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These two 1967 pictures are from Hank Heckel.

These Flamenco pictures are from Allen Hawkins. According to Hank Heckel, it's the old Panamanian prison used by the US Army for the soldiers that worked at the Hawk missile site on the west side of the isthmus. He lived there while serving in the army during 1967-1968. There was two men to a room and Hank's roommate had a monkey for a pet.

Larry Bommarito from Seattle commented on 4/20/2013:

"I served at both Ft Sherman (D Btry) and Flamenco Island (C Btry, Ft. Amador) during 1967-69, and Flamenco Island was not an old Panamanian prison, but the former site of the coast defense arty for the Canal. The direct-fire defense rifles were mounted atop "the rock", with at least one, perhaps two, disappearing guns lower down on the flanks of the hill, served at the 220 ft. level. The high-angle guns were mounted down below, where the billeting rooms (not cells) are, and in fact, in a couple of the pix shown on your site, you can see the azimuth rings still set in the concrete floor of the btry.

Ft. Sherman had a couple nearly identical facilities, Batteries Howard and Baird. We used Howard for the storage of some of our tactical supplies, small arms ammo and such, and pulled regular guard duty there. Baird had been pretty much reclaimed by the jungle, but was accessible if you didn't mind a stint of bush-whacking to get there."

These pictures are from Rick Doninelli, 134th Ord Detachment (Hawk) GS/DS attached to the 517th at Fort Clayton from 1964-1965.

The 4th Missile Battalion (Hawk-AW) 517th Artillery provided air defense for the Panama Canal Zone until the battalion's deactivation in 1970. For more information, visit these 517th web sites:

Bill Cole's 517th Web Page

CZBrats's 517th Web Page

This Web site was designed and is maintained by Tom Madracki, US56708259. For further information about this Hawk Missile Web Page, if you have pictures you'd like to see up here, or if you'd like to talk about the good old days, please CLICK HERE to send e-mail to me at tom@madracki.com.