Evolution to AMCOM: The Formation of the U.S. Army Aviation and Troop Command (ATCOM) Part III: Field Operating Activities, 1961-1975

Courtesy Photo | USNS Corpus Christi Bay off Vung Tau, South Vietnam, c. 1967-69 (Photo By US Navy)  

REDSTONE ARSENAL, ALABAMA, UNITED STATES

10.31.2017

Courtesy Story

U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command

by Dr. Kaylene Hughes, Historian

In the 15 years between 1961 and 1975, during which ATCOM’s predecessor aviation and troop support commands experienced significant alterations, both organizations acquired new missions involving acquisition, research and development, sustainment and testing.

Also, between 1962 and 1968, the aviation portion of ATCOM’s lineage in particular underwent several reorganizations and redesignations. The U.S. Army Transportation Materiel Command (TMC), established in 1959, became the Aviation and Surface Command (AVSCOM) in 1962. Two years later, the initial AVSCOM became the Aviation Materiel Command (AVCOM) then transitioned in 1968 to the Aviation Systems Command, which reused the older AVSCOM acronym.

At the same time, as a former ATCOM historian noted, the evolution of the two commands that would ultimately become the Aviation and Troop Command—AVSCOM and the U.S. Army Troop Support Command (TROSCOM)—was accompanied by the addition “of … field operating activities (which) kept pace with mission growth and scope of operations.”

On Apr. 21, 1961, for example, TMC assumed responsibility for the Aeronautical Depot Maintenance Center (ARADMAC), Corpus Christi, Texas, which began operations that day. According to the website for today’s Corpus Christi Army Depot (CCAD), as ARADMAC became known in 1974, the center “was tasked with helicopter repair and maintenance for three engines and four airframes. The first Huey UH-1 helicopter was overhauled in 1962 and by 1968, the facility was in full operation, providing repair and overhaul services to approximately 400 helicopters.”

The depot’s online history related further, “During the mid-sixties, a Navy seaplane tender ship was recommissioned by the Army as the Army’s first floating helicopter maintenance facility and named the USNS (U.S. Naval Ship) Corpus Christi Bay.” Originally commissioned in 1940, the repurposed vessel passed its first sea trial in 1965 and deployed to the coast of Southeast Asia in 1966. A 1971 article in the Gateway Reporter recalled, “For the first time the Army would have an aircraft maintenance shop that would go anywhere there was sufficient water, with personnel able to work on aircraft component overhaul and repair enroute.”

The 538 foot long ship supplied “about 37,000 square feet of shop space and 112,400 cubic feet of storage space,” where maintenance personnel had facilities for “limited airframe repair, engine overhaul repair and test, component overhaul, laboratory support, limited manufacturing support, calibration services, evaluation of low-time components for return to service, evaluation of all types of disposition, extensive test facilities and a wide variety of repair shops … (such as were found) in a depot on shore.”

The reorganization of the entire U.S. Army in 1962, when the former TMC transformed into the original AVSCOM, resulted in the reassignment of TMC field activities dealing with depot maintenance and test functions to other U.S. Army Materiel Command (AMC) organizations. Subsequently, in Nov. 1963, the Department of Defense (DoD) assigned the first of several plant cognizance missions to the original AVSCOM.

These organizations performed the in-plant administration for contracts awarded by the Aviation and Surface Command and other DoD procuring offices. The command’s plant cognizance mission initially included accountability for offices located at the Bell Helicopter Plant, Fort Worth, Texas; the Hiller Plant Division, Palo Alto, California; the Lockheed Plant Activity, Van Nuys, California; and the Hughes Plant Activity, Culver City, California. AVSCOM later exercised jurisdiction over offices at the Grumman Plant Activity, Stuart, Florida, and the Boeing-Vertol Plant Activity, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Although the Hiller plant was discontinued in 1966 and higher headquarters transferred the cognizant activities at Grumman and Lockheed to other organizations, by the mid-1970s, the Aviation Systems Command performed its assigned plant cognizant responsibilities for not only the Army but also the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Air Force and various foreign governments.

On Jan. 31, 1964, AMC assigned the newly created AVCOM its first research and development (R&D) activity with the transfer of the U.S. Army Transportation Research Command (TRECOM), Fort Eustis, Virginia, the primary mission of which was aviation and surface materiel R&D. The research organization was renamed the U.S. Army Aviation Materiel Laboratories (AVLABS) on Mar. 25, 1965. The following month, AVCOM assumed responsibility for the new U.S. Army Aeronautical Research Laboratory at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA’s) Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, California.

Also in 1964, AVCOM became responsible for the procurement, supply and maintenance of the Army’s Air Delivery Equipment. At that time, the command assumed operational control of the Army Air Delivery Liaison Office at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Additionally, AVCOM received full responsibility in 1966 to develop, engineer and procure Army aircraft.

That same year AMC also assigned the command its first aviation test activity mission when it transferred responsibility for the U.S. Army Aviation Test Activity, Edwards Air Force Base, California, from the U.S. Army Test and Evaluation Command (TECOM). Along with the testing mission, AVCOM assumed oversight of Army aircraft standards and qualifications. Between 1966 and 1974, the test activity underwent two name changes, the first when it became known as the U.S. Army Aviation Systems Test Activity (AASTA) and the second when it was redesignated the U.S. Army Aviation Engineering Flight Activity (AEFA), with the new title conforming to its assigned mission and functions.

Army aviation R&D and testing responsibilities for low speed aviation increased further under the Aviation System Command’s jurisdiction with the creation on Jul. 15, 1970 of the U.S. Army Air Mobility Research and Development Laboratories (AMRDL) Complex at Moffett Field. AMRDL was charged with directing and controlling AMC’s Air Mobility Research, Development, Test and Evaluation Program.

AVSCOM’s new R&D complex was part of a Nov. 1969 agreement between AMC and NASA designed to save more than $100 million by providing for the “joint use of existing NASA test chambers, wind tunnels, and other facilities for conducting aeronautical research by scientists and engineers of the two agencies.” The cost savings were derived from eliminating the Army’s need for constructing its own low-speed aviation research capabilities.

The command’s already existing AVLABS became part of the new R&D complex and was renamed the Eustis Directorate, with little change to its original mission. Also reporting to AMRDL was the new Langley Directorate at the NASA-Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia, which would conduct basic research and exploratory development in the fields of low-speed aeronautics and aircraft structures. The complex’s new Lewis Directorate, collocated at the NASA-Lewis Research Center, Cleveland, Ohio, was responsible for basic research and exploratory development in the field of aeronautical propulsion. The former Army Aeronautical Research Laboratory, originally established in 1965, was reorganized as the Ames Directorate and remained at Moffett Field, where it worked in the field of low-speed aeronautics.

Although AMRDL was geographically dispersed, the laboratory complex carried out a single, unified program designed “to develop the technology needed to provide simple, rugged, reliable air mobility equipment that the typical soldier … (of that time could) operate and maintain.

The troop support portion of ATCOM’s lineage also experienced some organizational and names changes in the 1960s and 1970s. After becoming the Mobility Equipment Center (MEC) in 1964, AMC transferred the Engineering and Development Laboratories at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, from the U.S. Army Mobility Support Center, Columbus, Ohio, to the new command’s jurisdiction. The laboratories supported maintenance and repair parts for both Corps of Engineers (construction) and Quartermaster Corps managed items.

Later that same year, responsibility for rail, marine and amphibian items were transferred from AVSCOM. Additional missions assigned to MEC this year included the U.S. Army Engineer Procurement Office (EPOC) in Chicago, Illinois, along with the U.S. Army Engineer R&D Laboratories field activities once the responsibility of AMC’s Mobility Command. In July 1965, both EPOC functions and personnel transferred to MEC headquarters in St. Louis. The functions and personnel of the Mobility Equipment Manuals Field Office (MEMFO) at Fort Lee, Virginia, assigned to MEC on Jun. 1, 1964, also relocated to St. Louis in Sep. 1965.

AMC reorganized and renamed MEC as the U.S. Army Mobility Equipment Command (MECOM) in 1966; seven years later it became the U.S. Army Troop Support Command (TROSCOM) in 1973. It retained jurisdiction over the Engineering and Development Laboratories at Fort Belvoir, which were reorganized and renamed as the Mobility Equipment Research and Development Center (MERDEC). The TROSCOM mission was expanded by subsequent reorganizations which added responsibility for the U.S. Army Natick Laboratories, Natick, Massachusetts; the U.S. Army General Materiel and Parts Center (GMPC), New Cumberland Army Deport, Pennsylvania; and the U.S. Army Support Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 1974, GMPC became the U.S. Army General Materiel and Petroleum Activity (GMPA), while the Support Center in Philadelphia became the U.S. Army Support Activity, Philadelphia on May 1, 1975.

• Date Taken: 10.31.2017
• Date Posted: 10.31.2017 15:47
• Story ID: 253663
• Location: REDSTONE ARSENAL, ALABAMA, US
• Hometown: REDSTONE ARSENAL, ALABAMA, US