One of the strangest things about the master suite is the domed concrete ceiling. Early in the morning of Friday, September 19, a two-man PTS investigation team consisting of Senior Airman David Lee Livingston and Sergeant Jeff K. Kennedy entered the silo. There are 1,000 kilotons in a megaton). Aerial photographs taken Friday morning showed a gaping hole with smoke drifting from it, and debris scattered over hilly pastureland." "Basically, what your smart phone can do today, the bottom floor of the launch control center did back then," Hill said. The silos were of necessity deep, about 150 feet. During the next year, the other 18 missile silos in central Arkansas received ICBMs, and Jan. 1, 1964, all silos in Arkansas were active and on alert status. Reports in the Arkansas Gazette described the devastation: "The inside of the 155-foot-deep silo was reduced to rubble and its concrete doors which weigh 740 tons were blown to pieces. A missile took 15 minutes to launch and had to be fueled with a highly flammable mix of kerosene and liquid oxygen. If you saw footage from the massive explosion in Beirut this past August, King says, you saw what he saw that morning. It was used for the Gemini project, which launched men like Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Jim Lovell into space in the 1960s. Janet Choate: An Everyday Hero of Small-Town U.S.A. "The nuclear warhead landed about 100 feet from the launch complex's entry gate; its safety features operated correctly and prevented any loss of radioactive material. Accepted file types: jpg, png, Max. Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety, National Register of Historic Places listings in Van Buren County, Arkansas, "Titan II Missile Explosion (1980) Encyclopedia of Arkansas", "Missile silo blast kills 1, hurts 21; no radiation leak", "Colonel Replaced in Action Linked to Fatal Titan Explosion", "Command and Control American Experience WGBH PBS", "Air Force truck removes damaged warhead", "Titan warhead flown to nuclear arms plant", "Season 4, Episode 4 Nuke Kids on the Block", "The night we almost lost Arkansas a 1980 nuclear Armageddon that almost was", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=1980_Damascus_Titan_missile_explosion&oldid=1137032445, National Register of Historic Places in Van Buren County, Arkansas, September 1980 events in the United States, Nuclear accidents and incidents in the United States, All Wikipedia articles written in American English, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 2 February 2023, at 12:19. But the newly constructed test facility was so badly damaged it wasnt worth salvaging. Eric Ayala was topside, at ground level near the silo. And the origin of those dates back to the height of the Cold War in the 1950s and '60s, specifically the Soviet launch of the Sputnik satellite in 1957. The lake was blue and beautiful and we parked about 25 yards away and opened the hatch of our SUV intent on a nice, tailgate lunch. Robert Rhodus, the test conductor for the company that had built the missile, watched in fascination as the elevator, carrying a missile fully loaded with propellants, plummeted to the bottom of the silo, Stumpf writes. The team started running the procedure for readying the missile for liftoff. Theres a unique history surrounding Little Rock, Arkansas that you may not know about. It was morning in America, and the Ronald Reagan administration undertook massive military spendingincluding missiles to supplant the Titan II. It turned out a worker doing routine maintenance on one of the missiles had dropped a nine-pound socket. But spend any amount of time here and you'll forget that you're underground," he said. The next, they were bracing against an explosion that destroyed the facility beyond repair. "We could excavate it, but if you think about it, it's like, 'Why?' By 1986 these sites were all decommissioned and destroyed. In 1978, six months after the trailer leak in Arkansas, two airmen died after a leak in Kansas. He was also the station manager and news reporter. So every minute counted.". During the 25-year period of operations, Arkansas experienced two disasters connected to the missiles. The elevator structure and the launchertons and tons of steel that one witness later likened to red spaghetticame flying from the silo as the test team ran for cover. "If we built rooms, it would kind of take away from it.". Basically, you crawl 10 feet and then it's a 50-foot ladder," Hill said. The incident occurred on September 1819, 1980, at Missile Complex 374-7 in rural Arkansas when a U.S. Air Force LGM-25C Titan II ICBM loaded with a 9-megaton W-53 nuclear warhead experienced a liquid fuel explosion inside its silo.[2]. I never knew we were so close to a pasture filled with grazing cattle, and where there is an abundance of cattle there is an abundance of cow pies and where there are cow pies there is an abundance of flies. Kennedy went down into the silo by himself to get readings. Placed on the western edges of the Soviet Union due to their limited range of 2,000 kilometers, the Sandals could . The first was for Jackie to have her annual Multiple Sclerosis checkup at the University of New Mexico's Pete Dominici Medical Building and the second was to have dinner with one set of friends and lunch with another. If a rocket could be launched into space, it could also be launched at something, and far faster than bombers could fly to targets to drop their payloads. Hill said he had no plans to excavate the silo in the immediate future. I just hope it doesnt hurt., After what seemed like an eternity of silence, Kennedy could be heard on the radio saying, Im dying.. The main theory is that when the vent switch was pushed, it sparked the explosion, Devlin says. Copyright 2023, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Inc. More than half of the potential arsenal is in Amarillo, Texas, at the Pantex plant, which will dismantle them. On the night of September 18, 1980, a Titan II missile carrying a thermonuclear warhead exploded in rural Arkansas. Visitors to the site first descend down the 50 feet to a concrete pad, where they are greeted by the first of two 6,000-pound blast doors, one of which was kept closed at all times during the Cold War. Of course the flies didn't swarm on us until we opened the tailgate and started to prepare our lunch. Kimberly S. Mitchell loves journeys, real or imagined. Inside the super-hardened silo, meant to be protected from nuclear attacks, the team loaded the rocket with oxidizer, a key ingredient for blast-off, and sent it up to the surface. [7][8], Livingston died at the hospital, and 21 others in the immediate vicinity of the blast sustained various injuries; Kennedy struggled with respiratory issues from inhaling oxidizer but survived. Ultimately, the Titan system was declared to be essentially reliable, though minor changes were recommended. King remembers sitting on the hood of a sheriffs car, aimlessly slipping his shoes on and off. He's the author of two books, and his byline has appeared in Deadspin, Jalopnik, CityLab and POLITICO, among other places. Perhaps most famously, as the investigative journalist Eric Schlosser recounts in his book Command and Control, in 1980, a Titan II missile exploded in its silo in Damascus, Arkansas, while carrying a nuclear warhead. I turned to Sergeant Green and said, Man, aint that pretty, before I realized what it was, Roberts said in a statement during the investigation. "Two officers would each turn a key, and 58 seconds later the Titan II would be out the door," Hill said. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); We select one featured photo per week, but we show many more in our gallery. King was part owner of KGFL-AM in Clinton, Arkansas. I was living out of state at the time, but the disaster was covered in depth by the national press. Lieutenant General Lloyd R. Leavitt Jr., the Vice Commander of the Strategic Air Command, commanded the effort to save the launch complex. The silos launch door was propelled over 600 feet from the launch complex. The missile silo itself is one of the few remaining atlas f silos that is naturally dry, with many interior levels and crib structure. After the accident, the area around the missile silo was littered with debrisboulders of concrete, giant springs, pieces of navigation systems. Using decades-old U.S. Air Force training footage, re-enactments and drone . In Arkansas, three launch sites remain with both launch pads and control centers. We hurriedly put our food away, closed the hatchback and put some distance between ourselves and the pasture. He saw the explosion, and he told the New York Times his first thought was, It kind of reminded me of the old days. [2] The warhead landed a short distance away and no radioactive material was lost. Since it was very hot outside I asked this cadaver of a man, "What's the temperature." President Ronald Reagan announced the retirement of the Titan II program, Your California Privacy Rights/Privacy Policy. Oh yes, Jackie's checkup, despite her MS, showed her to be in excellent health. These missiles had a range of 5,500 miles, but they required a high level of upkeep. Senator David Pryor's office had been concerned about the safety of the Titan sites since January 1978 when a cloud of toxic vapor was accidentally released at the Damascus launch site, resulting in four hospitalizations. No purchase necessary. In 1965, dozens of people died after a fire started in a Titan II silo in Arkansas. The entire motel was quite ramshackled and we entered number 20 with trepidation. The Titan II, on the other hand, had a longer range and could be used for defense as well as for the nations nascent space program. What Happens to Pilots That Defect to the U.S.? I said, We just left a bunch of dead people back there. He said Yeah, I know. We were sick about it. The incident occurred on September 18-19, 1980, at Missile Complex 374-7 in rural Arkansas when a U.S. Air Force LGM-25C Titan II ICBM loaded with a 9-megaton W-53 nuclear warhead experienced a liquid fuel explosion . file size: 5 MB. Thats the idea of the Titan II. A look inside Level 3 of the Titan Ranch in Vilonia, featuring the facility's emergency escape tunnel and ladder. October 18, 2021. "And we don't have any vacancies because there's a tournament in town," he spat. Investigators later discovered that a welder working on level 3 had "hit a hydraulic line with his welding rod, rupturing the hose and causing the spray of hydraulic fuel to catch fire." 2023 Atlas Obscura. And Mondale then refused to confirm or deny when he was asked about it at the state convention. Two airmen were performing maintenance at Missile Complex 374-7, located 3 miles north of Damascus, the evening of September 18th. At a station that small, King couldnt afford to specialize. For a one-night stay, I would recommend bringing all of your own food. These sites stayed active until President George H.W. [1] It focused on the explosion, as well as other Broken Arrow incidents during the Cold War. From Level 2, visitors may climb a spiral staircase to Level 1which previously served as the crew's sleeping quarters and kitchen or descend to Level 3, which housed the communication equipment that kept the facility connected to the larger world. Soviet Ukraine held around one-third of the U.S.S.R.'s nuclear arsenal, most of . The aim was to bring the weapon right up to the point where it could be launched, without actually sending it off: They needed to know the missile would be ready to use in attack, if needed. And around 3:05 a.m., all hell broke loose, he tells Popular Mechanics. The control room space sits on level two of an internal, solid steel birdcage structure. Say what? Sequential photographs showing the launching of the Titan II ICBM weapon firing from underground silos, circa 1965. The missiles were shipped off to a base in Utah, and the silos were destroyed. The Strategic Air Command facility of Little Rock Air Force Base was one of eighteen silos in the command of the 308th Strategic Missile Wing (308th SMW), specifically one of the nine silos within its 374th Strategic Missile Squadron (374th SMS), at the time of the explosion. "So you work on things when you can. By then, a lot of the documents detailing just how bad the incident wasand how close wed come before to accidental nuclear explosions had been declassified. In his official statement in the investigation, Kennedy said it didnt make sense: Why would you energize an electrical circuit in a fuel leak? Livingston flipped the switch and then came topside. U.S. The state is armed with 150 nuclear missile silos that form a . They were ordered to leave the launch duct when the measurements proved alarmingly high. But the site King and Phillips were driving to in their company Dodge Omni was worse. [2] The entire missile launch complex was destroyed. A look inside Level 2 of the Titan Ranch in Vilonia, a decommissioned Titan II nuclear missile facility, featuring two-queen sized beds and a spiral staircase. The last of the Titan launch sites in Arkansas, located near Quitman in Cleburne County, was demolished on Nov. 19, 1986. By 9 p.m. the Air Force had a team on site and began evacuating personnel as well as some local residents. He called the station, and word spread. locate When in service, the 110-foot long, 10-foot wide Titan II missile carried the largest warhead the United States military ever placed on an ICBM. The Hami missile silo field is in a much earlier . Livingston died of his injuries [later] that day." Perhaps most famously, as the investigative journalist Eric Schlosser recounts in his book Command and Control . Nodak, based in Grand Forks, served 55 missile silos around the region. Construction on the Minuteman II structures began in 1946. This time, Livingston and Kennedy went down. Workers from . But the effects of the explosion and working with the potentially toxic fuel linger for many of the airmen who were on site. "You didn't know if it was going to Cuba or if it was going to Moscow," Hill said. Devlin and Hukle werent certified to work a hydraulic pump, Devlin recalls, and were unsuccessful in trying to manually open a blast lock door. Police discussing evacuation plans after the explosion. The countdown to launch started and thenright before the signal to ignite the rocket would have been givenit was stopped. During the next year, the other 18 missile silos in central Arkansas received ICBMs, and Jan. 1, 1964, all silos in Arkansas were active and on alert status. The Titans sat fueled and ready to go at a moments noticebut that meant constant monitoring and maintenance. Contributors control their own work and posted freely to our site. The Doomsday Clock is at 100 seconds to midnight., The odds of a city being destroyed are probably the highest since World War II, says Schlosser. It was forecast as a beautiful day so we decided to pack a lunch, find a nice spot along the highway and enjoy our lunch. The PTS crew stayed at the site as an investigative crewDevlin, Rex Hukle, David Livingston, and Jeffrey K. Kennedyarrived. The elderly man behind the counter was a dead ringer for the man lying on a gurney in the movie Young Frankenstein who Gene Wilder, Dr. Frankenstein, assaults unintentionally while instructing a group of medical students. Eventually, it was foundin a ditch about 200 yards away from the silo. NORTHERN WELD COUNTY If it weren't for the 184-foot tall antenna tower stretching far above the prairie, many . Hed worked on the Manhattan Project and had retired to Damascus after years in Los Alamos, New Mexico. tercontinental ballistic missile wing, has the largest number of active fense Council (NRDC) and Hans M. Krisair force weapons. The W53 thermonuclear warhead landed about 100 feet (30m) from the launch complex's entry gate. "This whole facility was designed to shake to survive in case of war," Hill said. Tim Giago, an Oglala Lakota, is the editor and publisher of Native Sun News. This document may not be reprinted without the express written permission of Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Inc. Material from the Associated Press is Copyright 2023, Associated Press and may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The military continued to use Titan rockets as part of its intercontinental ballistic missile program through the 1980s, and this was not the only dramatic incident involving them. This isnt ancient history, Schlosser, who wrote Command and Control, the seminal book about the Damascus incident and the history of nuclear weapons in America, tells Popular Mechanics. Today they are still used, although . The missile was not armed at the time. Three years later the Pangburn launch site was rocked by an explosion which killed 53 of the 55 contract workers doing maintenance work. Back in September 1980, September 18, Jeff Plumb climbed into his pickup and headed toward the nuclear missile silo near a tiny town in Arkansas called Damascus. That made the trip well worth the bumps along the way. Mark Christ set the stage: "Senior Airman David Livingston and Sergeant Jeff K. Kennedy then entered the launch complex early on the morning of Sept. 19 to get readings on airborne fuel concentrations, which they found to be at their maximum. Jackie and I set out from Rapid City to Albuquerque for two reasons. Missile nosecones from Titan IIs in Arkansas are dismantled. Many of the dead were found crowded around an escape ladder. Be sure to fill out all the fields in order to have yours selected. The Titan II missile program was terminated by the Reagan administration, but memories still burn brightly among many Arkansans. 75) of Scorpion is largely based on this event. This was the first missile site to become operational in Arkansas in 1963. The explosion blew the silo blast doors off and sent chunks of debris flying everywhere, including the nine-megaton nuclear warhead that sat atop the missile. The second fuel tank, sitting just above the first, contained a different fuel that could spontaneously ignite if a collapse occurred and it came into contact with the aerozine 50 already in the launch duct. The initial PTS team was sent home. The initial explosion catapulted the 740-ton silo door away from the silo and ejected the second stage and warhead. Despite the size of the explosion, no one was hurt in the accident: The second-set of recently reinforced blast doors held. silo: [noun] a trench, pit, or especially a tall cylinder (as of wood or concrete) usually sealed to exclude air and used for making and storing silage. Intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) were developed in response to the Soviet Union achieving nuclear capabilities. Why the Air Force Wants a Stealthy Tanker by 2040, Why Runaway Mines Are Detonating in the Black Sea, How This Humble Drone Shrugs Off Russian Jamming. My son was absolutely thrilled to learn how to use the tablet to control the lights in the room. Arkansas was home to 18 Titan II ICBMs in a missile field located north of Conway. Sound good? Pieces of debris were taken away from the 400 acres (1.6km2) surrounding the facility, and the site was buried under a mound of gravel, soil, and small concrete debris. One can visualize men in uniform going about their business far below the surface of the earth, manning and maintaining the silos with their guided missiles armed with nuclear warheads smack in the middle of Colorado while cattle graze peacefully just outside of the wire fences enclosing the silos. Its a lot of heavy information in a short time, but worth absorbing every minute of it. AddThis Utility Frame. While I wouldnt recommend this for small children, its certainly a bucket list-worthy experience for adults and older children. The Crescent Hotel in Eureka Springs is famous across the state and [] Titan II was a nuclear-tipped missile, also known as an intercontinental ballistic missile, designed to [], [] the early 1960s, the Air Force built 18 Titan II Intercontinental Ballistic Missile Silos in Arkansas. I can recall vividly the September 1980 explosion which destroyed a missile in its silo located near Damascus on the Faulkner-Van Buren County line. [6] There was concern for the possible collapse of the now empty first-stage fuel tank, which could cause the rest of the 8-story missile to fall and rupture, allowing the oxidizer to contact the fuel already in the silo. We always take Highway 71 South taking us through Kimball, Nebraska and Limon, Colorado coming out at Highway 25 at Trinidad, Colorado. The next morning, my kids enjoyed the donuts Id brought for them and another movie on the projector. GT has also set the space up to be able to host DJs and dance parties, for any kind of event. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. The 308th Strategic Missile Wing was created and operated from the base, overseeing the missiles, [], Your email address will not be published. What you may not know is that at one time, there were 18 ICBM (intercontinental nuclear missile) silos surrounding the Little Rock area. These shortcomings led to the rapid development of the Titan II missiles, which would become part of the three-pronged nuclear strategy the U.S. military used for the next 25 years. The triad, along with assigned . After the missiles were retired, they were again used as space launchcraft until the last one was launched in 2003. While renovating, GT decided to put in a spiral staircase to save space and it adds to the industrial ambiance. "People who stay here do so willingly, and they have a blast.". Slumbering just beneath the earth, a silent army of nuclear warheads waited for the outbreak of armageddon during the Cold War. Then it faded into relative obscurity. "From a weapon of mass destruction to hosting birthday parties and weddings, that's pretty wild ride," Hill said. The missile could launch in 60 seconds, without the cumbersome raising and fueling procedures the Atlas and Titan I models required. Eighteen were in Arkansas, from which intercontinental ballistic missiles carrying nine-megaton nuclear warheads could be launched to strike targets as far as 5,500 miles away. Many were built in Colorado, Nebraska, South Dakota, and North Dakota. God. Titan Ranch began hosting conferences and meetings in 2019, and added its AirBnB listing in November 2020. The united states built many missile silos in the midwest, away from populated areas. Titan I missiles were stored in silo lifts and had to be raised to the surface to be fueled before launch. Not that the Air Force was sharing that information. You have to try it to see what I mean. The large underground facility at Kirtland AFB in Albuquerque, New "Some people feel that the missile had a little bit of a bad omen, if you will.". How far is it from Rockyford to Limon? After getting the last fly out of the car, we hoped, everything went as planned. The Air Force decided to take measures to improve security within the launch complexes. Titan Ranch, located just northeast of Conway, Arkansas, is one of these nuclear missile bases. We didnt want to leave, but I understand why they wanted us to leave.. However, a new threat arose from the growing heat inside the silo. King and Phillips arrived at the site at the same time as Van Buren County Sheriff Gus Anglin, and they were all greeted by military security personnel, who told them no evacuation of the area was necessary at that point. A civilian crew was working throughout all nine floors of the missile silo, which plunged 150 into the ground. The newly formed 308th Strategic Missile Wing oversaw the operation of 18 missile sites, manned by groups of four soldiers 24 hours a day.
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