NOTE: Please Check out the new Whiting Field Gallery. There are several prople on the Whiting Field page that I need help finding. I found two guys in June of 2010, with both of them living close to Orlando, FL. One of these people gave me a link about my old photolab chief, Ernest J. Gaines, who died in 1985 in the Philippnes.

The images in this gallery were made with my personal camera's from May 1959 until Sept of 1962. The first images were made on boot leave from the Naval Basic Training Center in San Diego. I bought a used twin lens reflex in a pawn shop, and starting making pictures around San Diego. After returning to the base my first images were of the barracks, and the sailors in my company, number 148 of 1959.

My next duty station was at NAAS WHITING FIELD, near Milton, FL.

Whiting Field was a large part of the Air Naval Basic Training Command in north west Florida. Cadets started out at Pensacola, and then moved on to NAAS Whiting Field after completing basic flight training in the T-34's. The larger 1300 HP T-28's were the next phase of the student pilots training. Today Whiting is a full NAS, with helicopter training. (I left Whiting as a photographers mate third class.)

In the summer of 1961 I was ordered to Destroyer Development Group Two, at Newport, RI.

The development group had a staff of about forty officers, and enlisted men, with Commodore, (Captain), Donald G. Dockum as the commanding officer. (He died in the late sixties while on a hunting trip in upstate NY.)

The group was housed in building Eighteen near the two destroyer piers, in Coddington Cove. Most of the groups officers had started out as enlisted, and were commissioned through the LDO or Warrent programs. (Commodore Dockum was a 1936 graduate of the Naval Academy.) The group was small with everyone from the commanding officer down working closely together. (Commodore Dockum would often fish with the enlisted men in the evenings, and we had lots of good chats when I drove him to or from the airport at Providence, RI.

The developement group's purpose was to invent and test new equipment that would improve navy destroyer's. We had four WW II era destroyer's to use as test ships. The USS Hazelwood, DD 531, USS Hugh Purvis DD 709, USS Glennon DD 840, and the USS Brownson DD 868. I got to spend some time on all of these ships, but I was on the Hugh Purvis more than any of the others. Everything was classified, with a need to know.

My enlistment ended on Sept, 26, 1962. I was a Photographers Mate, Second Class at this time. PH2


My Email is modelsmodels@Yahoo.com Please put the word NAVY in the email subject line.


June 17, 2016

It's been over fifty seven years since I enlisted, and sometimes at night I will wake up and think about those days when I could hear the sounds of a radial engine going up to full power, or see the food being served on a chow line. I still miss being in the navy.