July-August - Air Defense Artillery School

Fort Bliss
BRIGADIER GE~ERAL DALE D. Hm;-'IA~
COlll1Jlil/ldillg AAATC
Since our last news letter. the AAATC at Fort Bliss,
Texas, has been brought to an even higher peak of rlevelopment.
\\lith the completion of Camps Hueco. Oro Grande
and Dona Ana, desert firing points located within fifty
miles of the Center itself, Al\ATC now boasts as complete
training facilities as any other training center in the countrv.
, Enjoying as it does, unusual advantages of climate and
location. AAATC is able to proceed with a tightly packed
schedule which is never interrupted by bad weather. In
fact it has rained but twice during the first six months of
this year. Aside from periodic dust storms the climate of
the EI Paso area is perfect for the purpose of A1\ training.
Camps H ueco, Oro Grande and Dona Ana have been
organized on a semi-permanent basis. Troops remain at these
desert camps for periods as long as several weeks, engaging
in exercises which lack onl" a live enemv to make thcm
completely real. The Infiltr;tion Course ~t Camp I-Iucco.
,- J
Signal Corp p
Among many practical trammg aids at Fort Bliss
AAATC is this pair of simulated freight cars. Tech.
nical Sergeant John l\I. Devlin of S-4 is credited
wich the idea of dummy flat cars for loading exercises.
directed by Lieutenant Stacy F. Graham, is the near1
thing to actual battle AAATC men encounter before goin
overseas. Crawling under criss-crossed barbed wire. \\;1
dynamite "land mines" exploding and machine gun bulle
whizzing a few inches overhead, the men are subjected I
the same conditions as actual battle. To add to the genel
effect, recordings of combat sounds-dive bombers, e
plosions, whistles and shrieks-are broadcast over a Iou
speaker system as the troops squiml along under the Wirt
Some eight thousand soldiers have made the course. wi!
only three minor mishaps.
Conversion of several A/\ units to "half-track" outfi~
took place here in the last few months. Officers and me
of the half-track units are invariably enthusiastic abo
this comparatively new development in AA artillery. r
Among recent aids to training at AAATC are a debar~
ation tower and the mockup freight cars. The debarkati I~
tower is the brain child of Captain LaVere Brooks, an arch
tect in civil life. A set of safety rules, prohibiting more th
four men on the net at one time, has been posted.
Infiltration Course at Camp Hueco Firing Range. A loudspeaker blares forth
bacele.noises, while machine gun bullets wing overhead and land mines explode.