THAT Question – during the time that I was assigned to the Public Affairs Office at Mather AFB in the early 1980s – was one which was almost inevitable from curious civilian visitors, or attendees at the luncheon meetings of various local civic orgs. THAT Question was some variant of “Are there nuclear bombs at Mather?”
You see, Mather AFB was not just the host for the Air Force navigator training school back then. It also hosted a SAC component: Strategic Air Command, with a complement of B-52 bombers and all that supported that element of our military structure. The answer to THAT Question was our standard and well-rehearsed Public Affairs-approved non-reply reply: “I can neither confirm nor deny the presence of nuclear weapons at Mather Air Force Base.”

(The base also hosted a small Army flight unit of Huey helicopters and their necessary support activities. I believe this unit was some kind of aerial search and rescue, or medical evacuation activity. Anyway, they were there with a corner of the flight-line, and I had a contact number for the warrant officer who would host and escort anyone interested in visiting them. Put a pin in that wee factoid. It will come up later.)

It was all part of our public affairs mission, attending such meetings as a representative of the Air Force, and reporting back to our commander on anything which might reflect on or impact the military mission. Generally, I attended those which cost less than $5 for lunch. The lieutenant who was nominally my boss in the Community Relations, or Com-Rel section did the meetings which cost more than that as she got paid much more than me. As an aside, I met ever so many women of a certain patriotic age who confessed that they had briefly served in the military, usually during or after WWII, who told me that they loved their experience of the military life, and would have liked to continue on with it … but that they met a guy and wanted to get married, and so reluctantly parted ways with military service. I also met a gentleman who had survived the 1945 sinking of the USS Indianapolis.

When it came to THAT Question, I always wanted to reply, with savage sarcasm, “Look, we have an active SAC unit stationed on this base, which contains a well-guarded alert area in which B-52 aircrews are always on standby, a heavily-guarded munitions storage area surrounded by barbed wire and so well-lit that it can practically be seen from outer space, as well as a component of well-armed military security police with shoot to kill orders regarding any unauthorized parties trespassing on all that lot … use the sense that God gave a goose and figure out that answer out yourself!”

But I didn’t, of course. I was the perfect gentle professional NCO and public representative of the USAF; well-trained in the art of replying to self-evident questions from members of the public, most of whom were serious, law-abiding patriots, taxpayers and citizens and asking out of natural concern for neighborhood values. Now and again during this tour of duty, I was fortunate enough to be driving home to my home in the base housing area – a 1950s-era concrete-block duplex unit, with an industrial-linoleum floor and metal kitchen cabinets – and observe a SAC flight taking off at close intervals in support of some exercise or other, since the road to the housing area looped around one end of that long runway. Four or five B-52s and a KC-135 tanker, each one starting down the runway as the one before it in line was halfway along … they all created a roar and a thunder that fairly shook the ground. By the time the last aircraft in sequence lifted off, I’d not be able to see the end of the runway for the cloud of dark exhaust from the many engines.

Our tax dollars at work.

It came about one day that I did have a special tour group to escort to the flightline. Half a dozen ROTC members from (IIRC) UC-Davis wanted to have their pictures taken for the school annual, or graduation program or something – clad in their fatigues and field gear and pot-helmets, striking a martial attitude as they posed in one of the Army aviation detachments’ Huey helicopters. More of our tax dollars at work, I suppose – but I scheduled a time and date, cleared it with the Army Warrant Officer who handled such things – and went down to the front gate to meet the ROTC cadets and their photog. Easy-peasy, lemon-squeezy. It was really kind of charming and brash of the ROTC lads to want to do this, by the way; it was not that long after the Vietnam War, and being openly military-affiliated was … umm, sometimes problematic. Especially in California. All points to them for being bold and in-your-face about being in ROTC.

Anyway, collected the ROTC guys and their photog at the gate, took them to the Army patch of flightline apron where the W.O. waited for us, with one of their Huey helicopters parked outside of their hanger … and commenced the picture taking. But just as we started, a convoy of vehicles went past, a little farther out on the concrete expanse of flightline.

A convoy with a couple of vehicles, one of them towing an enormous THING suspended within a heavy frame, a deadly-looking THING with fins, a THING which uncannily resembled the vehicle upon which Major Kong in the movie Dr. Strangelove took his last wild ride, a THING which was escorted by a bevy armed Air Force MPs, a good number of which immediately peeled off from the convoy and surrounded our little party, demanding to know our business, and our reason for being there. While pointing weapons at us in a particularly unsettling manner.

That does kind of make a working day stand out in memory; having serious loaded weapons pointed at one by nervous and jumpy teenagers of the junior enlisted sort. The ROTC students were well frozen into horrified silence, as was their photog. The Army W.O., though – was pretty blasé about it all, and all the while I was calmly explaining that I was Sgt. Hayes from the Public Affairs office, holding out my own ID in my hand, that this was officially authorized and affirming that no, the photographer had totally had his camera turned the other way, taking pictures of the ROTC cadets in the door of the Huey, I believe that I managed to talk the MPs down from the heights of wholly legitimate paranoia about a group of strangers with a camera on the flight line at that particular moment, which impressed the ROTC cadets no end. We took the cadets and the photog into the Army hanger to take the rest of the photos indoors, safely removed from the SAC exercise and the Dangerous THING.

We finished the shoot, and I escorted the still rather shaken ROTC cadets back to the main gate. All the way I was interiorly begging for THAT Question not to be asked by any of them. I would have felt such a fool replying, “I can neither confirm or deny the presence of THAT WHICH YOU JUST SAW TRUNDLING ALONG THE FLIGHTLINE BEFORE YOUR VERY EYES!!!”

None of them did, for which I was very grateful. (I was told, years later, that The THING was what was officially known as a Training Shape. Not the real THING. Not that it made any significant difference.)