Murals at Chanute AFB (abandoned)

[syscom3]

Check this out.

Pictures of forgotten murals adorning the walls of the long abandoned Chanute AFB. Move your mouse pointer to the right of the picture to see a menu pop up for what picture to look at.

Dave Jordano Photography

[FLYBOYJ]

Pretty cool - they had some at George AFB as well. Got to go inside some of the buildings after the place was closed. Didn't realize that Chanute still had buildings standing.

[evangilder]

Kind of sad, really. I remember being involved in a couple of murals in my days in the AF, one at Lackland, one at Keesler. It's sad that the pride and patriotism of yesterdays warriors has been left to rot.

[syscom3]

Originally Posted by evangilder

Kind of sad, really. I remember being involved in a couple of murals in my days in the AF, one at Lackland, one at Keesler. It's sad that the pride and patriotism of yesterdays warriors has been left to rot.

Kind of like the murals painted in the AAF installations in England during WW2?

[Captain Dunsel]

Man, does that bring back some memories! As a young Airman, I graduated Chanute's Weather Observer school in '75. Eleven years later, I went back for Radar and Satellite classes as a Captain.

White Hall was the big building holding all the classes. I recognize many of the hallways, although the only painting I recall is the one at the entrance to the Marine wing.

I recall I had to visit the Marine wing because I had some software that needed to be loaded on a Z248 computer. When I was there, I "paid" for my time on their computer by doing some tweaking and configuring of the system in the Marine commander's office.

It's a shame to see that monster of a building decay like that. I'd always thought it would make a great community college, but what do I know. Reading the photographer's remarks, I guess I'm just a dinosaur.

CD

[Airframes]

That was interesting. Back in the early '80's, I had the opportunity of looking around the (once) BAD at Burtonwood, near Warrington, England. This was the main American Base Air Depot during WW2, and virtually every USAAF aircraft operating in Europe passed through this facility during the war. It was still operational up to the late '60's, with WB50's and the like. Anyway, in some of the old accommodation blocks, there were quite a few murals on the walls, mainly post war, which I photographed at the time. Saddly, the 35mm transparencies were lost, together with another 2,000 or so aircraft images, in a fire. Damn shame!