A fine article in NRO on what has to be one of the smallest, strangest military museums in the U S of A, at least since the Marine Raider Museum packed up and moved out of Richmond. (Not that a museum for the Raiders was strange in and of itself, it’s just that what it was doing there, I never knew.)
The Titan II missile was the largest nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile ever in the U.S. fleet. Just over 100 feet long, powered by two liquid-fuel rocket engines, it was the same vehicle used to launch the Gemini manned space missions in the mid-1960s. The warhead was also the biggest ever on an American missile, the nine-megaton load dwarfing anything in the U.S. arsenal today.
Sheee-it.
John Noonan– please tell us you make an annual pilgrimage! Honestly, sounds like a nifty place and a destination all its own.
(And don’t make fun of no damn dial phones.)
Best assignment in my USAF career was as the Technical Requirements & Standards Officer for the Gemini Launch Vehicle at Space Systems Division in Los Angeles. I wish we could recapture the enthusiastic support of the American people that we then had.
meh — I’d rather make an annual pilgrammage to the George C. Marshall Museum in beautiful Lexington, VA.
Besides, why visit Arizon to see what’s already right in front of my nose?
Side note, Sir. Got a Christmas care package in the mail. There was a t-shirt inside, proudly bearing the standard “THE PALMS. LEXINGTON, VA”
Heh, almost makes me forget that the corps boycotted that place back in 05.
I and my crew stood alert duty at 571-7 a few times in the early ’70s (and the other 17 in the 390 Strategic Missile Wing). It was the closest and easiest to get to, and had a Circle K or 7-11 store maybe half a mile away.
I highly recommend seeing that complex of ’50s technology if you’re ever in the area (and the Pima Air Museum by Davis-Monthan AFB, especially the 390 Bomb Group–the WWII predecessor–section).
There’s also Launch Control Facility Oscar-1 at Whiteman AFB, MO. A Minuteman Launch Control Center lies below it, where my crew also stood alert duty in the late 70s. Interestingly, the Guest Book is signed by the then Commander of the USSR’s Strategic Rocket Forces.
There’s also a Minuteman site in South Dakota preserved as a National Historical Site by the NPS. It has a Launch Control Site and a Launch Site, separated by the requisite miles and miles.
http://www.nps.gov/mimi/
Best assignment in my USAF career was as the Technical Requirements & Standards Officer for the Gemini Launch Vehicle at Space Systems Division in Los Angeles. I wish we could recapture the enthusiastic support of the American people that we then had.