The Secret Radar Base

Ray and Shirley get together in Florida and promise to grow old together doing foolish things in foolish places.

Transcript

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Second Lieutenant Ray Conan dropped 65 cents into the slot machines at the Boca Ratan Army Airfield Officers Club before settling in with a five cent Coke to write a letter home. It was January 30th, 1945, and the warm Florida breeze was a world away from the freezing Chicago winter his sweetheart, Shirley, was enduring. Ray described the club as a redecorated foxhole, a place where the rhythmic pull of the one-armed bandits provided a mechanical backbeat to the low hum of nervous conversation. In the early months of 1945, this corner of Florida was the epicenter of a technological revolution that would change the face of the war, though Ray couldn't say the word that defined his mission. If he had, he risked a court martial. At Boca Ratan, airmen were sworn to absolute secrecy about a technology so new it was simply called the secret weapon. Radar. The airfield itself was a sprawling, chaotic landscape. To get to the mess hall, Ray often had to hitchhike across the base, which was scattered over thousands of acres of scrubland and former pineapple fields. The barracks were crowded and functional, reminiscent of his time at Truoxfield in Wisconsin, but the atmosphere here was different. There was a frantic 20-hour-a-day pace to the training. Cadets studied aerodynamics, engineering, and communications in windowless rooms where they weren't even allowed to take notes. Everything had to be committed to memory. Ray told Shirley the course was hot stuff, joking that by the time he finished, he'd be able to do anything, including milking rattlesnakes. This wasn't just a colorful metaphor. The base was nicknamed Rattlesnake Bomber Base because of the sheer number of diamondbacks uncovered during its rapid construction. The military had essentially seized the town of Boca Ratone to build this installation. In 1940, the town's population was just over 700 people. By 1945, it was home to 16,000 airmen. The government invoked the Second War Powers Act to force owners to vacate their land almost overnight. This included the displacement of nearly 40 African American families who had lived as squatters on the land for years. Even the dead weren't spared. A local mortician was hired to relocate bodies from a cemetery that sat directly in the path of the new runways. The transformation was so absolute that the army even took over the luxurious oceanfront Boca Raton Club, a Mediterranean-style resort designed by Addison Meisner to house radar trainees. The once glamorous rooms were stripped of their finery and replaced with standard issue bunks eight to a room. The swimming pool was boarded over to create more space for training. The contrast between the high society history of Palm Beach and the grim, urgent reality of the base was stark. Ray's journey to this swampy frontier had been a grueling five-day train ride across the country. He described the South as a place where people didn't believe in hurrying, a pace that left a restless Midwesterner like him feeling like a wreck. During a seven-hour layover in Kansas City and a three-hour walk through Birmingham, he observed a culture that felt foreign and stagnant. He told Shirley that if the South ever wanted to secede again, he wouldn't do a thing to stop them. But Florida offered something the rest of the South didn't: a chance for a brief, stolen reunion. Ray spent weeks scouting for a place where Shirley could join him. He promised a swell sun and a romantic moon, twenty miles from the high society world of Palm Beach. He eventually found a spot, and for three weeks in February, the war felt far away. They spent their days under the Florida sun, Shirley's skin turning a deep tan that would later make her look like a stranger among the pale feces of Chicago. But the letters that followed her departure were heavy with the weight of the coming mission. On February 22nd, Ray wrote about moping around in a daze, the base feeling hollow without her. He sought out quiet places as the sun went down, walking where he wouldn't have to see or hear anyone, trying to meditate on the brief time they had shared. The radio in the background frequently played Don't Fence Me In, a song that felt like a cruel irony for a man confined to a base waiting for orders to fly into the heart of a global conflict. He tried to keep her spirits up with a nonsensical joke his friend Johnny had sent him. What's the difference between a duck? The answer, there is no difference, because one of its fronts are both the same, was a bit of absurdist humor intended to puncture the growing gloom of their separation. By late February, the reality of the training was wearing on him. While he found the radar technology fascinating, he admitted to Shirley that he didn't like the school as much as he liked the visceral reality of bombing. There was a sense of unfinished business that haunted him. He told her he wouldn't feel worth much until he went overseas and did some good. This was the internal conflict of many young airmen of the era, a desperate desire to stay with the people they loved, and an equally powerful, almost cellular need to prove themselves in combat. Ray was a second lieutenant bombardier, trained to be the man who actually released the payload, a role that required precision, nerves of steel, and the new radar eyes that would allow them to see through the thickest clouds over Europe or the Pacific. The radar bombing runs were often practiced over the Avon Park bombing range, where crews would drop dummy loads on targets designed to simulate German industrial centers. The technology was temperamental and the training was relentless, but the stakes were clear. Radar was the secret weapon that would allow for night bombing and navigation in weather that had previously grounded the Allied Air Forces. Every hour Ray spent in the classroom or in the air was an hour closer to the front. He encouraged Shirley to stay strong, telling her she had more real stuff in her than he ever would. He jokes that if she ever truly cracked under the pressure of waiting, he'd desert the army and fly to Chicago to carry her back to Alabama in his arms. It was a romantic fantasy, a way to bridge the distance between a secret base in the Florida scrub and the reality of a world at war. The legacy of the Boca Raton Army Airfield is still visible today, though most of its 800 buildings are gone. After the war, the base was shut down and much of the land was transferred to the state of Florida, eventually becoming the site of Florida Atlantic University. A few of the original T-shaped wooden barracks still stand on the campus, serving as reminders of the 16,000 men who once marched where students now walk. The secret of radar eventually became public knowledge, but for men like Ray Conan, the experience was defined by the silence he had to keep and the letters he wrote to keep a connection to a life he wasn't sure he'd ever see again. He ended his letters with a simple, desperate plea. Keep remembering. He wanted her to remember the heat, the frustration of lost car keys, and the promise they made to grow old together, not gracefully, but laughing and doing foolish things in foolish places. For a bomber deer in 1945, that was the only future that mattered. If you think a friend would appreciate the history in this story, pass it along to them.