MINUTEMAN
MISSILE
NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE
1
MINUTEMAN
MISSILE
NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE
Text by the interpretive staff at
Minuteman Missile NHS.
For more information contact:
Minuteman Missile NHS
21280 SD Hwy 240
Philip, South Dakota 57567
www.nps.gov/mimi
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2Minuteman missile fields in the United States.
1
ON THE BRINK OF
DESTRUCTION
“NUCLEAR CATASTROPHE WAS HANGING
BY A THREAD ... AND WE WEREN’T COUNTING
DAYS OR HOURS, BUT MINUTES.”
-Soviet General and Army Chief of Operations,
Anatoly Gribkov about the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962
On the afternoon of October 16th, the New York Yankees scored
their winning run against the San Francisco Giants in the last
game of the 1962 Major League Baseball World Series. Thousands
of Americans turned on their television sets to watch the seventh
and final game of the 13-day match up. At a time when fear of
nuclear attack and war were ever-present in the lives of everyday
Americans, the game offered a brief escape from the tension and
uneasiness of what then was the height of the Cold War. But as fans
left Candlestick Park at the game’s close, disappointed at the loss
of their hometown team, the United States entered another 13-day
game; this time, with much higher stakes. That evening, President
John F. Kennedy sat in a meeting with his advisors holding a map
of the nuclear missile sites recently discovered under construction
in Cuba, just 90 miles off the Florida coast. Intelligence informed
him that the missiles could be operational within two weeks and
were capable of reaching targets well within the United States,
even as far north as Washington, D.C. The sites were supplied and
constructed by the Soviet Union, with whom the United States had
been at odds ever since the close of World War II. For days, Kennedy
and his advisors discussed their options to respond. Inaction might
allow enough nuclear buildup to put the United States at risk of a
devastating nuclear attack, while an air strike could also end in
nuclear war and cost hundreds of millions of lives. Unless President
Kennedy could reach an agreement with the Soviet Union, and soon,
the crisis could become a war between the two nuclear powers.
A 1948 cartoon commenting on the
2precariousness of world peace.
3
Six days later, after making his decision, the president addressed
the American public to inform them of the presence of the missiles.
The United States, he said, would respond with “a strict quarantine on
all offensive military equipment under shipment to Cuba” through a
naval blockade. He hoped that this quarantine would prevent further
buildup and encourage Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev to negotiate.
The president’s demands, however, could just as easily turn to war. To
prepare against nuclear retaliation by the Soviet Union, the United
States placed 160 inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) on
alert. They carried nuclear warheads and could reach Soviet Russia
within 30 minutes. The newest and most effective of these ICBMs was
the Minuteman, the first of which activated that day at an Air Force
base in Montana, which Kennedy later called his “ace in the hole.”
A U.S. naval squadron off the coast of Cuba, October 1962.
world held its breath for 13 days until Khrushchev agreed to remove
his nuclear missiles from Cuba. Humanity had narrowly escaped a
nuclear war.
Despite their compromise, mutual distrust lingered and the threat
of nuclear war did not subside. The Cuban Missile Crisis became a
catalyst for growth in nuclear weapons, and the Minuteman ICBM
force expanded to 1,000 to compete in a nuclear arms race against the
Soviet Union. While they existed to deter a Soviet nuclear attack and
maintain peace, they also held the power to destroy the world as we
know it. These missiles stood on alert, hidden in plain sight, for over
30 years during the Cold War while the world crept to the brink of
nuclear catastrophe and back. Still today, 450 Minuteman III missiles
remain on alert to defend the United States from nuclear attack and
maintain peace well into the foreseeable future.
President Kennedy announcing plans for the naval blockade of Cuba, October 1962.
Tension heightened when Khrushchev rejected the president’s
demands; in a letter he wrote, “Mr. President, you have thrown
down the gauntlet.” The Soviet Union appeared to be preparing for
war. As millions of Americans listened to Kennedy’s speech, and as
days passed without a resolution, fear of nuclear war intensified. The
4
PEACE THROUGH “MUTUALLY
ASSURED DESTRUCTION”
“From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron
curtain has descended across the continent.”
-Former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in 1946
The Cold War began quietly, without a formal declaration of war or
struggle on a frontline. Allies during World War II, the relationship
5
between the United States and the
Soviet Union quickly cooled after
its conclusion in 1945. At the heart
of their animosity, the two nations
defended opposing ideologies. The
United States upheld capitalism,
an economic system that promotes
private ownership of the means
of production and wealth in a free
market, while the Soviet Union’s
economy was communist, a system in
which the state or a classless society
owns the means of production and
wealth as a whole. The American
government not only feared the
expansion of communism by force
at the hand of the Soviet Union’s
Stalin paints the globe with “Red Propaganda,” fearsome leader, Josef Stalin, but
1952 cartoon.
the totalitarian nature of the Soviet
government also clashed with
American ideals. While the United States celebrated democracy, a
system in which people with equal rights and privileges participate in
their government freely and equally, the Soviet Union’s centralized
rule, controlled by a single unrestricted government party, severely
regulated all aspects of political, economic, and cultural life. The
United States’ government feared the expansion and threat of such
ideals, while the Soviets resented postwar settlements and feared
American intervention and aggression around the world. Conflicts
and failed diplomacy only escalated hostility as time passed, and
mutual distrust and insecurity eventually drove the world into
two camps. Capitalism and its supporters lay to the west, and the
champions of communism to the east, divided by what former British
Prime Minister Winston Churchill called “an iron curtain” across
the European continent. Until its formal end in 1991, the Cold War
dominated international affairs and culture as the United States and
the Soviet Union narrowly avoided a nuclear “hot war” out of fear
that neither country could survive it.
The United States briefly held the nuclear monopoly after
developing and detonating the world’s first atomic bomb in 1945, but a
successful Soviet test of their own atomic bomb in 1949 threw the two
superpowers into a treacherous arms race. To avoid losing ground
in the technological rivalry, President Harry Truman announced the
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Newspaper report of Sputnik I, the first satellite to orbit the Earth.
development of the hydrogen bomb. The first test in 1952 produced
a fireball three miles across, vaporized an island, and left a milewide crater in the Pacific Ocean floor. The next year the Soviet Union
tested its own. As the two nations continued a competition to develop
increasingly advanced weapons, their new challenge was to develop a
way to deliver these bombs from the safety of their own borders.
On the morning of October 5, 1957, the Soviet Union made a
startling announcement. The headline of The New York Times read,
“SOVIET FIRES EARTH SATELLITE INTO SPACE: IT IS CIRCLING THE
GLOBE AT 18,000 M.P.H.; SPHERE TRACKED IN 4 CROSSINGS OVER
U.S.” “Beep, beep, beep” amateur radio operators in the United States
could hear the signal Sputnik I transmitted as it traveled overhead.
Not only did the Soviet Union beat the United States to outer space,
they successfully launched an ICBM to place the satellite into orbit.
7
The development was terrifying for many Americans since national
security was based on technological superiority. United States
officials wondered: How soon could the Soviets find a way to fasten
a nuclear warhead, instead of a satellite, to one of their missiles?
President Dwight Eisenhower responded by increasing spending on
American missile development. Soon, both sides would develop the
ability to launch a nuclear weapon around the globe, bringing the
front line of the Cold War into the backyard of every American and
Soviet civilian.
THE ARMS RACE:
AMASSING MISSILES
“[The Soviet Union will be] turning out long
range missiles like sausages.”
-Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in 1959
After the Soviet Union’s successful test of
an atomic bomb, the United States Air Force
established the Air Research and Development
Command, and approved contracts with defense
industry companies to develop an inter-continental ballistic missile. A white schoolhouse in
California with frosted and barred windows,
locked doors, and a security guard served as the
management agency’s top-secret headquarters.
Military staff even wore civilian clothes to keep
their mission a secret. The goal was to design
the new weapon as quickly and as cheaply as
possible to keep up with the Soviet Union in the
nuclear arms race.
Launching a Titan missile, 1964.
The team developed two missiles simultaneously, the Atlas and
Titan ICBM, designed to carry heavy nuclear payloads over 5,000
miles, the distance between Washington, DC, and Moscow, Russia. The
development team encountered early problems, however, the most
important of which became finding the right fuel. The composition of
the liquid fuel that powered America’s first ICBMs made it very volatile
and dangerous, especially for the onsite crews who maintained each
missile. Because the fuel had to be stored outside the missiles in
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separate containers, these crews had the tedious task of keeping
empty missiles pressurized with nitrogen gas. The stainless steel
walls of the Atlas and Titan were so thin that they would deflate like
balloons if not pressurized or fueled to keep their shape. The design
not only meant that crews had to tend to each missile constantly; it also
meant that they had to fuel each prior to liftoff. With one launch crew
responsible for several missiles, the launch process alone could take
over an hour for the Atlas. Although crews could launch the improved
Titan missile within 15 minutes, complications persisted. The close
proximity of the missiles to each other and the control center made
the launch facilities vulnerable targets, as a single Soviet ICBM
attack could disable an entire complex. Despite these drawbacks,
developers felt that these liquid-fueled ICBMs were vital to national
security and needed to be operational as soon as possible. The first
Atlas missile, at 82 feet, went on alert in 1959. The first Titan that
followed in 1962 was a massive 98 feet.
While both missile systems saw improvements during their
lifetimes, and offered an alternative to manned-bombers, the Air
Force needed a more efficient weapon. Not only had the Soviet
Union flown past the United States into space with the launch
of the Sputnik satellite, in 1958 President Eisenhower received
reports that, within three years, the Soviets could have as many
as 500 operational missiles capable of reaching the United States.
Americans were already reeling from the demonstration of Soviet
missile superiority; now officials feared that their enemy might
also achieve a numerical advantage. Senator John Kennedy warned
fellow politicians the year after Sputnik, “We are facing a gap on
which we are gambling with our survival.” Convinced by unreliable
intelligence reports that the Soviet Union had numerically outrun
the United States and that the Soviet nuclear stockpile would only
grow with time, he encouraged the expansion of the American ICBM
force to close the perceived “missile gap.” The Air Force called for
800 ICBMs by 1965. Satellite intelligence reports later confirmed that
the United States, in fact, had the numerical advantage, but the push
to achieve the upper hand in the arms race got rolling a program to
construct a massive retaliatory missile force. To make it possible,
the Air Force needed a new missile; one without the hazardous fuel
of the Atlas and Titan, one that could fly farther and required fewer
resources, one that would allow the United States to wield such a
powerful nuclear arsenal that the Soviet Union might never unleash
its own.
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INTER-CONTINENTAL BALLISTIC
MISSILES ON THE PRAIRIE:
THE MINUTEMAN MISSILE AND LAUNCH
FACILITY DELTA-09
“… with the Russians maybe breathing down our neck, it was
probably pretty clear to everybody that we had to do something.”
-Tim Pavek, Deactivation Project Manager
Two brothers, hungry after a morning of hunting in the fields of
the Great Plains, stop for a short lunch break. They pull their pickup truck onto a dirt road in what seems like the middle of nowhere.
Unwrapping their sandwiches and enjoying the stillness of the golden
prairie for a few short minutes, a brief knock on the window jolts them
to awareness. A U.S. Air Force security policeman is standing outside,
M-16 rifle in hand; he waves to motion that they roll down their window.
“You need to keep moving,” he says. The brothers quickly rewrap their
sandwiches and pull away; they have inadvertently come too close
to the security fence of a missile silo. Glancing warily through their
rearview mirror, they see the security policeman return to an armored
vehicle. Only a chain-link fence and unremarkable cement structures
within, barely visible above the gravel that surrounds them, hint at
the presence of what they had encountered. Deep under the Earth’s
surface lies an inter-continental ballistic missile. It is a warrior of the
United States’ third generation of ICBMs, a Minuteman.
The first of its kind, the Minuteman missile is a solid-fueled rocket.
At the dawn of American ICBM development, the Air Force did not
have solid-fuel technology; scientists developed it especially for the
Minuteman project. Solid propellant meant more reliable, cheaper, and
smaller missiles that could be mass-produced and deployed in remote,
unmanned facilities. The texture of a rubber eraser, the composition
of solid fuel systems also made Minuteman missiles much lighter,
increasing their range, and made them safer to work with than the
unstable liquid fuels used by previous ICBMs. A crowd at Florida’s
Cape Canaveral Air Force Station celebrated the first successful test of
a Minuteman missile in April 1961. One witness looked on with awe,
“the blast-off was swift and sure; there was none of that heart-stopping
hover of other tests when liquid-fueled monsters seemed to balance in
uncertain equilibrium before they picked up the momentum of flight.”
10
A Minuteman missile just launched from a silo, 1965.
11
The Minuteman missile’s unique qualities helped its principal designers decide its name, taken from another tumultuous period of
American history. Amidst the start of the American Revolution in
1774, a grassroots militia sprang from the American colonies to gain
independence from Great Britain. Expected to keep their arms and
weapons with them at all times and be ready to march against British
soldiers at a minute’s notice, they were called the “Minute Men.” Almost 200 years later, Minuteman missiles became soldiers of the Cold
War. Because of their solid-fuel technology, these missiles could lay
dormant in their silos for weeks, months, and even years with little
maintenance, and be ready to launch and attack, like their historical
namesake, at a moment’s notice. With the fuel stored inside the missile itself, crews did not have to be onsite to fuel a Minuteman before
its launch. Instead, launch crews could launch ten missiles simultaneously from a remote location, miles away,
in a matter of minutes. These technological
improvements offered significant advantages over the risky and dangerous Atlas
and Titan configurations, and allowed Minuteman crewmembers to more readily and
effectively defend their nation.
The first 10 Minuteman missiles went
on alert in Montana in 1962, on the day
President Kennedy made his address to the
American people about the buildup of arms
in Cuba. They became the first of 1,000 soon
to dot the peaceful prairie landscape of
the American West. Tucked neatly into the
South Dakota prairie, just a half mile from a
bustling interstate but rarely noticed by the
passing motorist, the National Park Service
and the Air Force have preserved one, Launch
Facility “Delta-09,” at Minuteman Missile
National Historic Site. Today’s visitors,
however, won’t be stopped by security
police as they enter through the eight-foot
security fence topped with barbed-wire to Fidel Castro and Nikita Khrushchev,
view the missile silo as it existed during 1959.
the Cold War. When it was operational from
1963 to 1993, the average civilian might stumble across it, but could only
approach so close before an alarm at a nearby control center alerted
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a launch crew and security police to their presence. The alarm was
triggered by a peculiar white antenna protruding from one end of the
launch facility: the IMPSS, or Improved Minuteman Physical Security
System. The IMPSS acted like radar; it could sense motion within
the perimeter fence and send an alarm to the nearby Launch Control
Center, Delta-01, just 11 miles away. While security police often arrived
to find that cows, rabbits, and even grasshoppers had set off the alarm,
they felt comfortable knowing that it would also detect any sabotage or
break-in attempts and keep the missile inside safe from interference.
Human intrusion was not the only thing that could compromise the
Minuteman’s mission, the missile and the silo itself relied on special
equipment and maintenance crews to keep it operating on constant
alert. Next to the silo was a concrete-roofed support building 11
feet deep, a chiller unit inside kept the silo and missile at a cool 60˚
Fahrenheit and at the proper humidity level to preserve the electrical
components inside. Sump pumps kept it and the silo from gathering
water, and an emergency diesel-fueled generator provided it with
electricity if its commercial power supply failed. The personnel access
hatch, a ground-level concrete door with a painted blue steel frame,
let maintenance crews enter into the silo itself for regular upkeep.
The five-ton reinforced door was opened by accessing a security vault
with a combination lock that activated a hydraulic pump. Several feet
below it was a seven and a half ton steel secondary door with a second
combination lock blocked by the access shaft. The two doors took
45 minutes to an hour to open to allow security police from nearby
Launch Control Facility, Delta-01, time to respond to security breaches
and sabotage attempts. After the access hatch lifted like a clamshell
and the secondary door retracted down the shaft, maintenance crews
could climb down a ladder to enter a two-level underground equipment
room, the upper level containing launch essential equipment and
the lower level containing a motor generator and batteries. These
features ensured that the missile and its components could remain
operational at all times and ready to launch at a moment’s notice.
On the first level of the circular underground rooms, a curved
bench is marked with compass bearings. Part of the original and now
obsolete alignment system, the bench supported an “autocollimator,”
an optical instrument that measured angles. Guidance technicians
used it, along with two azimuth markers and a sight tube that allowed
them a view of the sky to help them align the missile’s guidance
system toward the North Star and the Soviet Union. On board each
missile, a guidance set contained a computer, gyroscopes, devices
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to measure acceleration, and a hard drive storage unit that gave the
missile its target and instructions. Once launched, ground crews
could not communicate with the missile, so its onboard guidance and
targeting system led the missile to its target in flight. The inability to
communicate with the missile, however, also meant that crews could
not recall a Minuteman, order it to self-destruct, or change its target
once launched. After receiving its order to launch, only time stood
between a Minuteman and its target.
attacks disabled and destroyed the control centers vital to launch, the
Air Force needed a way to continue to deliver a retaliatory strike. A
small grey cone atop a rounded concrete bulge next to every missile
silo and control center provided them with the answer. The weather
dome and concrete that covered the ultra-high frequency (UHF)
antenna inside protected it from a nearby nuclear attack so that it
could survive to communicate with an airborne mobile command
post called “Looking Glass.” This command post functioned onboard
an airplane belonging to the Strategic Air Command, a branch of the
Air Force responsible for the nation’s strategic bomber aircraft and
ICBM force. Between 1961 and 1990, the airborne command center
flew every hour of every day, of every week, of every year. If they
were needed, a general and two missileers aboard could use the UHF
antenna to launch the missiles from the air. Throughout the Cold War,
it became the Air Force’s last resort to launch a retaliatory nuclear
strike.
At Delta-09, a 90-ton blast door is partially retracted to reveal
the missile silo, 80 feet deep. It seems to drop away endlessly, but
sunlight illuminates the white figure of a 56-foot Minuteman II missile
protruding from the darkness. The missile’s shape resembles a series
of stacked cylinders, each containing one of three motors to launch the
missile toward its target. When an order is received from the control
center, the blast door at the surface, three and a half feet of steel and
concrete protecting it from nearby nuclear attack, would have slid off
in seconds to allow the missile to launch. Within three minutes, the
three-stage booster engines propelled the missile and its warhead
to 700 miles above the Earth. Bursting through the atmosphere to a
speed 15,000 miles per hour, it could hit any target within the Soviet
Union in 30 minutes or less.
Minuteman missiles were named after the Revolutionary War soldiers who were ready to
fight at a “moments notice.”
Redundancy in methods to keep the missile at Delta-09 operational
continuously was mirrored by redundancy in communication efforts
to ensure that crews could always transmit information and orders to
their missiles. If all ground communication failed, or if Soviet nuclear
14
Sealed inside the missile’s narrow green tip, a 1.2 megaton nuclear
warhead awaited its deployment. (A megaton is a unit of explosive
power.) The Minuteman’s warhead is equivalent to 1.2 million tons of
trinitrotoluene (TNT). The warhead of the first atomic bomb used at
Hiroshima, Japan was 16.5 kilotons, equal to 16,500 tons of TNT. One
Minuteman II warhead, then, held more than 70 times its explosive
power. In a collection of survivors’ stories, author John Hersey
recounts the memories of a Hiroshima man in 1946: “… a tremendous
flash of light cut the sky... It seemed a sheet of sun… He felt a sudden
pressure, and then splinters and pieces of board and fragments of tile
fell on him. He heard no roar… Under what seemed to be a local dust
cloud, the day grew darker and darker.”
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THE UNDERGROUND FRONT LINE
OF THE COLD WAR:
LAUNCH CONTROL FACILITY DELTA-01
“We are going to have peace, even if we have to fight for it.”
-President Dwight D. Eisenhower
Atom bomb explosion during testing by the United States, circa 1960.
“A five-megaton nuclear weapon explodes with a brilliant flash
that lasts about a minute. A quick burst of nuclear and heat radiation
emerges from ground zero, the point of the explosion. The spurt of
nuclear radiation is called initial radiation or prompt radiation and
kills within a mile or two. The heat rays can kill unprotected people up
to 10 miles away and may start fires beyond that. The heat rays and
initial radiation are followed by a blast wave which starts at more
than 2,000 miles an hour, but loses much of its damaging force by
about 10 miles out. With the blast wave comes a violent wind which
picks up loose objects and bears them outward… [a] weapon [that] has
burst at ground level [leaves]… a crater about a half a mile across and
200 feet deep. Nearly everything within a radius of a mile of ground
zero would be destroyed.” From Fallout Protection: What to Know and
Do About Nuclear Attack published by the Department of Defense’s
Office of Civil Defense in 1961.
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For many, the South Dakota prairie inspires thoughts of a simpler life,
one of quiet wildlife and nature unencumbered by asphalt labyrinths
and skyscrapers. One might never guess that the same tranquil prairie
served as the arsenal for 150 nuclear missiles capable of indescribable
devastation. At the height of the Cold War, these represented only a
small portion of the one thousand Minuteman missile silos dotting the
Great Plains region of the United States. South Dakota’s missile field
was known as the 44th Strategic Missile Wing and was one of six spread
across seven states operational during the Cold War. The Air Force
divided the wing into three groups of 50 missiles known as squadrons,
then into groups of ten, called flights, each with its own Launch Control
Facility. This Launch Control Facility and its underground control
center were far enough from their missiles so that if any site became
the target for a Soviet ICBM and was destroyed, the rest of Delta Flight
could remain intact and operational. The Air Force and the National
Park Service have preserved two elements of Delta Flight: the Launch
Control Facility and its underground Launch Control Center known
as Delta-01, and one of the ten missile sites it was responsible for
launching, Delta-09.
Park rangers at Minuteman Missile National Historic Site now
conduct frequent tours of Delta-01. Visitors can walk through the
dayroom and security control center, once bustling with support
staff, and take an elevator 31 feet below ground to the Launch Control
Center. Here, missileers remained alert and vigilant at their consoles,
ready to launch at a moment’s notice, for nearly 30 years. As late
as 1993, however, a curious passerby could only come within a few
yards of the eight-foot-high security fence before meeting one of the
security police on duty, armed with an M-16 rifle. From outside the
fence, then, an onlooker might notice a variety of odd and seemingly
nondescript structures: a simple tan building and garage, a cement
pad in the ground, a single antenna protruding from a concrete slab.
The average person might drive by and observe the site with only a
passing interest, but the crews inside knew that they were on the
front lines of the Cold War.
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VITAL COMMUNICATION: A
MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH
These seemingly insignificant features were vital to the success of
the Minuteman program and deterring nuclear attack. The crew relied
on special communication equipment visible on the grounds to relay
information about security breaches, emergency war orders, alerts,
and other sensitive material. A circular concrete slab in the eastern
corner protected a transmission antenna, stored belowground in a
concrete cylinder. The antenna’s secure enclosure and its location
underground made it “blast-hardened,” or sheltered from nearby
nuclear attack. Its counterpart, a reception antenna, stands to its
west above ground. Below it, a buried reinforced concrete cylinder
protected four more antennae. If nuclear attack destroyed one, an
explosive charge could launch another to the surface.
While these antennae were vital for communication between
support crews, the missileers themselves relied on an entirely
different system to communicate with the missiles of Delta Flight.
Buried four to eight feet underground, interconnecting the launch
control facilities and missiles of the entire wing, lay over 1,700 miles
of buried cable known as the “HICS”, or “Hardened Inter-site Cable
System,” capable of surviving a nuclear attack. Not only did the
cables connect each launch control center to its ten missiles, they
also interconnected the launch control centers and missiles of the
rest of the squadron. The system ensured that if Delta-01 had been
attacked or disabled, the missileers of another control center could
take command of Delta Flight’s missiles and launch them from their
remote location. This redundancy ensured that the missile system
could remain secure and able to launch under any circumstances,
even after a nuclear attack.
SUPPORTING THE CREWS BEHIND
THE MISSILES
Often mistaken for a utility building without much consequence,
passersby might never imagine Delta-01 as the trigger for ten intercontinental ballistic missiles. The ability to launch these missiles
remotely made the Minuteman unique from previous ICBM systems.
Launch control facilities like Delta-01 were manned by only 10
18
people, and just two at each facility were needed to launch. These
two missileers occupied the underground launch control center
every hour of every day waiting for an order that may never come.
Aboveground, six security police split twelve hour shifts, a cook kept
them fed, and the facility manager kept the facility running smoothly.
All were based at Ellsworth Air Force Base near Rapid City, South
Dakota, about 70 miles from the Delta Flight. These eight support
staff members spent three days at a time in the topside facility before
returning to Ellsworth, and then back again for another shift several
days later. For these crews, Delta-01 became a home-away-from-home
and their fellow airmen became a kind of family.
Many missileers called their facility manager (FM) the “house
mouse” who spent each day supervising personnel and maintaining
the grounds and support equipment. The FM kept the launch control
facility running smoothly and even mowed the lawn and changed light
bulbs as needed. The facility manager had the benefit of a private
room while the security police shared their bedrooms with other
people. Because these security personnel needed to maintain vigilant
surveillance of the site and missile silos constantly, they split the day
into twelve hour shifts in the security control center, located in the
front of the Delta-01 facility with windows overlooking the property.
No records of saboteurs or significant security breaches exist from
the operational lifetime of South Dakota’s Minuteman II system,
which made for uneventful shifts, but as former Flight Security
Controller Ken Bush remembers, “that means you’re doing what
you’re supposed to be doing [as a security police officer].” To combat
boredom, off-duty security police could exercise, play games, read,
and relax on outside game courts, or inside in the dayroom. When the
Air Force decommissioned the facility in 1993, Delta-01’s amenities
included a television with a small movie library and video cassette
player, large couches for lounging, and restaurant-style booths for
dining. Because they spent so much time in the facility, it became
many airmen’s second home; this resourceful group brought a large
mural to hang, pictures to decorate the walls, and even installed
wood paneling to transform a barracks into their “home.” The crews
who staffed Delta Flight even created their own mascot, and called
their group the “Delta Dogs.” While these staffers may not have felt
as if they actively protected the front lines every day, their role in
defending the nation and Delta Flight was never far from their minds.
Delta-01’s isolated location in South Dakota’s Great Plains did not
exempt it from the threat of sabotage and attack during the Cold War,
19
Launch facility Delta-09 as it appears today.
and crews needed to be constantly prepared to defend Delta Flight. For
their protection, the flight security controller maintained a weapons
cage in the security control center that held grenades, M-16 rifles,
and M-60 machine guns. Even during regular upkeep at the missile
sites, security police accompanied maintenance personnel not only to
protect the crews, but the missiles themselves. Without their efforts
to defend each launch control facility and missile site, and without
the labors of the cooks, facility managers, and maintenance crews,
the Minuteman system could not have been the successful solution to
nuclear deterrence and peace it proved to be throughout the Cold War.
BEHIND THE BLAST DOOR
Between 1963 and 1993, when the 44th Strategic Missile Wing
was active in South Dakota, two missileers manned the underground
control center every minute of every day. To deter a Soviet attack, the
United States announced to its enemies and the world that it would
never launch a nuclear first-strike, and had to be ready to launch at a
moment’s notice.
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Missileers traveled from Ellsworth Air Force Base to Delta-01
every day to work a 24-hour shift. After gaining access through the
perimeter fence, they reported directly to the security control center,
where they were required to verify their identities with the flight
security controller. After clearing security, they approached a locked
door that would allow them access to the underground launch control
center. To gain entry, the incoming missile combat crew picked up a
nearby phone with a direct line to the missileers below and relayed
a code to identify them. If recited correctly, the underground crews
temporarily buzzed open the entry door; the incoming crew stepped
through and entered the site’s elevator. The trip took them 31 feet
below ground where they approached a steel-reinforced blast door
which separated them from the launch control center. At their toes a yellow line divided the room into two, the elevator
behind them on one side, and the blast door on the other. Red letters
painted on the wall announced “NO-LONE ZONE, TWO-MAN CONCEPT
MANDATORY.” Past the yellow line, and in the launch control center,
the two-man concept required the presence of at least two authorized
personnel, capable of detecting incorrect or unauthorized procedures,
which would prevent an accidental or unapproved launch. Once outside
the blast door, the missileers hear a voice within shout “Clear!” and
21
after responding by repeating
the message, the door swung
open slowly toward the
incoming crew. The blast
door would then reveal its
strength. At a thickness of
three and a half feet and made
of concrete and steel, the door
weighed a staggering eight
tons. Missileers operated the
door’s handle from inside
the capsule which moved the
twelve large lock pins that
held it in closed. Not only
would the blast door protect
the missileers within from
The blast door.
a nearby nuclear attack, its
construction also protected
them from sabotage and break-in attempts.
With the blast door opened, crews ducked into a dim, narrow
tunnel leading to what became known as the “capsule,” as its shape
resembled that of a gelatin medicinal pill. The passageway extends
about four feet, the thickness of the reinforced cement walls. Reaching
the edge of the tunnel, missileers stepped onto a short walkway.
Former missileer David Blackhurst remembers, “As you walked
through the blast door onto the capsule floor itself, you could actually
feel it move a little bit.” It led to an inner capsule, suspended within
like a yolk inside an egg. Around them, they would see the structure
and equipment that might help them survive a nearby nuclear attack
and continue to be able to launch.
Above their heads, a large, flexible yellow tube hung low from the
ceiling. While operational, this tube provided air from an aboveground
air-filtration system and protected missileers inside from any
harmful biological, chemical, or nuclear material. In the event of
a nearby attack, however, this system would be destroyed, and an
automatic blast valve system sealed the facility from the surface.
The missileers inside then relied on the air left within the capsule to
survive. A nearby blast would also sever the launch control center’s
power supply, leaving the crews inside in darkness. Under the floor
of the inner capsule ahead of them, a motor generator and emergency
batteries would continue to provide them with a limited amount of
22
power. To continue to launch, however, the crew and the equipment
inside needed to survive the shock wave associated with a nuclear
blast, one that would shake the earth and capsule around them. From
the walkway, the missileers could look upward and see the subtle
ridges that outlined the welded patchwork of quarter-inch thick steel
plate lining the capsule’s interior. Within the concrete walls behind
it, a spider web of reinforcing bar three inches thick might hold the
capsule’s shape and integrity during the earthquake accompanying
a nearby nuclear attack. On either side of the walkway, the incoming
crew could see two of the four cylinders, full of compressed air,
suspended from the ceiling of the outer capsule by large chain links.
Called “shock isolators,” each supported a corner of the inner capsule,
hanged to float several feet off the floor and bounce over a foot in any
direction, preventing harm to the crew and damage to the equipment
inside during a nearby nuclear attack.
Although they might survive the initial blast and execute their
launch, the missileers’ limited supply of power and air meant that
they would soon need an escape. From the walkway, they might not
see the escape hatch on the far end of the outer capsule, but its veiled
presence was comforting nonetheless. The escape hatch, a circular
orange door near the capsule’s ceiling and accessed by a ladder,
capped a corrugated-steel tube. The tube was three feet wide, filled
with sand, and angled upward, stopping just a few feet short of the
earth’s surface. When the missileers unlocked the escape hatch door
during an emergency exit, the sand poured from the tube, which
allowed them to climb most of the way, digging through the last few
feet of earth to the surface.
The rectangular inner capsule held the launch control center’s
communication and computer equipment. Missileers arriving for duty
in 1963 through 1993 had a similar view through the capsule doorway,
as much of the equipment inside was used from its activation up
until decommission. Here, the missileers spent their 24-hour shifts
about eight times each month. After a brief changeover process,
the incoming relief crew took their seats. The deputy commander
sat in front of a control panel with the equipment necessary for
communication, while the crew commander sat in the far end of the
capsule, in front of panels that displayed the operational and security
status of each of the ten missile silo sites. Their harness-equipped
aircraft seats were fastened to tracks on the floor. If a war order
came, the missileers could buckle into their chairs and be able to move
along the tracks to access a wall of control panels and continue to
23
COUNTDOWN TO CATACLYSM:
THE FINGER ON THE NUCLEAR
TRIGGER
The decision to launch a nuclear weapon would be made by the
president before it was relayed to the missileers in their capsules.
Because the United States would only launch a Minuteman ICBM
in retaliation, and because Air Force resources could only detect
incoming enemy ICBM attacks fifteen minutes prior to impact, the
missileers at Delta-01 and all other launch control centers across the
missile fields of the Great Plains had to be prepared to launch their
missiles within moments after receiving their orders. If the president
deemed a launch necessary, an emergency action message from the
Strategic Air Command broadcast over speakers in the launch control
centers. Within five minutes, crews inside were required to launch
and deliver a retaliatory attack against the Soviet Union before an
incoming missile could destroy their resources.
The launch control center.
launch as a nuclear attack shook the earth and capsule around them.
Missileers were responsible for monitoring their equipment and
coordinating maintenance and inspection efforts, and tested often
during random Operational Readiness Inspections. Most importantly,
though, missileers maintained constant vigilance and preparedness
over their consoles to launch their missiles the moment they received
their orders.
24
In a rare opportunity to experience a 24-hour shift inside a capsule,
reporter Richard Stolley describes a launch sequence he witnessed
in Launch Control Center Lima-01 in South Dakota, published in LIFE
magazine in 1964 in an article titled “Holding the Nuclear Trigger.”
After a shrill warble tone pierced through the noise of the capsule’s
equipment, Stolley recounts what came next. “I bolted from the room
to crouch awkwardly… in the narrow blast door passageway… ‘This
is Reno,’ the voice began, using a code name for SAC headquarters,
‘with a message for 8th Air Force.’ Although directed specifically at
Westover Air Force Base, Mass., all stations on the Primary Alert
System received, decoded and verified the message. It consisted of a
series of letters phonetically pronounced: ‘Tango Mike Papa Yankee
Romeo,’ each series separated by a monotoned ‘Break, Break’…
[Captains] Lamb and Christians each wrote the message down. Then
they compared notes and, working swiftly and quietly, decoded it
together… Lamb and Christians strapped themselves into their seats.
Christians, on order, simulated flipping a row of arming switches in
front of him, calling off the numbers as he went: ‘2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-1011.’ If this had been the real thing, each flick would set in motion a
complicated and fail-proof procedure by which a missile would be
readied for immediate launch.
25
Lamb went through the motion of opening a plastic cover over his
launch control panel. Christians did the same for the cooperative
launch switch. Each officer pretended to insert his key… Lamb
ordered, ‘conference call.’ By phone and headset, the two men talked
with squadron command post, where readiness reports were coming
from other Minuteman capsules. The command post then told each
capsule, ‘launch on your count.’
Captain Lamb, his right arm stretched out to the key in the launch
control panel, the left pressing his phone tightly to his head, said
quietly, ‘Rotate key on two, release on five,’ Christians acknowledged,
‘Roger.’
Lamb counted, ‘1, 2…’ Both men turned their hands to the right as in
starting a car. ‘… 3, 4, 5,’ They turned their hands back. In 15 seconds,
they repeated the firing sequence. If this had been war, keys would
have turned in other capsules. Minuteman cannot be launched without
a corroborating signal – called a ‘second vote’ – from another launch
control center. If the first signal were a mistake, another capsule could
promptly stop a launch with a special inhibiting switch. But once two
separate capsules give ‘go’ signals, the irreversible countdown would
begin.”
If the launch at Lima-01 Stolley described in his article had been
authentic, rather than a drill, the world would be a much different
place. Within 30 minutes, Captain Lamb’s and Captain Christians’
missiles would reach targets in the Soviet Union over 5,000 miles
away.
LIVING NEXT TO THE MISSILES
“While growing up as a young boy in Rapid City, South Dakota,
I vividly remember laying in bed on hot summer nights, with the
windows wide open, waiting to go to sleep, only to have the silence
broken by the distant rumble of the B-52 bombers, beginning their
take-off roll, one right after the other, at Ellsworth Air Force Base,
located 10 miles to the northeast. As the rumble increased in intensity
and then gradually disappeared into the distance, I laid awake
wondering whether or not the planes would ever return, whether it
was another practice mission, or whether it was the real thing and if,
within minutes, we would see the fireballs of Soviet nuclear bombs
detonating over western South Dakota.” Tim Pavek remembers his
26
childhood alongside the Minuteman missiles of the 44th Strategic
Missile Wing. Later he would become Ellsworth Air Force Base’s
deactivation program manager.
The Air Force chose the Great Plains region of the United
States, including South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming,
Nebraska, Colorado, and Missouri, as a strategic location to deploy
1,000 Minuteman missiles at six missile wings. The missile sites’
strategic locations in the northern interior United States put them
far from the coasts, where Soviet submarine-based nuclear missiles
might lay in wait, and shortened their flight time over the North Pole
toward Soviet Russia. Their locations also placed them near existing
Air Force bases like Ellsworth. And because Minuteman’s planners
feared that these sites could one day become targets for a Soviet
attack, they also chose locations far from large population centers.
Despite these attempts at isolation, however, Minuteman missiles
occupied a stretch of land 13,500 miles square in South Dakota and
inevitably affected nearby residents like Tim Pavek in his childhood.
Many local people were influenced financially by the missiles, as their
installation in some cases brought economic boosts to the regions
they occupied. The missiles’ presence moved others politically and
ideologically; some residents offered their patriotic support, others
brought signs, banners, and flowers to protest nuclear weapons
themselves. The western South Dakota landscape began to transform
from the moment the Army Corps of Engineers arrived to survey.
The missile sites could not all be built on federal property. The Air
Force needed to cooperate with South Dakota’s residents to make
construction possible. The Army Corps of Engineers distributed a
pamphlet to the affected property owners. It promised them that the
government would negotiate for purchase of their property for the
missile sites at the fair market value, as permitted by the Constitution
of the United States, and compensate them for any damages and
losses. But while landowners tried to aid the defense effort by
working individually with the government, they soon found that they
also needed to work with each other. A group of farmers and ranchers
formed the Minuteman Missile Area Landowners Association, to
collaborate and ensure that the government took landowners’ rights
into consideration and compensated landowners fairly. They wanted
to stay informed by circulating important information, and make
sure that the project would not affect local roads, schools, and other
services. The group soon swelled to 150 members and each paid $1
to participate. Although they received some criticism for slowing
27
the effort, their cooperation with the Air Force was a success, and
construction work began a year later.
On September 11, 1961, 200 people witnessed a small explosion that
symbolized the beginning of the Minuteman construction project in
South Dakota. Peter Kiewit and Sons’, a Nebraska-based construction
company, won the contract to build all 150 silos and 15 launch control
facilities in South Dakota for a low cost of $56,220,274, and hired over
3,000 workers for the job. The Kiewit Company and its subcontractors
moved 20 million cubic yards of dirt, poured 150,000 cubic yards of
concrete, and used 35,000 tons of steel. With a flood of construction
workers and new jobs in the area, local resident Gene Williams
remembers that the effort “was very good to the local economy. They
were high paying jobs, there were a lot of people that… picked up
skills… that have used them the rest of their life.” More airmen began
to staff Ellsworth Air Force Base in Rapid City, bringing their families
with them. They became a part of the economy and community. The
real estate market soared, and the newcomers’ increased demand for
more services and goods created jobs and an economic boom. With
the flurry of activity to complete construction, surrounding areas
began to adapt not only to the flood of human arrivals, but a flood of
Minuteman missiles as well.
The contractors finished the project ahead of schedule, after
the Cuban Missile Crisis amplified the need to ready the nation for
nuclear defense. The massive building effort quickly transformed the
peaceful South Dakota prairie into one of America’s nuclear arsenals,
its effects resonating with surrounding communities for decades.
The Air Force had improved 357 miles of local roads to transport
equipment, paving some, which are still enjoyed by residents today.
Rapid City, near Ellsworth Air Force Base, even adopted street names
like Atlas Street and Minuteman Drive. A local amateur baseball
team called themselves the “Titans.” Missileers and support crews
knew that they were quickly becoming part of the community’s social
fabric. Former missileer Craig Manson remembered the Diamond
Café in Newell, South Dakota. “I don’t know if it is even still there, but
that is part of the story because it would not have been there long if it
hadn’t been for the missile crews, you know… all of these communities
are part of the story, too.”
Despite some apprehension, most residents generally accepted
the presence of the nearby missile sites, perhaps out of patriotism,
lack of information, indifference, fear of the missiles themselves, or
28
preoccupation with daily life.
But the missiles also took a
psychological toll on some
members of the community
who dreaded that the missile
sites nearby, and therefore
their homes, could become a
“big red-and-white bull’s eye
on the Soviet map,” as Pavek
feared in his youth. For
others the technology they
soon learned to live with
became hard to grasp. In just
a
few short years, the world
had entered the nuclear
age. A local rancher, Gene
Williams recalled that a lot
of the people that had missile
sites put on their land were
The deputy commander’s console.
from an era that had traveled by
horse and buggy or could recall this time, “and now you’re putting a
hole in the ground for a missile that could launch and go, you know,
fifteen thousand miles and blow up millions of people. I mean, these
types of things I think were hard for people to even put their arms
around.”
“A NECESSARY EVIL”
Because of this frightening potential, not all residents welcomed
the Minuteman ICBM program. Especially in the 1970s and 1980s,
local residents and national groups started to voice opposition to the
United States’ deployment of nuclear weapons. The South Dakota
Peace and Justice Center became active in 1979 to protest their use
and development, and organized events at Ellsworth Air Force Base
and silo sites across the state. The group also organized Easter
Sunday protests at numerous missile silos. In 1987 a group arrived
at Launch Facility Delta-09 to hold prayer vigils and take communion.
Occasionally, protesters trained in nonviolent activism trespassed,
climbing over the silo’s security fence to lay Easter lilies on the blast
door. The goal of the group’s efforts was to raise debate about the
subject and question the use of nuclear weapons. Most protesters
29
maintained a professional and
courteous relationship with the
security police they often met
after triggering the sites’ alarms,
but some groups were not always
so diplomatic. When the peace
movement gained momentum in
the 1980s, activists sometimes
damaged facilities by sledge
hammering the blast door or
poured blood over the equipment
in symbolic disarmament. Local
peace activist Jay Davis believed
that protesters initiated a
necessary discussion. “I think
if we hadn’t been there people
would have absolutely taken the
missile silos for granted. Those
A 1962 antinuclear poster.
silos are there to preserve peace.
At worst, they’re a necessary evil. At best they help our local economy
and by having protests which were broadcast… people at least became
aware of the fact that there is another side to the story.”
ENDURING PEACE
“Just suppose with me for a moment that an Ivan and an Anya
could find themselves, oh, say, in a waiting room, or sharing a shelter
from the rain or a storm with a Jim and Sally, and there was no
language barrier to keep them from getting acquainted. Would they
then debate the differences between their respective governments?
Or would they find themselves comparing notes about their children
and what each other did for a living? … They might even have decided
they were all going to get together for dinner some evening soon.
Above all, they would have proven that people don’t make wars.
People want to raise their children in a world without fear and
without war... Their common interests cross all borders.”
- President Ronald Reagan in 1984
By the 1980s, the Soviet Union and the United States had been
locked in a stalemate for more than 30 years, still avoiding a nuclear
war out of fear of “mutually assured destruction,” which kept the
30
superpowers at bay. This doctrine ensured that if either nation
unleashed its nuclear arsenal on the other, the defender would launch
a similar attack in which neither side would survive. Still, the United
States maintained 1,000 Minuteman launchers and 54 Titan missiles
since the mid-1960s in an effort to numerically outrun the Soviet
Union and deter a nuclear attack. Although the United States kept
this superiority for a few years, the number of Soviet ICBM launchers
had climbed from a feeble two in 1960 to almost 1,400 by 1990, far
surpassing the United States. Despite diplomatic attempts to lessen
the looming threat of nuclear weapons, clashes between the United
States and the Soviet Union kept tension high. In 1980, after the Soviet
invasion of Afghanistan the previous year, President Jimmy Carter
even boycotted the Olympics held in Moscow in the Soviet Union in
protest.
But throughout the next 10 years, the Soviet Union’s stability
began to falter. In the face of cumbersome financial competition to
keep up with the West in technology, the Soviet Union’s economic
structure began to disintegrate. Communist nations that had once
aligned with the Soviets, members of the “Eastern Bloc,” began to elect
governments democratically, and independence movements in some
countries helped them break free of Soviet control. As the dissention
and rebellion in Eastern Bloc countries grew, and groups tired of
the constraints associated with the oppressive nature of communist
control, the Soviet Union’s political strength began to weaken.
The division of Germany during the Cold War came to symbolize
the discord felt around the globe. After World War II, Germany and
its capital, Berlin, were divided into occupation zones by the Allied
powers. To the east lay a communist government established by the
Soviet Union while American, French, and British militaries occupied
the west. In the dark of an August night in 1948, the Soviet Union and
East Germany built a fence dividing the capital. Soon reinforced and
monitored by armed guards, the wall prevented people from fleeing
communist control in East Germany. It stood as the symbolic and
physical rift of a divided world between the communist East and noncommunist West; it remained standing for the Cold War’s duration, a
symbol of the “iron curtain” that had descended across Europe.
The wall was unpopular with Western nations. President Ronald
Reagan demanded of the Soviet leader, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this
wall!” President Reagan and other opponents could not take military
action, however, as that could easily trigger nuclear war. But by
1989, Eastern Bloc nations began to throw off the cloak of communist
31
control. Small protest groups soon grew in East German cities, and
crowds of demonstrators swelled to 500,000 in the capital, Berlin.
Under pressure, East German officials relented and began to allow
passage to the West, and protesters took chisels and hammers to the
wall to destroy it themselves. As these nations and their people began
to cooperate in efforts that transcended the barriers between their
economic and political differences, the fall of the Berlin Wall became
symbolic of the long-awaited end to the Cold War.
Finally, in 1991, the war that had taxed its participants for nearly
half a century officially came to a close. President George H. W. Bush
and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev significantly relaxed tension
when they met to sign the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START)
which limited the number of ICBMs and nuclear warheads either
country could possess. Months later, unrest and instability led new
Russian leadership to dissolve the Soviet Union, and with it, the
tension of the Cold War era that had defined a generation. While both
nations had spent an enormous amount of money on nuclear defenses
that were never employed, they successfully averted a war of massive
destruction and devastation on a global scale.
President Bush soon announced a plan for peace to withdraw
from alert “within 72 hours… all 450 Minuteman II intercontinental
ballistic missiles,” the weapons that for nearly 30 years had stood
as the United States’ main tool to deter nuclear war. South Dakota’s
missiles became the first to be taken off alert; and deactivation of the
44th Strategic Missile Wing was completed by 1994. Spearheaded by
the Army Corps of Engineers, and in compliance with the recently
signed START agreement, dismantlement and demolition of the
missile sites only lasted from 1994 to 1999. During this process, South
Dakota’s Minuteman missile silos were imploded and filled with rubble
and soil; the HICS cables were severed, underground control centers
welded shut, and elevator shafts filled. The Minuteman Missile Area
Landowners Association, disbanded after the construction project in
the 1960s, formed again to voice questions and concerns of those with
missile sites located on their property. Some landowners even had the
opportunity to push the button to implode the silos themselves. But
landowners bought this property back with a few restrictions; they
could not install wells or dig below two feet at the missile silo sites
for environmental reasons. Landowners who received property with
the launch control facility intact could not dig above the underground
control center, although some transformed their new property into
homes and businesses.
32
Standing on the Berlin Wall on the day it fell, November 9, 1989.
33
Subsequent years saw more attempts to reduce the number of
these missiles. In 1996, the United States and the newly established
Russian Federation signed START II, which required each nation to
eliminate all ICBMs with multiple warheads and reduce their nuclear
arsenals by another 65 percent. Another START treaty, signed in
1997, established a framework for even more reduction throughout
the following years. But while these peace agreements led to the
deactivation of numerous facilities and weapons, they also laid the
foundation for historic conservation. During their negotiations,
Russian and American leaders realized the need to remember this
crucial period of their mutual history and decided to each disarm and
preserve a few former missiles and facilities for interpretation.
LESSONS LEARNED AND SECRETS
REVEALED AT A NEW NATIONAL
HISTORIC SITE
In the United States, the National Park Service and Air Force chose
to conserve two elements of America’s former nuclear ICBM arsenal.
Because they were built early in the Cold War effort, and captured
the original Minuteman I construction and technology as well as
the changes made to convert them to Minuteman II missile sites, the
government chose facilities near Ellsworth Air Force Base in South
Dakota for preservation. Launch Control Facility Delta-01 and Launch
Facility Delta-09 were soon chosen in particular, in part for their
convenient locations along Interstate 90 and proximity to Badlands
National Park, to become monuments to the role of the Minuteman
missile during the Cold War. In 1999, the United States Congress
passed legislation to create a national historic site. After efforts to
modify the silo in accordance with START regulations and make the
sites accessible to the public, the first visitors began to explore the
components of the United States’ nuclear defense held secret for
decades.
Minuteman Missile National Historic Site represents an unprecedented window of opportunity for visitors to view and contemplate a
significant period of United States and world history. It is the story
of the Cold War and how it affected our lives. Generations in America
grew up in fear of communism and the Soviet Union and school children learned to “duck and cover” in the event of a nuclear attack. It
is the story of the Air Force’s role in the defense of the United States,
and the men and women who made it possible. It is the story of the
34
people of western South Dakota who lived alongside the Minuteman
II missile defense system on the front lines of the Cold War. Although
the Minuteman missile cannot be cited as the reason the United States
and the world averted nuclear disaster, its presence as a massive and
intimidating retaliatory potential no doubt played a role in deterring
such a devastating conclusion to the Cold War. But the story of the
Minuteman missile has not ended yet. Some 450 Minuteman III
missiles remain on alert across the Great Plains. Ranchers still meet
security police on back roads on occasion, maintenance crews still
brave winter storms to tend to each silo, and missileers still pull alert
duty in underground control centers, ready to defend their country
at a moment’s notice. Although the world has changed around them,
their role in the defense of the United States continues on into the
foreseeable future.
MISSILEER PROFILE
DID YOU VOLUNTEER TO BE A MISSILEER?
NEAL: “Well, I was a supply officer [in the Air Force] and I ended up in
munitions in South East Asia, and when I came back… I was drafted into
missiles.”
WHAT KIND OF TRAINING DID YOU HAVE?
NEAL: “…there was an initial six week course run by Air Training Command
at Chanute Air Force Base in Illinois and we went there first… then drove
across the country… Route 66 to Vandenberg [Air Force Base in California for
eight weeks].”
HOW OFTEN DID YOU PERFORM YOUR 24-HOUR SHIFT IN THE
CAPSULE?
NEAL: “… the most I ever did in one month was eleven… And that just drives
you nuts and they had wives complaining to Congressmen and that got fixed.”
BOENSCH: “… if you went past eight a month, you started forgetting your
kids’ names… your wife’s birthday… Nine and ten became very, very hard
on morale...”
WERE YOU EVER TESTED?
BOENSCH: “… we had written tests on EWOs [Emergency War Orders] once
a month… codes tests every month… a trainer ride [in a simulator] every
month... You’re going to fight like you trained, and we trained all the time,
35
for… all kinds of different possibilities. I’ve fought World War III hundreds
and hundreds of times.”
DID YOU GET TO PICK YOUR PARTNER?
BOENSCH: “It was kind of hit and miss, kind of luck, really… if you didn’t
particularly care for your commander or deputy usually you just had to
work it out.”
HOW LONG WERE YOU A MISSILEER?
NEAL: “’70… through ’74… [then] I was essentially a missileer on an
airplane… for 10 years.”
BOENSCH: “11 years… it’s normally four years for the ground crew.”
DID YOU HAVE TO GO THROUGH SOME SORT OF PSYCHOLOGICAL
SCREENING?
BOENSCH: “It was a four step process… first you had to have a “top secret”
clearance, then the FBI and agents visited your family… neighbors…
teachers… they’re looking for anything obvious… then you go to Vandenberg…
they asked “Would you do this [launch] as a lawful presidential order?” and
then [you] checked “Yes I can” or “No I can’t...” Once you got to base you
certified with the wing commander by briefing them on an EWO [Emergency
War Order]… and get questioned details to make sure you knew your stuff…
[then there was] the PRP, or Personnel Reliability Program… [when they
looked for] drinking, writing bad checks, medications that altered your state
of mind… things like that.”
DID YOU LIKE YOUR JOBS AT THE CAPSULE?
NEAL: “There were guys who liked and guys who didn’t. And I liked it.”
BOENSCH: “I loved my job … We were busy, you know. And I had two little kids
at the time, my daughters… there was enough time to enjoy them, though.”
HOW DID YOU FEEL ABOUT YOUR JOB AS A MISSILEER?
NEAL: “… I worried about being ready. And then when I go home, I worry
about the same thing everybody else does; my neighbor’s dog pooping in my
yard, my kid flunking algebra… same thing everybody else does.”
NEAL: “I never – for one split-second, doubted that what I was doing [was]
important. Not for a minute… Somebody needs to do it.” And when it was my
turn to stand up and do it, I did. And now, it some other guy’s, and it’s their
turn and they’re doing it.”
BOENSCH: “It’s great having something to do – a mission bigger than
ourselves, our little lives… And to be able to think, anyway, that we
played some kind of a role in something far, far bigger than we were was
important, to me. It still is important… the bottom line is that we’re still in
business. We’ve still got a nuclear force, we still have a mission because
we’ve got adversaries over there that are still capable, still building on their
capabilities while we’re chiseling away at ours, you know.”
36
A missileer at the control panel.
Photo credits: front cover, back cover, p. 20, 22, 24, 27, 37 courtesy of the National Park Service.
All others from the Granger collection, New York.
Design by Therese Cruse37
MINUTEMAN
MISSILE
NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE
In October 1962, the world was on the brink of nuclear
catastrophe. Soviet missiles capable of reaching well within
the United States were in Cuba, just 90 miles off the coast of
Florida. Millions of lives were at stake. American missiles were
placed on alert. Tension heightened when the Soviets rejected
American demands to remove the missiles. The fear of nuclear
war intensified. After 13 days, the Soviets agreed to remove
their missiles from Cuba. Humanity had narrowly escaped
nuclear war.
The Cuban Missile Crisis became a catalyst for growth in
nuclear weapons. During the 30 years of the Cold War, America
expanded its force of Minuteman inter-continental ballistic
missiles. Today, some 450 Minuteman III missiles remain on
alert across the Great Plains. Take a look inside the history of
these missiles, and their role in the defense of the United States.
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