The most unique thing about our mission was that this was the first "marriage" of
COMINT and ELINT. Until 1955, ELINT was the sole prerogative of the Signal 
Corps. In that year, it was transferred to ASA, with all of the equipment and
personnel. The kicker was that most ELINT personnel had only a SECRET 
clearance, weren't allowed access to the COMINT Ops building, and had only a 
vague idea of what we were doing.

The entire operations area was laid out with the two buildings (COMINT and 
ELINT) inside a secure fence, with a second fence around the COMINT
building. Coming in through the guard shack, there were two exit doors, one
leading to the ELINT area and one to the COMINT. Since the personnel 
complement was small enough, and everyone knew the exclusionary rules,
there was no problem with the guard knowing where everyone should go. 
We didn't use badges, relying instead on the guard's knowledge.  This being
my first experience with ELINT, I was given a thorough briefing and tour of their
operations early on, and the huge dish antennas and high-speed, wideband 
recorders that they used reminded me of the movies of the "mad doctor's 
laboratory."  During special operations, we communicated with the ELINT 
building over a land-line intercom, using special codes to describe where we
were in an operation. For any expansion of information, we had to use a runner.

We had the usual conflicts between headquarters and operations. For
example: a big cookout was set for Independence Day. Makeshift grills were
constructed, hamburgers, hot dogs, potato salad, and all the fixins were 
prepared by the mess hall, and a beautiful, isolated beach on the Black Sea just 
east of Sinop was set up for the festivities. All the troops were loaded in 
deuce-and-a-halfs and trucked down there - all, that is, except operations. The
target picked that day (coincidently? I think not) for extended operations, causing 
us to keep not only the normal complement of people there, but also as many as
we could convince to help out.We did get a small measure of satisfaction hearing 
later that the beach, as beautiful as it was, served as a reflector for the sun, and 
folks were getting drunk on two or three beers, drastically shortening their party.
The same thing happened on Christmas Day. The target picked that day to act 
up, and turkey sandwiches at operations were had instead of the normal feast.

As both an example of the Army's less-than-perfect personnel system, and as a 
kind of harbinger of what would happen, there were three Vietnamese linguists 
assigned to Sinop. Of course, we didn't have any use for them, so they were 
given OJT and cross-trained to work either cryptanalysis or traffic analysis. All 
three turned out to be exceptionally good workers, becoming highly productive 
in a short time. Eight to ten years after that, they would have had quite a different 
experience.

That summer, they moved in DF equipment that had been located at Ankara. 
The set was an AN/TRD-4 (how many of you remember those?), and, 
because of my past experience, I was picked to set it up and get it operational.
WOJG Taylor had no experience in DF, but he had a TM that went into great
detail on how to orient and erect the equipment. First of all, we had to acquire
land in an area far enough away from other equipment and manmade structures
that the DF equipment could operate without interference.