Warbird Information Exchange

Ellen and I took a little aerial tour of central Oklahoma today and were in the vicinity of Burns Flat so we decided to stop by for a little visit. The old Clinton Sherman Air Force Base is pretty quiet on weekends since the USAF finally vacated the field in 1975. Here are a couple of photos, the first from 1946 or so, and the second we took this afternoon.




Scott

Very kool now and then photos! Thanks

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Nice shots; didn't know they used Clinton NAS for storage after the war. The Clinton-Sherman AFB area is a strange place to visit; runways, housing, hangars, and everything else an AFB needed, with about 10% of it in use for anything (my guess) since it was closed. Great place to land and fuel up if you need a 13,000 foot runway, though!

Regards,

Andy

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Andy,

It is a little eerie, isn't it? If you drive back to the cantonment area on the east side there are still WWII Navy warehouses standing at the railroad sidings. There are a few other WWII remnants, but SAC remodeled the place pretty thoroughly when they moved in. Speaking of the size of the place, the runway is 13,505 feet with 1,000 foot overruns (the original length of the SAC runway) and 300 feet wide. Ellen shot this photo as I was rolling out on final for 35L to give a little perspective:


The aprons cover 96 acres, and there are 1,474,098 square yards of concrete between the runway, taxiways, apron, and ready pads.

The Sherman in Clinton-Sherman is Sherman Iron Works, the company that scrapped the Navy and Marine aircraft in the late forties.

Scott

Many of the planes parked in the above picture are PBJ’s. The Navy flew all of them to Clinton where all but eight that I know of were scrapped within a few months. The PBJ I am helping to restore managed to escape the smelter and is the last one left. All other Mitchells flying or otherwise are ex AAF. I wish somebody somewhere had a bunch of photos from Clinton that they could share.

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wow, the old runways look small compaired to the new one. Kinda sad and weird feeling to see then and now photos like that. Another lost america shot I beleive.

Whats the deal with the parking area being in the next County? If you were late for work, it must have been pretty harsh!

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Dan,

I think we may have posted this picture on the PBJ thread a long time ago, but here goes again. This picture is an earlier shot than the first one on the thread judging from the number of aircraft visible:


From what I remember, the area on the far right (marked with a "5") is PB4Y-1s, the aircraft between the viewer and the runway intersection being the PBJ area.

I haven't really done any heavy research on NAS Clinton or the scrapping, but I know there are a few photos around. When all the aircraft had been ferried in, close to 9,000 airframes were at this storage field. Not many flew out after they got there, sadly for us.

Scott

Its a nice reminder of stopping there in a C118B for about 400 gls of avgas.We were on the way to Nas Dallas from Elmendorf and came up little short.Great pics.

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I suspect that the vehicles you see are surplus military - trucks, etc. - probably headed for the same fate as the aircraft, or waiting to be sold.

Walt