Soldier in Panama 1954 US Army; The Big Picture TV-283

more at http://quickfound.net/

'Protecting the Panama Canal has for many years been a vital mission of the United States Army. This is the story about the men on duty in Panama -- one of the Western Hemisphere's most critical defense areas. Viewers will see some of the more unusual aspects of life in Panama. THE BIG PICTURE camera will cover many varied scenes in this tiny republic which is about the size of the State of Maine. From the new university near Panama City the camera travels to the ruins of the Church of San Domingo. It is here that the exploits of the buccaneer Sir Henry Morgan are recalled. Among the many interesting people that the soldier in Panama sees in his travels, are the Montunos, whose villages are in the interior. As one of our country's most important outposts, indispensable to our defenses and to the collective security of the Americas, the Panama Canal must be kept open and operating. This is the mission of the United States forces shown in this program; the mission of the "Soldier in Panama."'

Originally a public domain film from the National Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.

The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Sherman

Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Fort Sherman is a former United States Army base in Panama, located on Toro Point at the Caribbean (northern) end of the Panama Canal, on the western bank of the Canal directly opposite Colón (which is on the eastern bank). It was the primary defensive base for the Caribbean sector of the Canal, and was also the center for US jungle warfare training for some time. Its Pacific-side partner was Fort Amador. Both bases were turned over to Panama in 1999...

Concurrent with the Canal construction a number of defensive locations were developed to protect it, both with coastal defense guns, as well as military bases to defend against a direct infantry assault. Fort Sherman was the primary Caribbean-side infantry base, while Fort Amador protected the Pacific side. Construction of Fort Sherman began in January 1912 as a phase of the original 1910 defensive plans. Fort Sherman was named by War Department General Order No. 153 dated November 24, 1911, in honor of General Sherman. The Fort included 23,100 acres (93 km2) of land, about half of which was covered by jungle. The developed areas included housing, barracks for 300, a small airstrip and various recreational areas. Sherman was the site of the US's first operationally deployed early warning radar when an SCR-270 was installed there in 1941.

After the decommissioning of the U.S. Army Coast Artillery Corps the forested area was used by the United States Army South (USARSO) Jungle Operations Training Center (JOTC). JOTC was founded in 1951 to train both US and allied Central American forces in jungle warfare, with an enrollment of about 9,000 a year. The JOTC also taught a 10-day Air Crew Survival Course, open to all branches of service, and a four-week Engineer Jungle Warfare Course. Upon completion of the course the Jungle Expert Patch was awarded.

Between 1966 and 1979, 1,160 sounding rockets with maximum flight altitudes of 99 kilometres were launched at Fort Sherman.

Fort Sherman was used in the filming of the 2008 James Bond film Quantum of Solace.