Best food I ever had while in the Air Force, was while I was on alert duty at Hamilton AFB. We were in a building that was set up to house up to 4 acft and usually just had 2 F-106s with a supervisor (during the day), 2 crew chiefs, 2 pilots and a cook (during the day also). We had our own mess hall there.
In the afternoon (when the cook was leaving) and during down time, the cook would make sure that the fridge and freezer had whatever we wanted and he also let us cook while he wasn't there as long as we cleaned up afterwards. We were there for 48 and off 12. We had some good times there but, when the time came, we were up and running to launch those 2 F-106s! One time I remember, they were checking to see just how long it would take to launch from a dead sleep. That Alert Alarm went off about 1AM. We all woke up, went out the door, started the power units (electric power and air), got the pilot set to strap in the plane, got off of the plane, the pilots started the engines, we disconnected the power & air connections, quickly went over the flight controls, marshaled the pilots out of the perspective parking places, they taxied down to the other end of the runway and took off in less than 5 minutes! My family and friends could not believe that I could move so fast!
We had alerts that were scheduled by our higher command and also everytime a ship or plane got out of their designated course (and that seemed to happen pretty regularly). I worked at a gas station (some of you should remember
Full Servicegas stations) in Novato (not far from Hamilton AFB, CA) from 12midnight til 8AM and went directly to my Military Job on the base.
