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Young Air Assault Strip provides austere training

Photo By Master Sgt. Francisco Govea | A C-130J Super Hercules, 815th Airlift Squadron, Keesler Air Force Base, Miss., lands...... read more read more

FORT MCCOY, WI, UNITED STATES

10.06.2021

Courtesy Story

Fort McCoy Public Affairs Office

For more than 35 years, Fort McCoy’s Young Air Assault Strip has provided a place for service members to train in austere conditions.

Young Air Assault Strip, which has also been called Young Field, originally opened in October 1984. It was constructed by the 618th Engineer Company, 360th Engineer Battalion, 82nd Airborne Division.

The air strip was named after Pfc. Raphael Young, a member of the 618th who died in September 1984 while training on heavy equipment in advance of the mission to build the air strip.

In a November 1984 article in The Triad, Capt. William Prokopyk, company commander, said that he thought the Soldiers were more safety conscious because of the death of their comrade, which explained the lack of injuries during the actual construction process.

Construction of the air strip was good practice for the 618th, which had the wartime mission of construction and repair of air fields. Young Air Assault Strip, however, was of better quality than a wartime construction, Prokopyk said.

“During wartime, we would probably have less time to complete the mission and we wouldn’t have the soil analysts and survey support that were attached for this mission,” he said.

The construction cost approximately $86,000 and came in about $11,000 under budget.

Young Air Assault Strip is still in use today at Fort McCoy. It has been used for decades as a multiservice air strip that can be used in a variety of ways. It can replicate a terminal; used to receive process, and stage personnel, cargo, and equipment; or used as an austere airfield, said James Hubbard, chief of the Airfield Division at the Directorate of Plans, Training, Mobilization and Security (DPTMS).

“The air strip is an important part of our training complex at Fort McCoy,” Hubbard said in a 2017 article in The Real McCoy. “There’s not many air strips like Young available for training, so it is highly sought-after as a training area for exercises.”

The air strip also features a decommissioned C-130 that is primarily used to train service members to palletize cargo. It was transferred from Little Rock Air Force Base, Ark., in October 2015.

Fort McCoy has supported America’s armed forces since 1909. The installation’s motto is to be the “Total Force Training Center.”

The post’s varied terrain, state-of-the-art ranges, new as well as renovated facilities, and extensive support infrastructure combine to provide military personnel with an environment in which to develop and sustain the skills necessary for mission success.

(Article prepared by the Fort McCoy Public Affairs Office and Directorate of Plans, Training, Mobilization and Security.)