Deployment Sites
Hickam AFB, Hawaii
Pacific crossroads beside Pearl Harbor: ARIA and TRIA transit hub, and home of the Burning Light task force story tied to TRIA 61-0331.
Hickam Air Force Base (now part of Joint Base Pearl Harbor–Hickam) sits on Oahu next to Honolulu’s civil airfield and the Pearl Harbor naval complex. For decades it has been the central Pacific way station for Military Airlift and special-mission aircraft crossing between the continental United States and Asia or the South Pacific.
ARIA and related instrumented aircraft used Hickam as a crew-rest, fuel, and maintenance stop on deployments that stretched to Guam, American Samoa, Australia, and beyond. Apollo 13 recovery accounts describe engine and fuel-tank work at Hickam after a Darwin bird strike; other Pacific missions routinely staged through Hawaii.
Hickam also appears in the TRIA memorial record. Aircraft 61-0331, operating for the Space and Missile Systems Office, deployed with the Burning Light task force from Hickam to observe French Pacific nuclear tests. On 13 June 1971 the aircraft disappeared while returning to Hawaii from Pago Pago after the Encelade test—all 24 aboard were lost. That history is remembered on the flyARIA memorial pages, not repeated as spectacle here.
Milestones
- Pacific hubJoint Base Pearl Harbor–Hickam — Primary U.S. Air Force airfield on Oahu for trans-Pacific military traffic.
- ARIA / TRIAStaging and maintenance — Instrumented aircraft use Hickam for crew rest, fuel, and heavy maintenance between Pacific legs.
- 1971-06-13TRIA 61-0331 — 61-0331 disappears en route from Pago Pago to Hickam after a Burning Light mission.
On flyARIA
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Photographs, TDY notes, and corrections from ARIA crews and families belong here. Email [email protected] — no forms. Nothing is published as personal recollection without a source.
Summary original to flyARIA.com. Photograph: U.S. Air Force. Works of the U.S. Government are generally in the public domain in the United States; credit does not imply endorsement. Map coordinates are approximate.