towers, communication facilities and operations centers were all classified access areas only and photography was, to say the least, highly discouraged.

Facilities

Here is the view that you saw when ever you walked down "Main St." at H-3. Would you believe that the view got kind of boring only a few days into your tour?

H-3 wasn't so big that you couldn't walk from one end to the other in a few minutes but we still needed a motor pool to take care of the few vehicles we did have. Even though it is a B&W photo, all vehicles were Navy Gray and not the U.S. Air Force blue found on most radar sites or Air Force bases. In the background you can see the tropospheric scatter antennas.

Our communications back to civilization were mostly transmitted via the Troposphere Scatter Communications Systems. They were not the most efficient and required very specialized, costly and large feed horns and reflectors but they did work, provided you didn't mind the garbage can echo effect.

A quiet place to serve the spiritual needs of the Airmen of H-3 was available in our site Chapel. Although we did not have a Chaplain assigned to the site, on occasions a Chaplin may fly in from Keflavik. This usually was around the major religious holidays like Easter or Christmas.

The Air Force was not the only people calling H-3 home. There was also a contingent of civilian contractors who operated the tropospheric scatter communications equipment. Naturally the civilians got the nice new, clean building to house their operations while the Navy, who operated a communications station at H-3, had a functional older building to house their transmitters and receivers.

The people who were responsible for marinating the infrastructure of H-3 were headquartered in the Civil Engineering building. These carpenters, plumbers electricians, masons and general handymen were mostly local Icelandic citizens who worked as civilian employees of the Air Force. Foremost among these gentlemen was "Valdi". Although he was a Icelandic citizen, you would never know it if you talked to him or went into his office. You would swear you were talking to a native born Texas cowboy. You can check out the People/Icelandics for a picture of Valdi.

Just another view of the "Main St." at H-3

Here is where you came to sign in when you arrived or, more importantly, to sign out when you were leaving. Welcome to the 667th AC&W Squadron's Orderly Room.

When you first arrived at H-3, you probably bunked in the Transient Barracks. There were also a few Airmen who called this barracks home for their entire stay at H-3. The barracks also housed the H-3 MARS station. I seem to recall that MARS stood for Military Affiliate Radio System. It was a radio station that operated on frequencies just outside of the normal Amateur (HAM) bands and would allow phone patches and message grams, by way of specially licensed amateur radio operators back in the States, so you could talk to the folks back home a lot cheaper than trying to set up a landline phone call. You can see the multi-band beam antenna mounted on the tower at the far end of the barracks. Remember, this was before the days of international dialing or texting!

It is my understanding that when H-3 was deactivated, this Chapel was moved back to Keflavik and set up once again as a Chapel. Some information received from Steve Balashek (78-79) included the following: Re: your comment about the chapel, the one in the picture on your site was "repaired by replacement" while I was there. So, basically, the chapel that was moved was only a relatively few years old.

This is the Navy Communications building.

The Chow Hall was THE meeting place for everyone. They served four, yes, four meals a day. The fourth was a midnight shift breakfast for those going on duty for the mid shift or coming off the swing shift. Even the Dinning Hall was a 24/7 operation at H-3.

Housing

Here you have a typical corner of a H-3 Airman's room. Let me point out on the top shelf , in the corner, a hydrogen gas thyratron. This is an electronic tube which was used to very rapidly switch the power to the klystron (the final power amplifier) on and off to allow the radar pulses to be controlled with great precision. A similar tube is also located on the desktop. These tubes, once they died, became interesting looking lamps.

The record player setting on the cabinet is on top of one of the colored sheepskins which were a very popular souvenir of Hofn. They were purchased at the General Store in Hofn.

The bottles are just a few of the many which were consumed at the Hofn Open Mess.

Not much money or time was spent to "beautify" the hallways of the barracks as is shown here from a shot of the Transient Quarters barracks but the floors did shine!

One thing we had plenty of at H-3 was hot water. Seen here just coming out of the shower is "Preacher".

He set himself a high standard for his behavior and he stuck to it. He was also one of the two Airmen who kept us "safe" from the Russians on that one day when we had a heck of a good party the night before. He also had the part time job of being our barber at H-3. Let's just say that I don't think any of our haircuts would have been shown in the Top Ten Haircuts of the World but he did keep the hair out of our eyes. I just wish I could remember what his actual name was.

Barney: His name was Pierce and the stories he told about Aliens , out of body experience, and visits by flying saucers during his shifts had a lot of maintenance on edge.

Friskie was a regular visitor to many rooms in all of the barracks at H-3