Caribou Air Force Station
Caribou Air Force Station, also known as North River Depot and East Loring, is a defunct Air Force Station that operated from 1951 until some time when it was absorbed into Loring Air Force Base in 1962. It was located in Limestone, Maine, adjacent to Loring. Between 1951 and 1962 Caribou was an Operational Storage Site for Air Materiel Command (AMC-OSS), one of five in the United States, and the weapons storage and maintenance facility for Loring alert aircraft.
Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 40
In the 1970s NMCB FORTY was to play a key role in the "Cold War" as well as a continuing participation in the "hot war" of Vietnam. On 9 March 1971 the first units of NMCB FORTY were deployed to the small British atoll island of Diego Garcia in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Their mission was to construct a high priority communications station and airfield "from scratch" in the same manner as the Seabees did in the island hopping days of World War II. All support was to be "over the beach." This key base was needed to counter a growing Soviet presence in the Indian Ocean, and was constructed under the watching eyes of Soviet warships. A communications station was in operation on 25 March, establishing for the first time worldwide US Navy communications, and an operational runway was completed on 15 July 1971 provided the first US airfield in the Indian Ocean, three days ahead of schedule, earning the personal praise of the Chief of Naval Operations Admiral E. R. Zumwalt, Jr., and the Navy E for "Best of Type." The construction of this remote base changed the balance of power in the Indian Ocean from the Soviet Union to the United States. NMCB Forty was the pioneer battalion for the beginning of what was to become the largest Seabee construction project in history. Seabee battalion deployments would go on for eleven more years, with detachments continuing to the present. The NMCB Forty command flag would fly once more in the Indian Ocean, as the battalion deployed back to the island in 1980.